Where's Bertie? He's at a fenced-in Aire on the edge of a large car park in the town of Gibraleón (exact location: 37.37196, -6.96259).
Weather: Drizzly until we drove out from under the weather front, then sunny and increasingly warm (topping out at 18 degrees), but windy.
The strong north-westerly wind was a bonus again for the first part of today's journey, as we continued to head south. Then we turned west and the excellent fuel economy we've achieved over the last couple of days (helped by also losing a few thousand feet in altitude) started to be erroded.
It was a comparatively short journey today too, as a late change of plan meant that we didn't drive straight to Portugal. I'd spotted that there is an Aire in Gibraleón, with generally good reviews, and as we didn't visit this extreme bottom left corner of Spain on our previous trip to the south of the country (we turned north just west of Jerez on that occasion) we thought we may as well have a night's stop here, as it was barely a detour from our route.
We rolled into the Aire at just a couple of minutes past noon, with Bertie's cupboards and fridge stuffed to bursting, having stopped for an extensive grocery shop on the way (partly a case of shopping when hungry; partly a case of having spent days ignoring our dwindling supplies). By happy coincidence, one of this week's 'Special Buys' at Lidl in Spain is a beard trimmer - handy for Mick who discovered a short way into the trip that whilst we had the charging cable with us, he had left the actual trimmer in the bathroom cabinet at home.
Our foray into town this afternoon was an overdressed affair - after so much cold weather lately, our minds couldn't quite believe that it could possibly be as warm out as it was. Whilst locals were still dressed up in warm coats, we ended up with hats and gloves in pockets, and jackets in hands, as we wandered first around the narrow, cobbled streets of the town, then out on a good path along the river. That river is currently a small trickle, running in a deep channel that can clearly cope with much greater volumes when torrential rains fall - it's further evidence, along with the palm trees and cacti, that we have reached the 'winter sun' bit of the country.
Weather: Drizzly until we drove out from under the weather front, then sunny and increasingly warm (topping out at 18 degrees), but windy.
The strong north-westerly wind was a bonus again for the first part of today's journey, as we continued to head south. Then we turned west and the excellent fuel economy we've achieved over the last couple of days (helped by also losing a few thousand feet in altitude) started to be erroded.
It was a comparatively short journey today too, as a late change of plan meant that we didn't drive straight to Portugal. I'd spotted that there is an Aire in Gibraleón, with generally good reviews, and as we didn't visit this extreme bottom left corner of Spain on our previous trip to the south of the country (we turned north just west of Jerez on that occasion) we thought we may as well have a night's stop here, as it was barely a detour from our route.
We rolled into the Aire at just a couple of minutes past noon, with Bertie's cupboards and fridge stuffed to bursting, having stopped for an extensive grocery shop on the way (partly a case of shopping when hungry; partly a case of having spent days ignoring our dwindling supplies). By happy coincidence, one of this week's 'Special Buys' at Lidl in Spain is a beard trimmer - handy for Mick who discovered a short way into the trip that whilst we had the charging cable with us, he had left the actual trimmer in the bathroom cabinet at home.
Our foray into town this afternoon was an overdressed affair - after so much cold weather lately, our minds couldn't quite believe that it could possibly be as warm out as it was. Whilst locals were still dressed up in warm coats, we ended up with hats and gloves in pockets, and jackets in hands, as we wandered first around the narrow, cobbled streets of the town, then out on a good path along the river. That river is currently a small trickle, running in a deep channel that can clearly cope with much greater volumes when torrential rains fall - it's further evidence, along with the palm trees and cacti, that we have reached the 'winter sun' bit of the country.
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