Saturday 25 January - Cubnezais (France) and Pamplona (Spain)

Where's Bertie? He's in a free Aire in Pamplona. Exact location: 42.84015, -1.66468.
Weather: Cool but fine start; warm and sunny as we drove past Bordeaux and down to the Spanish border, then a bit showery since.

This morning was our fourth time attending the parkrun by Cubnezais and I was especially glad that I'd been there more than once before. I've mentioned previously that parkrun is a lax affair in France - who needs run briefings, marshalls or directional signs on the course, eh? Usually directional signs are not important to me, as even in a small field of participants it's pretty likely that I'll be able to see someone in front of me. Today, however, within seconds of the 'Trois, Deux, Un ... Allez!' I found myself in the unprecedented position of leading the pack. I had feared, when Mick stayed with me for the first lap of the 3-and-a-bit-lapper, that we would be engaged in a battle at the end, but I managed to shake him off in the second lap and maintained my position to come home a first finisher. Mick was not very far behind me in second place (although first on age grading, of course). Given this only occurred due to the small field (9) and the lack of men present (just 2), it's a reasonably safe bet that I'll never get handed that 0001 token again, although stranger things have happened*.

With this parkrun being in a remote location, there is no local cafe to which to adjourn, so coffee is served from a flask at a picnic table after everyone has crossed the finish line, and over coffee we chatted to another touristing couple - Mike and Katie from Wythenshawe parkrun. They'd flown into Bordeaux yesterday and had spent €60 on getting an Uber to the run this morning. To save costs, their intention for their return journey was to jog to the nearest station, 4.3km away along little lanes. Being not far out of our way (and knowing that in their situation we'd be very glad of a lift) we decided that showers could wait until later in the day and thus we drove them to a platform just outside of a tiny village with no amenities. There, we found that it was two and a quarter hours until the next train. We clearly couldn't leave two scantily clad runners huddled on a platform for that length of time, particularly when we were driving past Bordeaux anyway. So, we put the kettle on** and over tea and cake we had a little planninng session.

A twenty-minute drive later and we abandoned Mike and Katie in a supermarket car park on the edge of Bordeaux, from where Google suggested they could easily catch either a bus or train into the centre. Hopefully they enjoyed an afternoon full of eating and sightseeing, whilst we tootled our way south.

Employing our tried-and-tested toll avoidance tactics on the A10 south of Bordeaux (involving leaving the toll road at junctions 18 and 12, rejoining one junction later, having driven along the adjacent minor road in between), we forked out for the unavoidable toll fees on the A63 and continued to be frivilous in taking the toll roads in Spain. The whole splashing of cash came in at under €18, which was entirely justified by the time saving and ease.

Somewhere in amongst all that we stopped for lunch at some motorway services. Coincidentally, it was the same services as we used last year, and more coincidentally we pulled in next to the same two motorhomes as were parked next to us at lunchtime yesterday.

I'd spent a chunk of time pre-run this morning in planning our route through Spain, deciding (for reasons I can't now quite remember) to travel via Pamplona, Valencia and the coast down to Mazzaron, rather than going via Madrid. Pamplona seemed like a reasonable place to aim for today, and so it proved as we pulled into the Aire just before 4pm (having paused for diesel at a nearby supermarket, after driving the final 40km with the fuel light on***).

We now find ourselves with the same quandary as we did at the same point in our journey last year (when we stayed in Vittoria Gastiez on our way down to southern Portugal): I'd really like to have a look around Pamplona whilst we're here, but it's Sunday tomorrow, when HGVs won't be on the roads, making it the best day of the week to travel. I think practicality is going to win over exploration.

^{(*Two weeks ago there was a freak coincidence of all the speedsters being occupied elsewhere on the same Saturday morning, allowing me to come first female at a parkrun in a field of 268 participants (106 women). Whilst ridiculously pleased with the result, I did recognise it as an absurdly slow time for the first female finisher - indeed, perusing the stats later, I found that it was the second slowest first female time in 201 runnings of the event!
**As I served drinks I thought "What a shame we don't have any pastries on board" as we knew Mike and Kate hadn't had any breakfast. It took me a few moments to remember the cake mountain. That reduced the quantity of Dundee cake in the cupboard nicely!
***As ordinary diesel was €1.20 a litre and premium was €1.25, Bertie got treated to the latter.)}