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.
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.)
Wow! It all seems like a race to get to an unknown destination but your enthusiasm for being back on move shines through.
ReplyDeleteOur starting point was that, as we had managed to get home from the south coast of Spain in 3.5 days in March 2020, we knew we could, if we felt so inclined, squeeze the outward journey into a similar timeframe. With Mick's marathon rapidly approaching, and a desire to start acclimatising to the temperature ASAP it was all a bit of a race. At least now we've reached our (heretofore unknown) destination. (The destination was so unknown that it even changed slightly when we were 50km away this afternoon.)
DeleteAs soon as you mentioned "Via Verde" I knew I had walked along that somewhere. But where? I finally looked on my blog and saw that in Spring 2018, on a group tour, we visited an olive oil plant in Baena and then drove into the Subbetica National Park and walked from Dona Mencia to the tiny village of Zuheros. This is further east from your location, closer to Cordoba. Thanks for reminding me!
ReplyDeleteI looked up those places on Google maps, and it led me to think that we could probably happily bimble along the Via Verde for a week or two, stopping at places along the way. Maybe on a future trip!
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