Saturday 29 February - La Azohía

Where's Bertie? He's still being mesmerised by the Med in La Azohía.
Weather: Some high cloud around and still poor air clarity. Warm and calm, though.

It's Saturday and whether it's because it's nearly March (and we've clicked over from 'not a sensible time to go to the beach' to 'weekend beach trips season!') or because it's Spanish school holidays (I wouldn't have a clue), there was an influx of beachgoing, strolling visitors to La Azohía today, giving us plenty of people-watching entertainment out of Bertie's front window.

Snapped on this morning's run. The anglers were out in force early on. You may be able to make out the two who are standing a distance out into the sea, but only up to their knees.

The usual "What are we doing today" sort of discussion took place this morning, with today's emphasis being on staying or going. I don't think we reached a firm conclusion, which means we're still here.

Whilst Mick completed (for now) the work he's been doing, I finished off the hat I've been knitting, although I don't think it'll be called into use any time soon. We popped across the road for a photoshoot this afternoon and either I had a bout of paranoia, or people stared at our antics.

Our afternoon stroll was on the GR92 route along the coast to the west, to the beach at Isla Plana...

Isla Plana beach - the GR92 runs along the top edge, but it's a good firm grit/clay surface. No ankle-shaping sand here.

Looking back along the coastal walkway to La Azohía

...on our way taking us past a large area of polytunnels. We'd first seen the great swathe of polythene from up high yesterday...
 

You can see it in this snap (through the haze of poor air quality), although it looks less like water here than it did to the naked eye

...and couldn't decide whether we were looking at a lagoon or polytunnels. If it hadn't been for past experience of seeing entire valley floors apparently under water, but actually being used for covered agriculture, we would have erred on the side of lagoon. Yesterday, the reality was only confirmed later when a different view gave us sight of angular edges and water apparently lying on a slope.

The only other point of note in what has been a quiet day (other than covering 9 miles on foot, which I suppose may be counted as an active day!) was that I implemented my second, more sophisticated, design of temporary fix for the shower room door handle. This uses a non-stretchy ribbon attached to two loops of elastic. The ribbon goes over the top of the door and the elastic attaches to both the door handles, forming an external spring, to do the job of the broken internal one. It's a much more effective solution, giving us an operational handle that will keep the door closed both when living and when travelling.

Friday 28 February - La Azohía

Where's Bertie? He's still enjoying a close view of the sea at La Azohía.
Weather: Poor air clarity today, but still cloudless and warm.

To the southeast side of the bay at La Azohía are these hills:

We walked across them today, on a route that could loosely be described as a figure of eight, like this:

Here's the top photo again, annotated (although I'm not sure in a meaningful manner!) with our route, as far as it can be seen from this side, and as far as it's possible for me to mark it accurately by poking a pointer at the screen of my phone:

We followed something akin to the orange dashes up to the ridge, then we disappeared behind the summit to the left of that point. Following the GR92 we went behind and past that hill, reapproaching it along the ridge from the other direction. We then followed the ridge the whole way along to the tower on the headland.

Here are a few snaps of the outing:

We had elevenses on the highest summit we visited (1200' ish?). That bun was bigger than my head!

From the summit with the masts we opted to shun both the GR and PR routes and instead follow the 'path' that runs along the ridge. It was definitely interesting going that way and at times scrambly, technical and/or like standing on plates of ballbearings. It's a wonder that we both managed to stay on our feet the whole time, although there were a few close calls and arm waving moments.

We resisted popping into the restaurant for another Menu del Dia on our way back to Bertie, but did nip into the Spar shop* adjacent to the parking area as ice cream seemed like a suitable end to our outing.

Mick has been campaigning for a swim in the sea since we arrived, so this afternoon we donned our swimmers and walked the 40m to the sea. There Mick did exactly as he always does when faced with cold water: he tippy-toed a few steps in and declared that there was no way he could swim in that. I did as I always do: I disengaged my brain and swam. It wasn't a bad temperature - no gasping or shivering. I did eventually manage to cajole Mick into getting wet, however, even 50m off-shore the water was still barely more than knee deep, so not ideal for swimming.

Forgot to post this photo yesterday. It's taken from Bertie's back bumper. This only shows a section of the area of wasteland that has become a temporary home for a veritable international gathering of motorhomers. We've found three other (much smaller) areas in La Azohía that are also being used for the purpose.

(*I often wonder what the residents of places such as this (although there aren't many around at this time of year; most properties appear to be second homes locked up for winter) make of the motorhomers who flock here and set up temporary encampments on every spare bit of land. However, I feel sure the businesses don't mind, as without a doubt the Spar shop (which only opens between 9am and 2pm each day) and the bars and restaurants are benefitting significantly from all of the visitors.)

Thursday 27 February - La Azohía

Where's Bertie? He's still sitting just across the road from the beach at La Azohía.
Weather: Another glorious warm day.

The sun had just popped up over the hills, quickly warming the day from its overnight temperature of 12 degrees, as we stepped out of the door for a run along the coast. My leg was painfree, but I kept the distance short for fear that overdoing it could may cause a relapse tomorrow.

Looking west along the bay in the morning light.

Pre-run selfie. Unusually, we stayed together for the duration today.

A bit of research came next in my day, as I looked at the walking options nearby. One of the nice things about La Azohía is that the hills come right down to the sea (often you have the choice of flat promenades by the coast or hills if you go inland, but not both in one place), and it turns out that there's not a shortage of paths through those hills. I downloaded three routes and proposed that we would do the shortest of them this afternoon. Mick suggested that wouldn't be compatible with having a Menu del Dia for our lunch and I had to agree; walking was thus deferred until tomorrow.

I also gave a bit of thought to where we're going to head from here. I reached no conclusions and it's a subject we returned to late this afternoon. The main problem is a conflict of wants: we'd like to be inland, in the hills, but we'd also like the ease of running routes and warmer, more settled climate of the coast. We went round in circles looking at options and trying to make a decision, but I think we got there in the end. Although we do, of course, have a good track record of making such a decision then to go completely against it!

In between those two planning sessions came another few hours of work for Mick, and a huge lunch:

Four courses this time (five if, per the menu, you count coffee as a course). A ridiculous amount of food, but we battled through it.

We were nearly back at Bertie after lunch when I realised that our bag was still at the restaurant. Without panic (it was highly unlikely in a location such as this that anyone would have walked off with it, and if they had they would have been sorely disappointed by its contents) we doubled back on ourselves to retrieve it and in the process learnt the Spanish word for 'backpack'.

Talking of learning Spanish, our progress with the language has improved since we started using the Duolingo App a couple of weeks ago (previously we were doing - and struggling hard with - an audio course), but we are both still finding it a harder language to learn than German (we've been trying to learn German in the summer and Spanish in the winter, per our tours of the last three years).

Tuesday and Wednesday 25-26 February - N of Mazarrón and Azohia

Where's Bertie? He's sitting on a wasteland sort of a parking area two throws of a stone away from the sea, at Azohia (37.56341, -1.17421). Yesterday he spent a second night at the petrol station just north of Mazarrón.
Weather: A few whispy bits of cloud around, but sunny and warm (back into the low twenties).

Who in their right mind would choose to spend two whole days sitting at a petrol station adjacent to a motorway? Us, that's who!

You may be thinking that we clearly weren't in our right minds, but it became apparent yesterday morning that Mick needed another 24 hours of electricity for his laptop. I looked at options for campsites, as they would provide nicer surroundings for me to wander whilst Mick worked, but on further analysis we decided that it just wasn't worth driving out of our way to spend €32 for two nights at a campsite when we could just put up with another 24 hours where we were for €5.35. Moreover, I was still trying hard to rest my poorly leg, and the limited exploration or walking options at the petrol station were good for that purpose (even if I was climbing the walls by late afternoon!).

It turned out that the surroundings weren't so bad. I strolled out a couple of miles yesterday morning and once I'd got past the petrol stations and off the service road, I found myself in pleasant (surprisingly green) wild-meadow-ish land with hills ahead:

Looking at the map later, I discovered there was a Via Verde (green route cycle way - usually ex-railway lines) a mile away in the other direction. That's where I headed for a circuit this morning* whilst Mick pored over his laptop some more. The good news is that today I could walk without pain in my leg and a few test steps at a jog were promising too.

By the time Mick had declared he'd had enough at staring at his document, and I'd reviewed what he'd done, it was past time for lunch. Once we'd lunched it had reached that hour when we start thinking we may as well stay put, and in most locations that's what we would have done. However, three consecutive nights at a petrol station seemed excessive, so off we pootled a few kilometres up the road to Camposol.

When we set out on this trip, Camposol was the only place that was firmly on the agenda to visit. Everything else was to be made up as we went along, but our declared objective/turning-back-north-point**, was Camposol. The reason for this was because Mick has long been on the mailing list of a local estate agency, and has for the last couple of years regularly shown me properties we could buy. In reality, we're pretty convinced that if we were to want to spend a few months each winter at a fixed location in Spain, it would make more sense to rent than to buy, but even so, given his interest in the place we decided we would visit, spend a week in the area and see how we liked it.

We spent less than an hour there and probably decided in the first five minutes that it was a resounding 'no' even from a rental point of view. There are many reasons we like Spain and not a single one of them was exhibited in Camposol.

Where to go next? We've had two separate recommendations for Azohia in the last week, so it seemed as good a place to come as any. As we set off coast-wards, I pondered to Mick that it would be funny if we got there to find we'd been before, as we are now (temporarily!) on a bit of coast we travelled in 2016. As we drove through Isla Plana, just 3.5km from our destination, I clearly remembered having been there before (on 24 January 2016 - click here for the relevant blog post), but it turns out that on that occasion we passed within a kilometre or so of Azohia, but didn't visit.

The view from in front of Bertie's bumper. Taken at an angle because straight ahead it's just sea.

Having nestled Bertie into a space in the front row of this large patch of wasteland that's been comprehensively taken over by motorhomes, we set out at once for a stroll along the seafront and had not gone far when a ringing of bicycle bells behind us was augmented by shouts in English. It was Steve and Steve, who we first met in Simat three weeks ago, then in Archena last week. Once again, of all the places and directions we could have gone in the meantime, it's some coincidence to see each other again.

Looking back towards Bertie

We didn't make it all the way to the end of the bay today. Time had run away with us, so we returned to Bertie to squeeze in a crossword (a stinker today) before Mick donned the pinny to cook tea for me.

Conrad: there may have only been PRs around Ricote, but there's a GR runs through Azohia!


^{(*After a poor night's sleep. Having successfully played 'hunt and kill the mosquito' before lights-out, we hoped it was a lone intruder. Alas, no. At around 1.30am, after multiple disturbances of Mick turning the light on to look for the little bastard (they always seem to prefer Mick to me; he's sporting five bites at the moment), I got up and deployed the makeshift mosquito net. Really must make a proper one large enough to do its duty properly without draping over either of us. The net may be back in use tonight as we're pretty sure (unless it left whilst the door was open today) that we have at least one more.
**Yes, we are now further south...)}

Monday 24 February - N of Mazarrón

Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire at a Repsol petrol station a few kilometres to the N of Mazarrón. It's free to stay here, with free services, except for electricity which has cost us €5.35. Exact location: 37.62187, -1.34075
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm. Little bit of a breeze this afternoon.

Before we left Ricote I'd really wanted to visit the castle ruins, atop a hill overlooking the village, but a short walk across the Aire and back this morning confirmed that my leg wasn't up to it. That made me regret my decision not to nip up on Saturday whilst Mick was working.

We could easily have sat where we were for another day or three, but with Mick's laptop battery dead and his work unfinished, we decided to skip the next intended night-stop and go to find electricity instead. Over breakfast I outlined the three options to Mick and after discussion of the details, costs and merits of each we decided on a campsite which was both the nearest and the most expensive option. Ten minutes later we thought that hauling Bertie up into the hills, just to sit with hook-up for one night, and without the ability to go out and enjoy those hills, was a bit counter-intuitive. Instead we set the SatNav for this Repsol station next to a motorway, which we'd originally rejected on the basis that it only has eight spaces and if they were all taken then we would already have passed the two other options. We figured, however, that few people would want to sit in a position such as this all day (we're on the edge of a motorway and there's no town or village within easy walking distance) and thus there would likely be space.

Even though we were going to stop at a supermarket en-route, Mick nipped up to the bakery this morning in the interests of spending a few more pennies in the village before we left. This huge bun was one of his purchases. It was a cross between bread and cake and had the flavour of almonds and fennel. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to buy another.

With a couple of navigational blips (it seems that every time my examination of the map suggests that there's only one possible way the SatNav could take us, leaving me free to stare out the window instead of paying attention to where we're going, it surprises me again with its ability to choose the most ridiculous route) we arrived here early this afternoon to find just two spaces available. It seems, however, that some of those vans were either late getting on their way today, or had just stopped for lunch, as three have since left and one other arrived.

With our first mains electric in over a month, we wasted no time on arrival with getting things plugged in. That big worksurface in Bertie's kitchen comes in very handy!

Mick has spent the afternoon tap-tapping away on his keyboard, breaking off at around 5pm so that we could have haircuts. The level of breeze blowing by then made the al-fresco barbering all the more interesting. We've both gone a grade lower than we usually do on the clippers (Mick a 2, me a 4), so that's us looking like a couple of thugs for the next week!

Thugs!

Bonus collage of the day, to complete a day of non-standard (i. e. neither 'pretty views' nor 'points of interest') photos:

The story of tonight's tea, based on being unable to resist a short-dated pack of prawns that was going cheap.

Sunday 23 February - Ricote

Where's Bertie? His wheels remain unturned, at the Aire in Ricote.
Weather: Yet more wall-to-wall sunshine.

On the dot of seven last evening, whether by some signal or related to sunset, I know not, the pigeons all landed in a cluster in the car park. Everyone stood around pointing and discussing for a while, then individual birds were picked up, placed back into their carriers and the various cars and scooters slowly trickled away.

Curiosity got the better of me and I consulted Google, which (via this page: https://www.wired.com/2015/03/ricardo-cases-paloma-al-air/amp told me that the painted pigeons are all male, chasing a single female, all the time being trailed on the ground (as we observed) by cars and scooters, presumably occupied by the birds' owners. The winner is the pigeon who, over the course of the event, is observed to spend the most time closest to the female.

Onwards to today, which started with a run for Mick whereas my intended hilly 8-miler was cancelled. When I turned over in the night and felt a twinge in my hamstring, I hoped it would resolve by morning, but alas that didn't prove to be the case. In fact, when I went out for a walk first thing, I only made it to the end of the road before turning to limp back.

Unfortunately for my leg, I'm not very good at spending an entire day sitting around, so we went out for a gentle stroll this afternoon. I took Mick to the start of the path up to the castle remains, but he vetoed (on my leg's behalf) going up there. Instead we took a tour around most of the points of interest on a trail through the village ... and in so doing walked further, with almost as much ascent, as if we'd gone up to the castle. Mick was quite right. My leg has not appreciated the activity.

There's some sort of mini-carnival/parade going on in the town this afternoon (involving kids dressing up and some music), but I'm afraid that it's start time clashed with the England rugby match. So we returned to Bertie where I'm sitting quietly and Mick's glued to the screen of his mobile phone, occasionally making such loud exclamations that I have more than once leapt in the air in surprise at the sudden noise.

Later...

We didn't need to go to the carnival, as it came to us. It's final hour was at the community centre, behind which the Aire is situated. The volume of the music was quite something, but they're not through-the-night party animals here; by 7pm the partying was over.

Saturday 22 February - Ricote

Where's Bertie? He's still in the Aire at Ricote.
Weather: Another cool start, but cloudless all day and warming to a pleasant afternoon.

As I type this there is a whole mob of scooters sitting to one side of the car park and brightly coloured pigeons are flying overhead. When I say 'brightly coloured' I mean that they have been dyed in greens, blues, reds and yellows. We have no idea what is going on, but guess it is some sort of competitive event.

It all started this morning, a few minutes before I got back from a run that featured a lot more uphill than I've been accustomed to of late. According to Mick, a small group arrived in cars and on scooters, all clutching pigeon carriers, and as I entered the car park Mick was already outside watching them flying circuits.

About an hour later the men left and we knew not what had become of the birds. We thought that was the end of it, then this afternoon there was the leap-out-of-your-skin bang of a maroon going off (I'm assuming this was related; it may have been coincidental) and ten minutes or so later a bird-carrying truck appeared outside of the Aire, more people arrived with their own carriers, and it all started over again, but this time with bigger numbers, with scooters zipping up and down the lanes and with chaps wearing official looking waistcoats and talking into walkie-talkies.

Every now and then the birds land in this tree, whereupon everyone stares at the tree until they emerge.

Don't think you can see the bright colours of the birds, can you?

In between the fancy pigeoning, Mick had some work to do this afternoon (worry not, it's voluntary, he's not accidentally fallen out of retirement), so I took myself off for a walk. One of the things I want to do whilst we're here is to visit the castle ruins on top of a nearby small hill. I walked to the foot of that hill this afternoon and nearly went up it, knowing that I could be up and back before Mick finished his phone call, but I decided it would be unfair to do that without Mick, so I made do with a bit of pottering around the village instead.

Mick, of course, also needed a leg-stretch, so he did that later whilst I took advantage of his absence to get the floor swept and finally to effect a temporary fix for the fly screen on the main door that has been loose for a while (damage that occurred last summer when the door blew shut whilst the fly screen was deployed).

Oh, and there was cake today too! The 'panaderia' is located in amongst the maze of tiny village streets, looking very much like a house, but identified by a small sign. Entering, we found what appeared to be half the village already there, with more customers arriving every moment. It was a crowded space, with no orderly queuing and we wondered if we would ever reach the front. Of course, we did and we were served with smiles in spite of our lack of language skills. The wares hit the spot nicely:

A soft meringue for Mick, a sponge affair for me. These plus four bread rolls came to just €2.30

Friday 21 February - Ricote

Where's Bertie? He's on the large piece of wasteland that forms the Aire at the village of Ricote. Exact location: 38.15074, -1.36723.
Weather: A layer of cloud that formed after dawn soon burnt off, leaving us with a sunny day. Warm in the sun.

The nights this week have been much cooler than the preceding couple of weeks, such that I was glad of my gloves as I took a brisk walk along the riverside path this morning. With only 25 minutes available, I set a timer to turn back after 10 minutes. As I had the keys, and Mick was out for a 3-mile run, it wouldn't have done for him to get back first.

Breakfast, faffings, service point (good fun with the tap; swimsuits would have been suitable attire considering how wet we got), supermarket, then onwards the whole 8km to our next stopping point: Ricote.

Whilst Mick concentrated on the road (not overly wide, slightly wiggly and notably uphill - it doesn't do our MPG stats any good on these short drives), my attention was drawn by the scenery and I tried to give Mick a description of what he was missing by focussing forwards. I'm by no means a geologist, but I was fascinated by the shapes and layers created in this arid ex-seabed.

The journey became slightly extended when, about 200m from the Aire we came upon a crane blocking the road. With its legs down, arm extended and no indication that it was going to move any time soon, a diversion was needed. That looked simple enough from the map, but road after road was rejected for either being one-way, or too narrow with parked cars for us to squeeze through. On the sixth attempt we were heading back in the right direction and Bertie was soon settled into a free spot in this large (wastelandish) parking area.

The surroundings are superb, which we confirmed this afternoon by walking the circular 5-mile 'Petite Randonee' PR-MU8 route. I hope these snaps go some way to conveying what it was like:

Bertie is in the bottom photo

One of the objectives of the walk was to recce whether the route would work for a run. Alas, no - I'm sure it would make for a fun trail run, but there was just too much technical rocky terrain for my current purposes.

In other news, a spring in Bertie's shower-room door handle went 'ping' a couple of days ago. It's not a problem when stationary, but having a mechanism to keep the door shut when driving is a necessity. My attempts to disassemble it, to assess its fixability, failed (managed to get most of it apart before getting thwarted), so I opted for a more basic temporary fix:

A piece of yarn goes from one handle, over the top of the door to the other handle. As long as the handles are held in the 'up' position, the door will stay shut.

Thursday 20 February - Archena

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Aire in Archena.
Weather: Just a few little fluffy clouds around. Nice and warm in the sun.

When we arrived here on Monday I posted a photo of the hill that can be seen out of Bertie's windscreen:

I was talking to a chap the other day who referred to this and the nearby lumps as mountains, but as the top of this one stands just 400' above the town, it's more of a pimple than a mountain.

Having downloaded a route from Wikiloc.com, our first activity today was to go and visit its summit. This was only semi successful.

After a false start, we located the path (rather than the less enticing concrete trackway on the other side of the hill)...

...and it didn't take much gaining of height for excellent views that gave a much better understanding of the local topography (unfortunately, not well demonstrated in these snaps!)

I don't know how visible it is in this snap, but nestled in the bowl between those hills over there is a large cemetery. Both of us, and another chap we talked to later, originally mistook it for a village.

Odd place for a cafe/bar/restuarant, which presumably this heavily grafittied shell once was. Our summit is now only just above us.

A bit of trouble locating the final path to the summit (had to duck under some trees), then we got to a scrambly bit...

The final few metres to the summit was a scramble too far for me. Getting up would have been easy, but getting back down would have terrified me, so Mick went on his own (he failed to take a selfie next to the cross and once down in the town he declined to reascend to put right the omission).

First thing this morning my legs hadn't protested too much about yesterday's long run. By the time they had negotiated a steep, scrambly descent, those quads were making their feelings known!

Elevenses seemed a suitable activity to follow our (admittedly minor) exertions, so we hunted out the bar from which a lively hubbub had been heard when we passed by a couple of days ago.

The objective of this snap wasn't really our coffee and toast. I was trying surreptitiously to capture the table of 4 police officers, in uniform, enjoying their coffees and liqueurs before, presumably, going back on duty.

With a couple of hours before it was a reasonable time to go out for lunch we headed back to Bertie, where we had a visit from a chap called Dave, new to motorhoming and on his first trip. Before retirement he was an international HGV driver. He now hopes to visit the places he used to drive straight past.

With 2pm approaching, we threw Dave out and headed off across town to the only place we had found, on previous outings, displaying a Menu del Dia. Oooh, it was good!

My starter was an excellent bean and clam stew. Mick's main (to which this snap does not do justice) was a fabulous slow roasted lamb shoulder. Both puddings were devine. All of this, including Mick's half-bottle of wine and two coffees came in at €10 a head.

We were stuffed as we moseyed back to the river, to follow it back to Bertie and (understandably, I think) have done nothing active since.

I'm sure we could manage to spend another day or two here, but we've already stayed a day longer than we feel is reasonable in a free Aire, even when there's not a time limit displayed (we would have left today, if we hadn't lost Tuesday to the grey weather). So, we'll be on the move again tomorrow, although I wouldn't discount a revisit on our way back north.

Wednesday 19 February - Archena

Where's Bertie? He's still unmoved, at the Aire in Archena.
Weather: Overcast again, but not as heavily as yesterday and with some hints of blue, so warmer (up to 18, maybe 19 degrees).

Something I forgot to mention: on Monday night at around 8 the sound of a marching band reached our ears. There were some football matches going on at the training ground next door to us, so I initially assumed the two were related. Eventually, at around 9.30 I went out to see what was going on, but didn't find said band; they weren't at the sports ground. It was all reminiscent of our stay in Gibraléon last January. As on that occasion, we listened to (seemingly) the same three bars of a marching tune being played over and over until they finally decided they'd got the hang of it and called an end to the practice just before 10pm.

On to today: it started with runs. Mick joined me for the first 1.5 miles of my 17-miler, then after he turned back, I continued another 3.5 miles down river (i.e. 5 miles from Bertie) before turning back myself. After a super-quick stop at Bertie to shove some cake into my mouth and refill a water bottle, my intention was to head up-river for 3.5 miles. I did notice, only a mile or so into the up-river bit that I'd lost the river, but I assumed that's what the route does at that point and that I would rejoin it in due course. Then an Aldi came into view. "Wonder if that's closer than the one we went to yesterday?" I wondered to myself. Then I spotted the Repsol station across the road and the abandoned half-built house behind it. This *was* the Aldi we'd visited and it was nowhere near the river. After a stop to look at a map to see how best to put myself right I decided an about turn was the only option. The bonus of the accidental detour was that it threw some inclines into my otherwise flat route.

mid-run snap

I got back to Bertie to find that our Austrian neighbours of the last couple of days had left and in their place was the Belgian van we'd been parked behind at Ceutí*. A couple of hours later we arrived back from a stroll up to the nearby spa resort to find the Belgians had already gone. It turned out that we'd missed an altercation between the Belgians and the lone Dutch woman in the next van along. She'd suffered a fault resulting in her grey water being dumped on the car park (a big no-no, but sometimes extenuating circumstances** means it can't be helped). Even though, with the assistance of a German chap, she had managed to effect a temporary fix, the Belgians had complained. She'd explained, but they complained some more. As things became heated she came up with a pragmatic solution: if they didn't like being next to her, they could leave (apparently the language was a little more colourful than that), which is exactly what they did. All a bit bemusing as to why someone would be so offended by someone accidentally spilling a bit of dish/shower water over the car park and a bit of a shame that we missed the whole episode.

Snaps from our walk up to the spa resort.

In other news, I finished my latest yarny make last night:

The back story: for Christmas 2018 my sister gave me some mystery balls of yarn. I think that the one I've used here is pure wool and it feels like it's good quality. By sight I guessed it was aran weight and I had 270g of it. Unfortunately, I had no feasible way to know what yardage that translated to. I figured it would be enough for a sleeveless jumper and picked a pattern that would allow me to experiment with a couple of pattern features I've not tried before. It's a pity it doesn't fit me better (I erred too much on the side of caution with sizing vs yarn availability... and ended up with plenty left over) as I love the colour and the feel of the yarn.

^{(*All these repeated meetings of the same vans could make one wonder if maybe southern Iberia is not overrun with motorhomes in winter, but there's just 100 of us following each other around!
**Aside from faults, which can happen to anyone, there's also the possibility of innocently forgetting to turn your drain tap off. We had an incident in Norway (where it is illegal to dump waste water in the street) when we stepped out of Bertie to go for a walk and discovered we'd accidentally left his drain open after using a service point earlier in the day. Two showers worth of water led from immediately under his drain point, all the way down the street. Bit embarrassing!)}