Saturday 12 March 2022

Saturday 12 March - Camarles

Where's Bertie? He's in a free Aire just on the edge of Camarles (exact location: 40.77921, 0.67537)
Weather: Rain until about 9am, then a few light passing showers for another hour, then sunshine, warming up to around 19 degrees. Windy.

At around 11.30 last night I cursed the Norwegian couple next to us for thinking it an appropriate time to repeatedly open and close all of their doors, including their noisy sliding side door.

Woken again at 3am by talking and more door banging I began to wonder if they had a problem. The rain was still coming down - perhaps they were trying to sort out a leak? On my way between loo and bed, I peeked out the side window to find, to my surprise, that a car and caravan had just arrived and squeezed in between us and the Norwegians.

At 7am, I got up to make our first, pre-run breakfast, and had to nip outside in search of the washing up sponge (ooops - it was still in the bowl when I emptied the water last night). Opening the door it was a surprise to find there was a little VW van squeezed in between us and our neighbours on the other side. It must have been their doors that had first woken me. The Norwegians were, I think, entirely blameless in my disturbed night. Why did both vehicles feel inclined to snuggle up to Bertie and his neighbours? Must surely have been the offer of wind breaks.

After a slow start, it was 0830 by the time Mick and I headed out of the door in nice-smelling running gear (Spanish laundrettes tend to come with laundry detergent and softener included. This isn't a good thing in my view, as I never use softener, and I don't always like the fragrance used. This one met with my approval, and was a vast improvement over how those same clothes smelt 24 hours earlier.). Thanks to yesterdays perambulations, the route to the river was well known to us, and once there we had four options, with a bridge ahead of us and cycle routes running along the river on both banks. We opted to turn immediately right (east).

The first bit of the run was completed in the rain. Then there were a few edges of light showers. Then, finally it came good to sunshine (which, according to all forecasts I'd looked at, including the Spanish met office, was what we should have had since dawn). Alas, the predicted death of the wind did not accompany the sunshine, so when we found the way blocked 8km in (due to wild boar or, I suspect, their hunting, as the closure only applied until tomorrow) and turned back, it was into the wind we went. 


Variously hemmed-in path and track, but both quite pleasant, even if we didn't often have a view of the river

On the exposed sections of path, that wind was brutal. It was a relief, just past our start point, to find that the cycle route to the west was well protected by reeds and trees. We are this afternoon parked next to a weather station, and the adjacent white board tells us that the wind speed this morning was up to 46.7km/h.


Huge river, and notably choppy.

Back at Bertie a while later (21km for Mick today, 27k for me, so Mick was back first), we reviewed our intentions. The plan had been to travel a couple of hours north today, but when we considered that we needed second breakfast, showers, shopping and lunch before we travelled, and that the time was rapidly approaching noon, there was an argument for just nipping out to Lidl, and staying put another night.

A quick look at maps and resources, and I found this Aire, only a few kilometres distant. So, to Lidl we went then onward the whole 10 minutes to here.

A brief recce this afternoon has suggested the route I intended to run from here tomorrow morning isn't ideal, but another drive of a few kilometres will take us to a car park from where I can explore another bit of the Natural Park before we make concerted efforts northwards.

Historic point of interest, a couple of minutes walk down the road from the Aire in Camarles.

There's enough room in this Aire for hundreds of vans. There's masses of room. Yet after we parked this Italian van decided that Bertie is an irresistible magnet. (I think he looks further away from Bertie in this snap than he is in reality).

1 comment:

  1. I'm still following. the running for both of you is impressive - a contrast to my jolly little four mile walk today (blog post currently WIP)

    ReplyDelete