Monday 31 January - Salobreña

Where's Bertie? He daren't admit that he's still in Solabreña.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and very hazy. Not feeling like the forecast 22 degrees, particularly with the cooling breeze.

The itinerary is going well, isn't it? Two days after we were supposed to leave Motril for Almuñecar, we're still only 3.5km away in Solabreña.

Mick had his long run this morning, which at 33km took him a good while to complete. When he got back, I immediately needed to go out to the shop (I could have put together something for lunch, but supplies were low) and as Mick hadn't taken a key with him, I hadn't dared go out whilst he was also out, for fear that he would come back unexpectedly and find me absent.

By the time I'd got back and made us some lunch it was 1430 and it seemed more sensible to stay here another night than to move on, particularly as Mick was unlikely to want to do anything overly energetic for the rest of the day.

That said, we did manage a stroll along the seafront, with the side mission of looking for a tap (found quite a few, but they're all of the water fountain type, which isn't ideal for filling a bottle).

Getting back from that little outing, I Googled to check if the requirement to wear facemasks outdoors has been dropped, as in both my trip to the supermarket and the afternoon stroll I'd seen a grand total of two (out of many) people wearing masks. Alas, no. It seems that for whatever reason there's just a low level of adherence today. I'd had to run back to Bertie a couple of minutes after we left when I realised that we were not only walking down the street with naked faces, but didn't even have any coverings with us. Needn't have bothered, it seems!

And, that's it for today. Tomorrow we will move on, I promise!

^{These are the only photos taken today. On the left is our washroom door; on the right a sunshade. I mentioned in blog post quite a long while ago (I can't remember whether it was summer 2019 or January 2020) that the spring in our washroom door handle had broken. My temporary fix was to apply an external 'spring' by way of a piece of ribbon and two loops of elastic. It has worked admirably (which is why I've not been moved to effect a permanent fix), but every now and then the elastic perishes. It became apparent within a day of leaving home that the elastics we've had on there for the last year or so were completely shot and no longer performing their job even at the level of 'badly'. Thus this morning I dug out the shade I made some years ago for the side window and 'borrowed' a piece of elastic off it. It's not the elastic that's missing in this snap - that was the piece I already borrowed previously. Must get some more elastic and repair the window shade before we next need it!}

Sunday 30 January - Salobreña

Where's Bertie? He's in a large car park (that looks like it was designed as a marketplace) just outside of the pueblo blanco of Salobreña. Exact location: 36.73210, -3.58346.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm (20 degrees). Not as windy as the last couple of days.

You know I said yesterday that we needed to stay focused on progressing along the coast and not getting bogged down in one small area? Ummmmm.... Shall I explain how tonight we are within 3.5km (as the crow flies) of where we spent the last two nights?

As you know, we ate a massive lunch yesterday. We didn't need anything else for the rest of the day, but in the interests of fueling for his long run today, Mick ate a doughnut late on. It was a really greasy doughnut and greasy food doesn't agree with him. He thus spent most of the night awake with a tummy ache. Accordingly his long run got postponed from today to tomorrow, and as we'd already identified a couple of good-looking routes hereabouts, it was the easy option to stick around. However, we couldn't stay where we were, so we drove the 10km (you have to go around the houses a bit by road) to get here.

I made it out for a run before we left, on another lovely morning.

Arriving at the spot I'd identified, we didn't like the look of it, so we started tootling around looking at a likely side street where we could pop ourselves unobtrusively (or as unobtrusive as a white box gets) on the road. Being an area of apartment blocks that are clearly mainly summer second homes, most of the roadside parking is empty, so we wouldn't be inconveniencing anyone by spending a night thus.

Peering down the side roads, I happened to spot some motorhomes and, upon investigating, we found this place. At first glance it didn't look appealing, with some people having clearly set up camp for the long term. However, it would serve our purpose for the night, so we joined them.

Until our final approach to the town I had no knowledge as to what was here, but as we drove we observed a town of white houses perched upon the sides of a hill atop which sits a castle.

Perhaps not the very best snap I could have taken of the town with its castle atop it, but this also captures the place where we're parked and the wasteland appearance of the adjacent land where construction of some parkland was started, but then apparently stalled. 

As soon as we'd coffeed, out we headed to investigate the riverside track, thence down to the beach we went, finding that it sports a promenade (busy on a Sunday) that extends for the best part of 1.5km. We didn't make it quite to the end, as by now lunchtime was behind us and our stomachs were reminding us so.

Hot soup may not have been the obvious choice in the midday heat, but I had a whole lot of veg to use up before we left home, so we drove down here with the freezer full of soup. I'm not inflicting it on Mick, who instead enjoyed the last of the pate I bought in France.

The castle was our objective after lunch, so we wandered off townwards, then followed our noses with the general rule of 'up'. That took us variously up tiny winding streets and up stairs between houses.

I'm not sure I captured adequately the feel of the place.

We found a couple of view points

Finally we located the entrance to the castle, and perhaps I should have checked Google before we went, because we found it to be closed. It turns out it wasn't to reopen until 1600, and we weren't going to hang around that long (it had just gone 1500), so wandering slightly aimlessly in a generally downwards direction, and with a small diversion into a park, back to Bertie we came. 

I've since finished the task I started yesterday, of noting potential places to visit between here an Cadiz and have even come up with an itinerary (almost unheard of!). As the chance of us sticking to it lies somewhere between 'slim' and 'none', I'll not publish it. 

One closed castle entrance

Fountain of the day

Sculpture of the day

Saturday 29 January - Motril

Where's Bertie? His wheels have not turned, so he is still in the car park at Motril.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine and warm (20 degrees this afternoon), but with the wind picking up to 25mph by lunchtime.

The wind dropped completely overnight, which was a bonus for my run this morning.

I was out not long after sunrise

Looking away from the sun about 45 minutes later

Whereas Mick had run repetitions of the 2km-long beachside promenade yesterday, I investigated slightly further afield. I didn't find anything overly interesting, although I couldn't help but notice that all of the other runners I passed (presumably all locals) were wearing jackets, hats and gloves, whereas I was out with bare arms and semi-bare legs. It was a bit chilly on the arms first thing, but was warm an hour later.

Back at Bertie, Mick had heated a tank of water so, after removing goodness knows how many weeks worth of grit and dirt from beneath the duck boards on Bertie's washroom floor, we had our first showers in a week. Eeeh, that felt cleaner! It put us in suitable states to go out for lunch too.

The cafe/bar we'd espied yesterday was to where we headed, seeing with relief that they do offer a Menu del Dia on a Saturday, and that they don't charge a premium for it being the weekend.

Today's menu. I understood all of it!

Service was prompt, to the extent that we hadn't quite lowered ourselves into our seats when a waitress asked if we intended to eat. A second later she read the menu out to us and took our choices, and within five minutes our first course was in front of us.

First course. In all honesty, this was all the food I needed for lunch. It was huge, and packed full of chicken and seafood.

A small pause was given before second course came:

I won. Mick's 'pollo con patatas' was a breaded chicken burger thing with chips and he wasn't impressed by it. My fish and veg was good.

We had enough time after the second course to hypothesise over pudding. In the past I've almost always chosen flan, because it's always an option (and I do like it!) and it solves the problem of not understanding any of the options given. Today I wasn't sure I could manage a pudding on top of everything I'd just eaten. Then the waitress gave us the options (and I understood them all!) and I suddenly found that perhaps I could manage a little something else.

Mine was clearly a bought-in-frozen job (because it was too perfectly formed, and was still a bit icy in the middle) but it was very much to my taste. Mick was happy with his baked cheesecake too.

All of that (including drinks) for €21. I can't tell you how many times since March 2020 we've lusted after a Menu del Dia in the sunshine in Spain, and today we waddled away happy (albeit I'll be happier when we happen across one offering a fish or mountain stew).

Another quick trip to the mini-market next door (tomorrow's Sunday so we needed to buy tomorrow's bread today), and back to Bertie we came.

I've spent a sizeable chunk of the rest of the afternoon researching potential stopping places along the coast between here and Cadiz. We have about 17 days available (before we want to be in Seville), and thus far I've got 20 options, but only covering about half of the relevant section of coast. Given our past history for travelling very slowly, and considering that there are some places I positively want to visit on our way, we're going to have to be quite focussed on progressing along the coast and not getting bogged down in a small area.

As for the parking situation here, there was (as would be expected with a max 48 hour stay) a mass exodus this morning, and we lost our windbreak. The windbreak that replaced it wasn't very effective, but fortunately they didn't like being our neighbours and moved. Our new neighbour is perfectly big enough for the task, except that the wind has shifted around slightly. 

At 1700 the police came around noting number plates, but stayed in their vehicle until they got to the little enclave not far away from us. There they went and had words, and a short while later a convoy of six vans left. So, it seems that the reports of enforcement are true.

Taken at around 0930 at which point every van in that back row, except for Bertie, was French.


^{(Nipping back a couple of days to Guardia de Jaén, I forgot to mention that after being by ourselves on our first night there, there were 10 vans on the second night. Isn't it odd how that can happen?)}

Bonus snap:

Friday 28 January - Motril (not Guadix...)

Where's Bertie? He's in a large (some would say huge) beachside car park just outside of the town of Motril, on the south coast of Spain. Exact location: 36.716, -3.5508
Weather: In Motril, 19 degrees with wall-to-wall sunshine, but windy.

There was a building in the Aire at Guardia de Jaén. It didn't look to be in use, but that's common with many Spanish buildings, when the shutters are drawn. Last night, however, at around 7pm, it became a hive of activity, with a level of music that ranged from relatively unintrusive to positively banging. Lots of cars arrived, blocking the motorhomes in (why didn't they allocate the lower car park for motorhomes, given that the 100m distance is too far for people using the community centre to walk?!) and along with the music was a substantial hubbub of voices.

Of course, we couldn't resist nipping out to see what the mask wearing situation was. Or wasn't. The wearing of masks outdoors is already a nonsense in the vast majority of cases (e.g. you can be walking down the street without a person within 500m of you, but you have to wear a mask), and gatherings like this where people are not wearing face coverings make an even bigger nonsense of it. I may not be a scientist (although I have read more scientific papers over the last two years than I have in the rest of my life combined) but I'm pretty sure it's not the outdoor setting that the Spanish government needs to be worried about.

People started leaving the gathering just before we went to bed. I know the music was still going at 11pm, but it didn't keep us awake and I have no idea at what time it stopped.

As for today, and indeed the next few days, I had a plan. I was going to be taking us a not-insignificant distance out of our way, but it seemed worthwhile for the running routes it would afford us over the weekend. First off, we were going to Guadix, where we stopped at a supermarket 6 years ago, but otherwise have not visited, then we were potentially going to travel even further east to another Via Verde over the weekend. We would then head down to the coast early next week.

In all my planning, the one thing I had omitted to check was the weather forecast. It was only as we were approaching Guadix (which by then I'd realised sits at an altitude of 1500m, just on the north side of the Sierra Nevada mountains), with Bertie's thermometer reading 7 degrees, that it occurred to me to do so. Given that Mick's current priority is to acclimatise to running in warmer temperatures, in preparation for the Seville Marathon in 3 weeks' time, Guadix was perhaps not the best choice with daytime highs in the low teens.

We were within 10km of our destination when a sudden decision was made: to turn around at the next junction and go all the way back to Granada, thence to the coast. What a waste of an hour and a couple of gallons of fuel!

It was 1pm by the time we pulled into the car park here in Motril. It's surprisingly empty (relatively speaking)! I haven't counted, but there must be somewhere between 30 and 50 motorhomes here. I'm sure that 2 years ago it would have been heaving. We're currently sitting in a whole row of French vans (between a couple of biggies, to give us a windbreak). In front of us are five Norwegians. There's a curious lack of Brits (or, as Mick pointed out, maybe not so curious given that we weren't allowed to travel through France between late December and mid-January).

The other thing that has probably affected numbers here is that, apparently, the police are strictly enforcing a 48-hour stay limit and a 'no camping' rule (which means you can park, but can't have, for example, tables and chairs, awnings or even your step out). I completely approve of both of these measures (even if I would prefer the 48-hour limit to be 72 hours) - it makes the place a lot tidier and means that there will be a constant turn over of people, meaning new arrivals will be guaranteed a space. A far better situation than a total ban on motorhomes due to those who think it's okay to pitch up and stay here for months at a time.

After that slight digression, back to our arrival: we parked up, felt the wind, saw the palm trees across the road bending over, and Mick started to regret not taking his run in Guadix after all. He's out as I type this (and I've just seen him pass, looking like he's being chased, with what appeared to be a running club just behind him*), and it must be hard going on his east-ward reps.

In between lunch and his run, we took a walk the 2km (each way) to the nearest mini-market. Our first stop in Guadix was to be a Lidl, but in the 'turn around now' decision, I declared that there was no point continuing just to go shopping, as we were bound to pass another shop en-route. It turned out I was wrong, but we didn't need much, so going on foot with a backpack was fine. 

We opted to walk there along the beach, rather than the promenade, so that we could take advantage of the mask exemption applicable to beaches. Once we left the beach, happily the wind was strong enough to stop the sunglasses from steaming up today, which is the main problem we're finding with outdoor mask wearing combined with wrap-around sunglasses.

There's a vehicle track of compressed ground along the beach, so the walking was easy.

It may not be golden sand, but it is huge.

Will a Menu del Dia feature in our day tomorrow?

Snap taken as we drove south. I've never yet taken a passable snap from a moving vehicle, but two things are evident in this snap: 1) there's a lot of snow up there; and 2) this motorway is not well frequented.

(*Ha! Turns out that wasn't Mick. That became apparent when Mick was back in Bertie and I saw him run past again. What are the chance of two chaps of the same build both being out at the same time wearing black shorts and a fluorescent orange t-shirt?)

Thursday 27 January - Guardia de Jaén

Where's Bertie? After his sterling service in getting us through all those kilometres over the last 4 days, he got a day off today, so he's still sitting at the Aire in Guardia de Jaén.
Weather: Rain early on, followed by a day of sunny intervals, but with a cooling wind.

The sound of light rain was to be heard on Bertie's roof at 0630, but by the time I got up to make breakfast it had stopped and a peep out of the window as day broke suggested it wasn't going to be a bad day.

I was scheduled for a run today, but for someone who has spent the last few months in the flatlands, that wasn't going to be possible with the topography immediately surrounding us, so I went for a walk instead.

My intention had been to walk a loop which, at a glance at the map and without measuring, looked like it would be about 5km. So, up the hill behind Bertie I set, on (as I later found out) a local waymarked route called 'Ruta de San Cristóbal'.

Photos never do steepness justice. This was snapped mainly to give me a few seconds to recover.

Almost the same photo, taken from slightly further up, featuring the castle and the town. Bertie's in shot too.

From the higher vantage point, when I started getting views into different valleys and onto different plains, I couldn't help but notice that there's pretty much a monoculture going on around here, with olive trees as far as I could see in every direction.

Lots of olives.

At the point where I should have turned left back down the hill I opted to turn right, because: 1) it looked like the top of the hill wasn't far above me; 2) it looked like there was a chapel on the top; and 3) it had become apparent that my intended return route would have been on tarmac, making an out-and-back seem more appealing.

The chapel atop the hill (with a backdrop of masts) 

In front of a chapel was an information board about the Ruta del San Cristóbal, giving its distance as 7.8km. I'd already covered around 3.3km, so it seemed entirely sensible to continue around the circuit, rather than retracing my steps, especially as the rest of the route was essentially downhill.

It took me past a cave (that stank of sheep poo), then over a scrambly bit...

...past a flock of sheep...

...and along some nice paths.

Whilst I didn't want to trash my quads and shins (neither of which are accustomed to hills at the moment), I considred bits of the route (the not-too-steep bits) to be runnable. I was being consciously careful on the rocky ground, but apparently my concentration lapsed when I saw that smooth tarmac was just ahead of me. I went headlong and met the ground with a crash. No significant harm was done (bruised elbow; bruised knee; bruised palms), but I did walk those final few steps to the tarmac.

On the final stretch back to Bertie I saw a woman walking up the road with a shopping bag that appeared to contain bread, so as soon as I got in, Mick nipped out to try to find the panaderia. That he did, returning not only with a fine looking loaf, but a treat too:

From this snap you wouldn't think anything of its size...

...but maybe this one shows off better how enormous it was.

With doughnut, coffee and a crossword despatched, off into town we went to see if we could find an eatery for lunch. We found a few, but none that was open. A subsequent Google search told us that they only open Friday to Sunday. Worth the outing, though, as it was a pleasant enough diversion to walk through the town.

They've erected statues of me and Mick!

Main square with obligatory gathering of men having a good old chinwag

Fountain of the day

This afternoon we nipped out again, to see what we could view up at the castle, which we had read is currently closed for restoration work. We suspect that status has been ongoing for some time (as in years), and there was no sign of active work. We walked around half of the perimeter, agreeing that it was a shame that we couldn't see more of what lies inside.

As for Bertie, he is no longer alone. When we returned from our walk around the town, two other vans had joined him (both also Hymers, one Dutch, the other Austrian). By the time we went out again this afternoon numbers had swelled to five, with a Spanish and a French van joining in the party.


Bonus snaps:

The view from Bertie's front bumper, taken this morning before the sun made its way over the hills.

Olive tree topiary

At a glance there was nothing but olive trees, but paying attention at ground level revealed lots of these little pretty things. 

Wednesday 26 January - Jaén and La Guardia de Jaén (via Puerto Lápice)

Where's Bertie? He's at a free Aire at La Guardia de Jaén. Exact location: 37.74240, -3.69644.
Weather: Mainly sunny but with a few cloudy spells and a couple of short, light showers. Temperature between -2 and 15 degrees.

We need more hours in the day. Or to drive less. Fortunately, having made it sufficiently far south in Spain to say that we've finished travelling and are now touring, tomorrow we should be able to find time to do more (and for me not to be trying to type a blog post when I should be washing dishes, perilously close to bedtime).

The lack of hours in the day meant that we ran out of time last night to even think about our destination for today. Given that was critical information to inform the direction in which we left Burgos, I figured that once I got back from my run this morning I would come up with some options whilst Mick (who's run was to be twice as long as mine) was still out.

That plan went out the window when we woke to ice on the inside of the double-glazed window above the bed, leading Mick to come over all nesh and declare that he wasn't going to run until later. I can't blame him. If we wanted to exercise in that temperature, we could have stayed at home.

I sprang into action, preparing breakfast, boiling a couple of litres of water for later in the day, whilst at the same time consulting the road atlas and weather forecasts. I soon had a plan and by 0815 we were headed south out of Burgos. Rather a wasted visit, and we can't even claim to have had a peaceful night, thanks to 'Mr Shouty Man' at 3am.

Our initial objective was Puerto Lápice, where we stopped at the deserted Aire (at the end of a residential street, but with a reasonable view up to a couple of windmills) to use the service point and for a quick bit of lunch. We had the option of staying there for the night, but Mick's vote was to continue on the extra couple of hours to Jaén, where, rather than running along roads, we could use a Via Verde (ex-railway leisure route)*.

It was around a quarter past four when we arrived there so we wasted as little time as possible in finding somewhere to park, getting ourselves changed and out the door. The temperature at that time was 15 degrees, but there was a keen breeze blowing, making it feel cooler.

Along the Via Verde del Aceite (Greenway of the Oil - it runs through olive plantations) we went, although only for a tiny fraction of its 128km length.

I don't think I've mentioned yet (and it's possible not common knowledge outside of Spain) that face coverings are currently mandatory even outside in Spain. There are only two exceptions: 1) you're taking park in individual exercise (such as running or cycling) on your own; or 2) you're in a natural environment, such as a forest. In both cases, in order for the exemption to apply, you must be able to maintain a social distance of 1.5m from others.

The Via Verde was busy with walkers, runners and cyclists. Of the walkers, it was probably a 50/50 split between those wearing a mask and those not. Those running were 99% mask-free. We assume that two people from the same household are able to exercise together mask-free, so whilst Mick and I did carry our face coverings, just in case, we didn't wear them.

I took this just before we started running, intending to take a more illustrative photo later, but I completely forgot.

Once back at Bertie I set about deciding where we were going to spend the night. Our intention had been to stay in Jaén, but then I found that although we were only 1km, as the crow flies, from one of the overnight options, it was going to take us 14 minutes to get there, needing to either go right around the houses, or to tackle city roads that Google was reporting as being slow. There was another option 7km away that would take the same time to reach. Then I looked a little further afield and found that there's an official Aire here in La Guardia de Jaén - a 22km drive, but only 17 minutes. The only danger, given that it was already 1800, was that the Aire would be full, and there was no other obvious option nearby, but given how few motorhomes we've seen (even the Burgos Aire was only half full last night), we thought that the risk was low.

We were right. For the third night out of four so far, Bertie is all by himself.

I was ready to eat a scabby dog, and the light was fast draining out of the sky, by the time we got here, so although we saw on the drive in that we're parked next to a castle, we've not explored in any way. Being in no rush to go anywhere tomorrow, we will be at leisure to have a look around then.

(*A few weeks ago I was searching for information about Voies Vertes in France, but I confused my languages and came up with a map of all Vias Verdes in Spain. I've since imported it into Google Maps - which is how I came to identify Jaén as a good running location for today.)

Tuesday 25 January - Burgos, Spain

Where's Bertie? He's at a free Aire in the city of Burgos (exact location: 42.35513, -3.67395)
Weather: Clear skies all day. The highest temperature we saw on Bertie's thermometer as we drove was 18 degrees, but we were heading south into the sun, so I suspect the reality was a little less.

I remembered to set Bertie's heating to come on at seven o'clock this morning - a bonus on another cold and frosty morning. 

A light breakfast and we were soon off, but our first driving stint of the day was short - just 3km! - taking us to the 'Site des Dougnes' - the location of a parkrun that we've attended a few times. We were a couple of days late (or five days early) for the parkrun, but as we know the place it was an easy choice for a bit of exercise. Indeed, it was the reason we chose Cubnezais as yesterday's end point.

A gorgeous start to the day as again the sun rose over hoary grass

Taken with the sun behind me on my final (of 3) laps

Mick's run was longer than mine, giving me time to get us prepared for the day (mainly boiling water for our travel mugs and for a flask to save time when we stopped for lunch) before we sat down for a late breakfast. It was 10am by the time we finally hit the road properly.

Except for our usual toll avoidance tactics at the first two toll plazas to the south of Bordeaux (leave at the junction before, rejoin at the junction after), we paid for motorways the whole way down to the Spanish border. The final bit of that journey, accompanied by hazy air through which hills like La Rhune were peeking, was a little nervous as Bertie's fuel light came on and his trip computer counted down the miles remaining alarmingly fast as Bertie heaved us up the hills. We held faith that he had enough to get us into Spain, and thus, even though we stopped at the motorway service station after the border, we paid €1.50/litre rather than €1.80 at French service stations (yesterday, off the motorway we paid €1.62/litre).

There were miles and miles of lorries queuing for the French border.

In my capacity as navigator, I pondered the options once we were in Spain and decided that rather than taking our usual route (free motorway-esque road) to Vitoria Gastiez, we would take the GI632, followed by the AP1. That was based on my belief (seemingly confirmed by a Google search) that the AP1 was now toll-free. It turns out that only the southern section of that road had its tolls removed, so for a saving of 8km + a chunk of ascent + about 10 minutes compared with our usual route, we had to fork out €6.71. Lesson learnt, and another note has been made in our road atlas. When we finally buy a more up-to-date map, I'm going to have my work cut out transferring all my notes and post-it notes to the new one!

The last hour of the day seemed to drag. A stint at the steering wheel would have helped, but I didn't want to leave Mick to navigate the final stretch of the day again*, and, by and by, the kilometres did tick on by until we arrived at 1730 (to a car park bustling with police; no idea what that was about). With the sun not even close to the horizon (sunset is 1820 here today), we headed out for a short stroll before tea.

Burgos may not have been the wisest choice of end point, in that the drive into the city was slow, and will no doubt be equally so on our way out tomorrow, but having been here before* we knew that there's a path along the river that will serve for tomorrow's running route. It's also the point at which we need to decide on where we're going in southern Spain (yep, we really have got this far with no clue as to where we're going) as that will decide whether we proceed from here down the west side of the country or through the middle, via Madrid.

Wherever we end up tomorrow, we're hoping for a warmer overnight temperature. It's forecast to be -4 here tonight! 

Whilst we are no longer allowed to carry dairy products into the EU, I couldn't see any restriction on cakes, so I used up our butter with lots of baking last weekend, including the best chocolate cakes I have ever made (now all gone, alas). They made up for the coffee ones, which I under-coffeed. 

^{(*Our navigation method on this trip is the usual TomTom SatNav with all its little foibles that cause us not to trust it (although it's still better than our Garmin SatNav), together with the usual paper atlas, but this time we're also using Google Maps to shout instructions via Bertie's speakers. Google has many benefits over either of our dedicated SatNavs, and gives far clearer instructions, but Mick's not particulary familiar with the App (and is unlikely to become so if I continue to only drive the navigationally easy sections!), so finds the navigational task far more stressful than driving.
**Our previous visit was six years ago, when we visited the city and took a tour of the cathedral; my abiding memory is that I got so cold during our tour that as we walked back to our campsite at the end of the day I felt like I would never be warm again.)}

Monday 24 January - Cubnezais

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park in Cubnezais (N of Bordeaux). He previously spent nights here in January 2020 and in March 2019.
Weather: Gloriously sunny start and end to the day, but with around 3 hours of fog in the middle. Morning temperature: 1-4 degrees; afternoon: up to 14 degrees.

We were already driving down the A154 this morning by the time the big golden orb of the sun rose over the hoary fields. It had been a cold night, and the field adjacent to which we were parked looked pretty in the pre-dawn light, but I was quite happy to view it from inside rather than venturing out. It was thus Mick's job this morning to nip across the road to the Epicerie to pick up a couple of pastries for elevenses. 

With our target for the day being such a long way in front of us, we were hoping for a smooth day. I scuppered that hope quite early on, by setting a 'travel via' waypoint of a supermarket in the town of Dreux. I didn't need to set that waypoint, as we were going to be driving right by the store, but it would mean that we didn't sail on past.

Unfortunately, as I now know, I selected the Lidl on the wrong side of Dreux, not on our route at all, and because I wasn't paying a great deal of attention, I didn't notice until a few hundred metres too late. Attempts to turn around had us driving tiny residential streets, finding many dead-ends that Google thought were through routes, and it must have been a good twenty minutes until we were finally back to where we needed to be, only then to find that the car park was guarded by a 2m height barrier (we found a road around the back where we could park and I went on foot). Add that to the stop to buy fuel, where the machine kept telling us it couldn't accept our credit card, then finally decided it could, only for me to misremember the relevant PIN. All delays we could have done without!

Things didn't improve when, a while later, we both failed to notice that the speed limit had dropped to 70 (the usual speed limit on a single-carriageway road is 80, but on a criteria that we've not yet worked out, that often (but not always) drops to 70 when passing a junction). The first we knew was when a speed camera flashed just a few metres before the 'end of 70' sign. A glance at the SatNav told us we were doing 79.

Darn it! If we were going to be paying a speeding fine, then we may as well have taken the toll roads, have saved at least an hour off our day, not to mentional all the faff of constantly changing speed limits, traffic lights, and roundabouts.

The mood lifted a short while later when a quick Google search told me that since Brexit the reciprocal agreement between DVLA and France has ended. We got flashed again later in the day, but on that occasion we weren't speeding (on roads with various speed limits for different types of vehicle, motorhomes tend to get flashed because the cameras see them as being big and assume they're subject to the lower limit, only later in the processing to decide that they were actually legal).

After a tedious morning of slow roads, just before Tours we took to the toll road and, contrary to the usual tactic of using only short sections to bypass the worst bits of the slow roads, today we stayed on it all the way to Poitiers. Just under twenty euros was the damage, but it saved us about an hour (and a lot of tedium).

From there the N10 is effectively a free motorway, except that it doesn't have any service/rest areas, instead directing traffic to nearby towns for any services they need. We did detour via one village, just to empty Bertie's toilet, at which point we switched driving duties. I would have liked to have swapped back before the end of the day, but equally didn't want to waste time by leaving the motorway to find somewhere to pull over. That left me at the wheel and put Mick on navigational duties for the fiddly last few kilometres of the day. He would much rather have been driving (because he doesn't like navigating, not (I hope!) because my driving is frightful).

The sun was sinking rapidly by the time we pulled into the car park in Cubnezais, so we wasted no time in nipping out for a quick leg-stretch around the village, getting back to Bertie just as the sun dipped out of sight.

Bertie, all on his lonesome in the car park, just as the sun went down. With a forecast negative overnight temperature, we've deployed the external blinds tonight.  

An interrogation of atlases and apps this evening has suggested a destination for tomorrow and, yes, it will be in Spain.

Sunday 23 January - Surville, France

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park in the village of Surville, not far south of Rouen (exact location: 49.19869, 1.10171).
Weather: Dry but overcast. Whilst driving: max 8 degrees, min 4 degrees.

Our alarms were set for a time probably not chosen by many households in the UK on a Sunday morning and an hour and a half later Bertie headed out into the dark, fuelled by the excitement of his first long trip since he rushed us home in the middle of March 2020.

I was also being kept alert by excitement, rather than by a sufficiency of sleep. Two significant things have occurred since we last crossed the Channel to France: 1) Brexit has come into effect (more on which later); and 2) Covid has created extra border requirements.

The latter issue had been the thief of sleep, as within 24 hours of travel we needed to take a Covid test, then to load three documents (Covid result certificate; Sworn Health Declaration; and Covid Vaccination Pass) onto the Eurotunnel website for approval pre-travel, with the warning that if we didn't do that, then we would be subject to delays upon arrival at the Eurotunnel terminal. Goodness, what a trial of a succession of technical issues! I got there in the end, but far later into the night than I would have chosen.

Why so late? Well: 1) as the Covid Test* had to be taken within 24 hours of travel, we decided to hedge against delays by taking it late on Saturday night; and 2) we'd post-dated our Health Declarations for the date of travel, and given the nature of the document it seemed ill-advised to upload it too far in advance.

It turned out that it was worth the pain of getting those documents uploaded, as we sailed through Check-in and Border Control (once we finally reached the front of the queue for each!) whereas those in front of us were spending an age at each, handing over various pieces of paper that weren't requested from us.

Whilst each wait seemed interminable at the time, we were clearly just being impatient, as we were on a moving shuttle less than an hour after we pulled off the M20, and two hours before our booked crossing**. The earlier arrival in France was a massive bonus as (of course) it gave us two more hours of daylight to travel south, and the further we could get on a Sunday (very little traffic; no lorries) the better. As it turned out we had more daylight than we needed, arriving in Surville at around 1730.

It had been a long old day for Bertie who, in the UK, only had a brief stop for fuel and a few pauses in various queues at Eurotunnel. Then, after his rest on the train, he sped us south through France with just a couple of micro-pauses for a change of driver.

It had, of course, been a long day for us too, but I still managed to take myself out into the bitter cold on arrival for a power-walk around the village. Then it was back to Bertie to try to concoct something for tea. This is where the significance of Brexit came into play, as we are now not permitted to carry a whole list of foodstuffs into Europe. Our fridge was thus somewhat bare, and shops in France aren't open on a Sunday. What I thought at the point of preparation was probably the worst excuse for a meal I'd ever served to Mick, actually turned out to be perfectly acceptable.

Our continuing mission is to get to the south of Spain as fast as we reasonably can, so let's see where we get to tomorrow.

The church in Surville

Bertie's home for the night

^{(*What a nonsense the pre-travel Covid test is! We each took a lateral flow test at home, uploaded a photo of the result to the company that we'd bought them from, and received our travel certificates back within 30 seconds. That company had no knowledge as to whether the swabs had been near any nostrils, whether ours or anyone else's.
**In the few days between me first looking at Eurotunnel prices and being able to book, the prices rocketed - unsurprising in retrospect as lots of people had probably spent the previous month desperate to travel to France. We'd wanted to travel on Saturday, but the earliest reasonably priced crossing available was at 1420 on Sunday. We thus employed our usual strategy of arriving early and hoping to be offered an earlier crossing at no extra charge. It's a strategy that's only ever failed once, at the end of August one year when the Chunnel was the busiest I've ever seen it.)}

The end of 2021

Where's Bertie? By way of a sneak peek of what is to come, I'll tell you that Bertie has spent 10 hours of today travelling south and is currently sitting in a car park in the village of Surville, France.

Before I launch into daily blogs about the trip upon which we have today embarked, I thought I'd first nip back to the final 3 months of 2021 and summarise them in five memorable (not all in a good way) occurrences:

1) At the end of October, whilst running at a parkrun, I found a pothole, hidden under flood water, with my left foot. A not insignificant amount of damage was done to the soft tissue that sits over the cuboid bone and as a result not a single step did I run in November. In December I started tentatively throwing some short running intervals into my walks (a week after doing the damage, I could walk again, but only forwards and on flat tarmac; anything else was yelp-inducing). It's still not completely better, but it's now two weeks since I last yelped due to an unfortunate foot placement.

2) If there was a good time to do a run-stopping injury to myself, then the end of October was probably as good as it got, as we spent November all-consumed by refurbishing a rental property. The memorable moment came five days into the work, when I said "I'll just stick my head up into the loft to make sure it's clear.". That's when I found the previous tenant had constructed a cannabis farm up there, taking up half of the area. Its removal proved educational for someone as naive of such matters as I am.

A small snapshot of the inside of the structure. We're not sure if the mess was created during the police raid or by the tenant, but all the pots had been upended and the floor of the structure was inches deep in compost. There were no plants remaining, but my goodness, the few leaves in amongst the compost were pungent!

3) Just as the refurbishment was coming to a close and we thought we might manage a short trip to Wales, along came Storm Arwen, which brought down a huge conifer at another rental property. Of all the directions it could have fallen, it fortuitously fell the most convenient way so as to minimise damage and danger, but on its way it destabilised the adjacent tree that then became liable to fall into the building next door. It was an expensive do getting that sorted (and 'sorted' transpired to be having 7 large conifers and 1 deciduous species that I can't now name removed), following which the garden was left exposed to the parkland behind. Ideally I would have employed a fencing team to sort that out but finances dictated otherwise. Fence panels weren't an option for a couple of reasons, but I think Mick and I did a pretty decent job of constructing a feather-edge fence, even if it did take us two full days to achieve.

4) Trees continued to be a theme in December, when we decided it was time for our apple tree to come down (I like having an apple tree, but this one is far too big for the space it's in and only produces fruit about once every three years). On the first day of the task, during which I was the one up the tree, I questioned whether I'm getting a bit old to be climbing trees. Apparently not, as the following day Mick took his turn. Working on the basis of tackling a minimum of two branches every day (getting them down and processing for disposal; most days we did more than 2), it took us around 10 days of work to get it into the state in which we have currently left it.

During and after. A tree surgeon could likely have achieved this in a morning. Disposing of the waste is nearly complete, but ongoing.

5) Mick started training for the Seville Marathon, and we were all geared up to head to Spain at the beginning of January, to get acclimatised to the heat in good time for the event. Then France decided that we dirty Brits* were a danger to the health of their nation, and banned us from entering. All ferries to Spain were booked solid until the end of March. Would we get the trip that we've been so longing for, or were we going to be thwarted again? (The answer to this question is of course obvious, given the spoiler I gave right at the beginning of this post.)

(*For my future reference: As the Omicron variant of Covid19 swept through the UK, France implemented border restrictions such that Brits could only enter the country from the UK for a limited number of essential purposes. Omicron soon swept through France too, with even higher case numbers than the UK was seeing, yet the restrictions remained in place until 14 January.)