They had shaken hands and he had saluted and gone out to the staff car where the old man was waiting asleep and in that car they had ridden over the road past Guadarrama, the old man still asleep, and up the Navacerrada road to the Alpine Club hut where he, Robert Jordan, slept for three hours before they started.
Within 10 minutes of leaving the golden-hued lakeside wine country and joining the road to Switzerland, the climate and the scenery become distinctively Alpine.