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:
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.
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:
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