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.)}