Monday 9 February - Peñíscola

Where's Bertie? He's at Camping Los Pinos on the edge of Peñíscola, at a cost of €15 per night including electricity, wifi and all campsite facilities. The price is up €2 on last year, but it's still a bit of a bargain for what you get here. 

Weather: Sunny and warm, after a cool night with some overnight rain. 

There was a feral cat feeding station next to last night's Aire, which was nice from the point of view of watching the cats, particularly at feeding time, but not so good when they started climbing into Bertie's engine bay - I'm sure they must do it in all vehicles, but in Bertie's A-class motorhome body, you really hear them moving around in there. Mick went out to scare one out at one point; on another occasion some sharp raps on the dashboard did the trick. 

The short period of dawn rain had abated by the time we were ready to leave, which was good for me as I ran a quick errand, nipping to the bakery just up the road. I've not made any bread since we left home, so a loaf of some description was what we needed, and an impulsive purchase of a large Palmera occurred too.

Less than two hours later, we arrived in Peñíscola, heading for the campsite where we spent 3 weeks last year, hoping they would have a pitch for us. We got an actual pitch this time (last year we spent all of our 3 weeks in the concrete car park area), although arguably the worst one on the site, being the only one outside of the entrance/exit barriers, and nearest to the road. However, it's also one of the few real pitches (grit surface, hedges on two sides, a wall on the other) where its orientation means that we could position Bertie's nose towards the sun for maximum solar gain. It doesn't matter if the general temperature at this time of year is mid-teens: as long as it's sunny, we are toasty warm inside. As it goes, it's forecast to be 20+ for the next couple of days.

After elevenses, a crossword and lunch, I headed out into the Sierra d'Irta hills, just for a 1.5hr out-and-back, rather than one of the many circuits I did through those hills last year (I considered a circuit but was wearing brand new cropped leggings and knew that if I ventured further I would encounter seriously spikey undergrowth that would likely snag the fabric. I'll wear shorts next time, so it's my legs that suffer rather than my clothes). It may be a tad unexciting to return to the same place as we visited last year, to do the same routes through the same hills, but for the next couple of weeks we will be happy with the repetition. Mick was mainly working whilst we were here last year, so can explore more of the hills, and for me I'll have the benefit of mainly knowing where I am and where I'm going. Hopefully our favourite bar (for coffee and tostada) and restaurant (for lunch) will remain largely unchanged too.

 

Snaps from the local hills

Sunday 8 February - Alcañiz

Where's Bertie? He spent the night at a municipal Aire in the town of Alcañiz. 

Weather: A grey, sometimes wet morning, but a sunny and warm finish. 

 

We've now spent a total of two nights at a Camping Car Park location (the same one, twice, a year apart), and this stay didn't go entirely smoothly, in that when we came to leave we keyed in our code, it acknowledged it and said 'Good Bye!', but the barrier failed to open. These locations are all unmanned, and I feared an unwelcome delay to our departure, but a very brief phone call to the displayed number had us released within a minute or two. Pretty good service, particularly considering that it was relatively early on a Sunday morning. 

It was a grey, dull morning as we drove south out of France, which became a remarkably wet morning as we passed into Spain. The border really did mark the change from merely grey to monsoonal rain. Quite unpleasant driving conditions. 

Bertie's fuel light had been on for a while by the time we entered Spain, so we knew we were going to have to stop at the first motorway fuel station, which we also knew would be cheaper than even the cheapest fuel stations in France (€1.549 vs €1.662). There we briefly contemplated: to fill up, or to just pop €20 in to fill up later, somewhere cheaper. We opted for the former, which probably wasn't the most sensible choice given how many places we passed at 25-30c less per litre between there and Pamplona (for my future reference: taking the free road around Pamplona passes a cheap fuel station without needing any diversion into the town).

With it being a Sunday, almost no lorries were on the roads so we opted for the free road to Pamplona then onward to Tudela, with Google telling me that the difference in time would be less than 10 minutes. We stopped for lunch somewhere along that section and had a brief chat about where we might spend the night, deciding to head to Alcañiz and decide on arrival if we wanted to stay there or continue all the way down to Peñiscola. 

It had been another long day of driving, and we'd had enough by the time we got to Alcañiz. Arriving at gone 4pm, we wasted no time in heading out for a quick walk around the town - we needed a leg-stretch anyway, and having seen the striking sight of a massive church atop the hill with a castle a short distance away, they enticed us for a quick, urban, pre-tea explore, rather than striding off along the river. Verdict: it's the sort of place that, if the weather was just a bit warmer, we might have stayed for a couple of days. 

Usually we manage to time our walks around Spanish towns when they're absolutely dead, but 1630 is the time of day when people are just emerging back onto the streets after Sunday lunch out, so whilst it wasn't busy on the streets, there were people around. 

With the locals having just finished their lunches, we were ready for tea, so back to Bertie it was.

These long driving days are disproportionately tiring, so it was another early night, ready for one more early-ish start, but this time just for a final 1.5hr hop to our destination.   

A striking church, the centre piece of the view as you drive into town, and the castle over on the nobble on the right. 
 

If I'd been abducted by aliens and dropped into this street I wouldn't have struggled to know I was in Spain. 

The front face of the church, but the more impressive view was from below, from where you could see the scale of the building. 

  

View from the castle

(Margaret B: if you're reading ... seeing that Alcañiz is on one of the camino routes, I'm guessing you've probably been there? If so, did you stay at the Parador?)

 

Saturday 7 February - Castets

Where's Bertie? He's at a Camping-Car Park Aire at Castets, at a cost of €14.72 including electricity. 

Weather: Mainly warm and sunny. 15 degrees outside for much of the afternoon and absolutely roasting inside Bertie. 

We were away from Villedômer at ten past eight, and opted for the same route as last year, taking the toll road from Tours to the S side of Poitiers. The price on entry to the Péage remains 90c, but the price on exit has increased to €22. Mick was driving and I'm sure he would say that it was worth it for the mindless sitting with cruise control engaged and not having traffic lights, roundabouts and endlessly varying speed limits to worry about. 

In another repetition of our last two such journeys south, we stopped at Reignac at lunchtime, where there's a car park next to a Voie Verte ex-railway leisure route. We timed our arrival well; it's only a small car park and it was full, but as we sat for a moment contemplating our options, two women strode back to their car and promptly drove away. Mick walked east along the route; I trotted off west, and we reconvened at Erica an hour later, where Mick had lunch on the table. 

It was then just a two hour drive to our night-stop. We stayed here on our dash north last year, and decided that we would use it again. It's not as interesting a location as Capbreton, which has been our chosen staging point for years, but it has the merit of being immediately next to the motorway. 

I'm not sure where we're headed tomorrow. We're aiming for the east coast of Spain on Monday, but that gives us a lot of options for tomorrow. I'd best look at a map after tea, the making of which is what's next on my agenda.  

Friday 6 February - to Villedômer

Where's Bertie? He's in the Aire at Villedômer, where he's been several times before.

Weather: Some sunshine, some overcast, some showers. 11-14 degrees.

Last summer, Bertie's windscreen wiper motor twice ceased to function. The first time, I cleaned migrated grease from the internal contacts and revived it. The second time we were on the road without all the tools needed and an auto-electrician sorted out a corroded earth for us. It has worked faultlessly ever since - at least until we were about two minutes into our journey yesterday, when Mick turned the windscreen wipers to intermittent, and they parked themselves half way up the windscreen. 

It didn't take long to establish that they were working fine, save for the park position, which in turn meant that it would be in our favour if it rained for the entire journey and thus we could just leave them running. It rained most of the time, so the time they spent in an inconvenient position was minimal. 

By the time we stopped for tea in Tesco's car park in Ashford, I'd concluded that this couldn't be a repeat of the grease migration issue that caused the first failure (and that I know can also cause a park issue), but had to be that the wiper mechanism had slipped on the motor spindle. As we sat at the Chunnel terminal, I offered to sort it out, but given that it was both dark and raining, Mick suggested that it could wait until this morning. 

So, the first task in our leisurely start today was to disconnect the wiper linkage from the motor and reposition it. It was a relief to find that the securing nut wasn't even hand tight, confirming the diagnosis, and thanks to having taken it apart so many times last year, I could immediately see that it wasn't in the correct position. It can't have taken more than five minutes to sort it out.   

The wipers were called into use a few times during the day, but the more notable features of the weather were the warm (relatively) temperature and the periods of sunshine. It has been so grey and miserable at home for all bar a scant few days thus far this winter, that it was a pleasant change to see the sun and feel such heat through Bertie's panoramic windscreen. 

There's nothing else to say about today's journey. Each year I check my handwritten notes in our road atlas, and read my blog to see what we did on the previous year's journey. I don't need to make any notes about the route choice this year, as we did exactly the same as last year. The one toll road section we used had gone up by just 20c. The only stops (save for a driver-swap micro-pause) were at a supermarket at lunchtime (groceries first, then lunch in the car park), and a petrol station just before our destination. We arrived in Villedômer at quarter past five, which didn't feel too bad considering we didn't hit the road until a few minutes before 10am. 

Straight out for a brisk, but brief, leg-stretch we went, ending at the patisserie to sort ourselves out with something for pudding tonight:

 

The stream next to the Aire in Villedômer is running high

Bit soggy on the fields too

From the local patisserie (sorry - too much effort to rotate it now I've uploaded it)

 

Thursday 5 February: Wissant

Where’s Bertie? He’s in the Aire at Wissant (France), at a cost of €11 (including 50c tourist tax each).

Weather: Rain

What a hectic 36 hours! At 11am yesterday we were sitting having coffee and a crossword in town, on our way to the supermarket, with no expectation that we would be in France by the end of today. Indeed, we’d just about given up on our Jan/Feb trip to Spain this year.

I’d originally booked our Chunnel tickets back in November, to cross on 10 January. The spanner that got thrown in that works was that I found a lump in my breast when we were in Wales at the end of December. I wasn’t overly concerned, sure by its traits that it was a cyst, but thought I’d best let the doctor confirm that.

The doctor wasn’t particularly reassuring, and referred me to the breast clinic on a 2 week wait basis. This still gave time to get my appointment through, get the all-clear and be off to Spain on our 10 January booking ... except that the appointment finally came through for 3.5 weeks later. So, the booking was moved, such that I would attend my appointment, they’d confirm it was a cyst, either drain it or not, immediately discharge me, and we’d be on our way three days later.

The fly in that ointment was that they found an atypical cyst, and thus it required a biopsy. The consultant’s opinion was that it would be unwise to remove myself to Spain whilst awaiting the result. So, we moved our outbound ticket to August, figuring that would give us flexibility to either move it forward again, or use it in the summer (but completely forgetting that I’ve entered a race one week after the date that I moved it to – doh!).

When I received a phone call just before lunch yesterday, confirming that the biopsy had come back clear, we quickly looked at a calendar. Was there still time to make a trip to Spain a reasonable thing to do, considering that our return date was fixed and unmoveable? Yes, we decided, there was.

A frantic afternoon ensued, firstly sorting out travel insurance, then moving our Chunnel ticket once again, then packing in such a disorganised fashion that you’d think we’d never packed for a trip before in our lives. An equally frantic morning ensued today - a stark contrast to our usual take-a-few-days-about-it approach to packing. Half an hour ahead of schedule we jumped into Bertie and were off. We are yet to discover what we have forgotten, but I’ll be surprised if we managed to remember everything*. 

We arrived at the Eurotunnel terminal early enough to be offered a crossing 2 hours before the one we’d booked, at 1916 but half an hour later, the departure boards told us it was moved to 2016  (the App confirmed the rescheduling whilst simultaneously saying there were no delays, so apparently moving the time of a crossing doesn’t count as a delay). At 1915 our crossing suddenly changed back from 2016 to 1916 with the status ‘Boarding Closed’! We finally set out under the sea at around 2040, so still earlier than we had been booked, but an annoying set of circumstances, given that if we’d ignored the information on the board and just proceeded to the departure lanes, we would have crossed so much earlier.

With the time difference, it will be a late arrival in Wissant, but less painful than the alternative option we considered, which was the 0320 crossing tomorrow morning.  

(*yes, we do have a comprehensive checklist, but it wouldn’t be possible to cover everything. By way of an example, Mick picked up our Euro notes yesterday, but it was only in the middle of the night that I suddenly thought that our ‘float’ bag of Euro coins was probably no longer in Bertie, and whilst going without it wouldn’t have been disaster, but as we don’t tend to use cash on a day-to-day basis to accumulate change, it’s good to hold onto a stash of coins for things like the laundrette.) 

1-24 October - Scotland

Wednesday 1 October – to Perth

I had an appointment at 11am, was home just after noon and we were on the road before half past. With such a late start, it seemed too much of a stretch to think we might make it to Perth, so we decided to aim for somewhere around Moffat. Given the length of hold-ups met in our last few journeys, our journey time expectations were pessimistic, so it was a pleasant surprise to have the smoothest possible journey north. The brakes were barely troubled and by Moffat it had become clear that it wasn’t worth detouring from our route for a good night-spot when we could just continue to Perth.

It had been a tiring day of driving. I had tea on the stove almost as soon as the handbrake was applied, and by 2030 we were in bed.

Thursday 2 to Tuesday 14 October – Newtonmore

Leaving Perth, and with no need to be in Newtonmore at any particular time, I had a little look as to whether we were going to be passing any hills that I could reasonably visit on the way. A 5-mile (each way) detour seemed reasonable, and thus Blath Bhalg was bagged before we tootled onward to Newtonmore.

One of the purposes of this trip was to attend the TGO Challenge Scottish Reunion, after which we were just going to stick around for a few more days before heading off to do some more TGOC-East recces for the rest of the month.

What caused us to stay so long? I think it was mainly that I started making a video for the TGOC YouTube Channel, and year on year I suffer amnesia about quite how long it takes me to make videos. Days were lost staring at a screen and clicking a mouse (not to mention doing fifteen takes of me trying to speak an entire sentence without stumbling over any of the words).

In amongst that I took myself off for an overnight backpack, which turned into rather a hard 35km daywalk with a full pack - probably not an entirely sensible level of exertion so soon after my 24-hour race. 

On 14 October I finally finished the videos I’d been working on and we declared our intention to depart the following day.

Wednesday 15 – Friday 17 October – Around Pitlochry

Wednesday turned out to be a gloriously sunny day from about 11am onwards in the Pitlochry area, which was a bonus for me, as on my agenda was a recce that involved the summit of Ben Vrackie (not a new tick for me as I’d been up there a few years ago).

Leaving Mick in the Visitor Centre car park at Killiecrankie, it was a non-standard route that I took up (i.e. not from the nearest car park) and I only met one couple until the final reaches, when I looked up the stone staircase to see what struck me as a scene from the Hillary Step. I found myself on the summit with 17 other people, although not for long as I continued on away from the crowds to drop off the back side of the hill to make my way over to Shinagag. From there it was a retracing of steps for a while before, in a dereliction of duty, I walked straight past a path I was specifically meant to be looking at (even worse, actually, as my camera records tell me that I stopped and took a photo from the very spot, but looking in the opposite direction). 

22km later, I was back at Bertie having had a fabulous day out in stunning surroundings under a gorgeous sky.

With the day marching on, and unable to spend the night in the Visitor Centre car park, we debated whether to go for a spot that was immediately adjacent to (but not on) the A9 with the road noise that would entail, or whether it was worth a 5-mile detour to the car park we’d used when I’d nipped up the Marilyn of Blath Bhalg on our way north. We opted for the least driving, arrived to find the whole space taken over by Travellers, so we ended up taking the detour, knowing we’d need to come back on ourselves in the morning.

Thursday was another fine day and it started with me being surprised by the health stats on my watch that suggested that I was exhausted or ill and should rest. Feeling fine, I merrily ignored its advice and Mick dropped me in Pitlochry for me to walk to Ballinluig via Loch Broom. Another good outing, at the end of which I met Mick at the Nae Limits Café, before we headed back to the same night-stop – it being on our way to the next day’s recce spot.

Friday was a bad day in many ways. I woke up early feeling very poorly indeed and spent the morning having a close relationship with Bertie’s toilet. I spent the rest of the day in bed, at first freezing, then absolutely roasting. I was in no fit state to even be driven anywhere, and thankfully there was no impediment to staying exactly where we were. I remained a positive radiator of heat for the whole night.

Saturday 18 October to Wednesday 22 - Newtonmore

On Friday evening we had established that not only were all local campsites ridiculously expensive (£42 the cheapest), but they were also fully booked for the weekend with it being Scottish school holidays (I could have got a double room at the Bridge of Cally Hotel for £57!). Involving a bigger diversion off our route than we would have liked, Mick had booked us a Certified Site for a couple of days, where we could hole up whilst I recovered.

However, by Saturday morning it had become clear that I would benefit from some medical attention and the best option seemed to be to backtrack to Newtonmore (known facilities and a house to stay in) rather than diverting to Blairgowrie (unknown facilities and being confined to Bertie).

I spent the next two days in bed, and much of the following two too. By Wednesday I was feeling much better and we were good to resume our travels. (Incidentally, I spent a chunk of one of those days in bed collaborating with ChatGPT to produce some Python scripts and batch files that have automated converting my phone's HEIC files into JPGs, reducing their size by 50% and auto-adding names and captions. It has massively sped up the time it takes me to produce my recce reports.)  

Thursday 23 October - to Braemar

Google Maps told us that our journey to Ballater was going to be longer than usual, due to a closure on the A939 at Bridge of Brown. I checked Aberdeen Council’s road closure page and confirmed that yes, there was indeed a closure notice in place for the whole week, necessitating a 12-mile detour. With time now running out to do the Recces for which we came to Scotland, we weren’t at leisure to delay for another couple of days, so off we went … to find the road wasn’t closed at all.

Two successful recces were conducted (mine was particularly lovely, from Gairnshiel Lodge to Tullochmacarrick) and the only fly in the ointment was that there wasn’t a pitch to be had on the campsite at Ballater, which is where we’d wanted to spend Thursday and Friday nights. Braemar it was instead – just as good a site, but whereas £29 at Ballater buys you a pitch including electricity, at Braemar it’s £29 plus metered electricity.

Friday 24 October - Braemar

That brings us to today, which we allocated as a doing nothing day on the basis of a weather forecast that said that there was a 95% chance of heavy rain continuously from 4am until 10pm. By the time the rain finally started at 4pm, I could have done my next recce route three times over! How annoying!

The consolation prize was that the coffee and cheese scones at The Bothy (café) were both excellent (the tea was just fine too, but the croissant was a touch disappointing – perhaps an error on Mick’s part to order a French item off a Scottish menu?)

Another 24-hour Race

Why?! 

One of my aims at my 24-hour race in June was to beat my Personal Best of 130km. That race turned out to be ridiculously hot, so I moderated my plans and whilst I won the race I didn’t increase my PB.

I had said before, and during, that race that I wasn’t going to do a 24-hour race next year, but with my objective unmet, I resigned myself to having another stab. Then it occurred to me that it would be easier to maintain my fitness and endurance, than to rebuild it next year, which is what saw me enter this event taking place just 3 months later.

Weather

The weather forecast two weeks out was for wall-to-wall sunshine and 18 degrees. By two days out it was wall-to-wall rain. Two hours before the start, we were down to just two hours of rain and one of showers in the afternoon, with a middling probability of a couple of hours of showers overnight.

Given that forecast, we were unlucky with what we actually got. Somehow, with no suggestion of any remarkable windspeeds in the lead up, mid-afternoon the Met Office suddenly issued a severe weather warning for high winds, effective immediately until the early hours of the morning. It was as if someone had said “You do know that it’s jolly windy out there, don’t you?” and the Met Person said “Blimey, best get on and warn people about what’s currently happening!”.

As much as I like hot weather, I have to concede that the wet and windy conditions were more comfortable than 30+ degrees. But, oh, the mud! There were sections of the course that became pure comedy mud-baths, through which slow teetering was the only option. It was going through one of these in the pissing rain in the middle of the night that I suggested to the person slip-sliding next to me that we had made an odd choice of a fun way to spend a Saturday night out!

How it went

I know it sounds silly to say that I ‘only’ managed 120km, but that wasn’t my goal and it feels like I put in an awful lot of effort, and endured some pretty grim weather, only to fail in my objective. Relatively, I did reasonably well, coming 2^nd out of 89 in my age category and 11^th out of 297 solo women, but a good placing also wasn’t my objective.

It would be easy to blame being poorly in the week leading up to the event for my failure, but as I felt fine (if I overlook the persistent indigestion) for the first 10 laps, I really don’t think that was the problem.

It would also be easy to blame the weather – and certainly the solo winners’ distances were down on previous years – but as I was still on target when the sky cleared and the sun came up, I can’t blame that either. 

I think the reality is that I didn’t eat enough, I lost focus on what I was trying to achieve and somehow convinced myself, with 5 hours to go, that I couldn’t fit 3 more laps in when, in reality, I clearly had time (this event works on the basis of ‘if you’ve started you can finish’ on any lap started before the noon cut-off).

It was in Lap 11 that the wheels fell off. I felt awful and really tired. Thank goodness for a woman called Jayne who distracted me nicely, and undoubtedly sped me up, for the second half of the lap.

Somehow between Lap 11 and Lap 12, I spent 2 hours and 14 minutes in camp. How? What was I doing? I know I ate a bowl of porridge and a can of soup, but I cannot now account for the other two hours. And, yes, I felt pretty rough, but that’s hardly surprising in the circumstances, and it wasn’t a good reason not to carry on.

I did eventually drag myself back out, and felt pretty good for the first 4km of Lap 12, but then off came the wheels again. I felt so bad, seemingly unable to maintain a straight line, that I gave serious consideration to declaring myself unfit to continue at the second Marshal Point. I’d heard someone at the water station mention that they had water and sugar and thinking that a bit of pure sugar might sort me out, I continued on, and at the water station I asked if I’d heard correctly. They pointed me to some cups, where I expected to find a few teaspoons of sugar, but instead found four fizzy cola bottles.

I put the first one in my mouth, it tasted absolutely fantastic and before I’d even swallowed it, I felt so very much better, thus demonstrating that the ‘I can’t do this’ was entirely in my head. I stormed down the next hill (the steep one) passing people inching down sideways, and managed a power-march back up the other side (okay, that was more to do with the photographer at the top). The pep in my step lasted for most of the rest of the lap.  

Finishing Lap 12 with an hour still available to get back out for a final lap, I could undoubtedly have managed to equal my PB of 130km, but I couldn’t see the point. I was going to make my right shin worse, and having already had the experience of covering 70k on a painful shin back in June I wasn’t in the market for doing the same again when it wasn’t going to net me even a PB.

So, with time to spare, I called it a day.

In hindsight, it was a sensible decision to stop … it might have even been the right one!

That’s it, I’m done with 24-hour races…

It’s amusing to now read the messages I sent to a friend about 3 hours after the race, in which I was still sure that I wasn’t going to be doing another 24-hour race any time soon.

Three hours later Ali & I were plotting to return next year.

I’ve since decided that I need the opportunity to have two stabs next year (as I’m still convinced that I have 140km in me) so I may well be doing both June and September again. 

Photos:

Lap 1:

Lap 2:

Lap 3:

Above: Lap 4 (Blogger won't let me insert anything above it); Below: Lap 5

Laps 6, 7 and 8 (yep, Blogger won't let me insert text between the next 3 either):

Lap 9:

 I got so very cold on Lap 8 and shivered my way around. 

Lap 10: 

On this lap I set out in a long-sleeved base layer, fleece, two waterproof jackets, hat, gloves and buff. I must have gone 7 or 8k before took off the hat and gloves and opened some zips.  

Lap 11:
 

Final lap, about 2km from the finish, after the weather had belatedly come good