Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine.
In looking at potential running and walking routes last night, we discovered some Strava segments* nearby, including one just shy of 1 mile with 350' of ascent, ending just a few hundred metres away from Bertie. With the women's record standing at 21:22, how could I resist abandoning another rest day in favour of becoming the record holder on a segment?
I would likely have just run down the hill and back up again, but Mick's vote was for the other option I'd put to him: a descent to the east, looping around the Monsaraz hill to the north, then finishing with the segment which climbs back up the hill from the west. It was a very lovely route and even though I didn't manage to tackle the entire hill at a run (Mick did, mind) I still took the record by over 10 minutes.
Cloud hanging over the water first thing
A hot air balloon over the plain
Even though I was targetting the segment, I still paused for a snap part way up the hill. That's Mick ahead of me.
Running down steep sections of this is not a quick or pleasant experience!
Sometime between finishing our run and heading out for a walk this afternoon, I misplaced Mick for an hour or so. It happens occasionally. This time he'd noticed that the van about five along from us was the same one we'd parked next to in Ameixial a few weeks ago (small world that it is), and thus he'd got chatting on varying subjects from motorhome automatic levelling systems to (of course) Brexit.
Our afternoon outing was back down the east side of the hill, this time branching off to the right (this morning we went left) to visit a stone circle. Except it's not a circle, it's a rectangle. And, according to the information I read on line, this wasn't it's original site - it was relocated here due to the flooding of the reservoir. In the absence of any information signs, it was about as exciting as I expected a set of standing stones to be, but it was a pleasant stroll to get there and back.
Being Saturday, the village is much busier with visitors today and late this afternoon we joined them, although only so that we could sit in the square and avail ourselves of the free wifi for a short while. It was a pleasant interlude into our afternoon, with not just a bit of people-watching, but some good entertainment in the form of a male voice choir performing at a restaurant just out of sight, but well within earshot.
(*Strava: an exercise logging App. A Strava Segment: anyone can nominate part of a route they've logged on Strava as a segment. A league table is then formed of everyone who has covered that segment via the same activity (walking, cycling, running), and thus, just for a bit of fun/motivation, one can compete with complete strangers from all around the world.)
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