Friday 24 February - Berrocal

Where's Bertie? He's at an Aire on the edge of the village of Berrocal. Exact location: 37.60665, -6.54427.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine, except for a brief period with some cloud late afternoon. 4 degrees at sunrise and only rising to around 14.

It's Andalucia day on Tuesday - a public holiday hereabouts - and thus it's effectively a long weekend. Having experienced before how busy motorhome parking can get during holidays in Spain, we were focussed this morning on timing our arrival in Berrocal at around 1030. Having got away from La Palma del Condado in a timely manner, a remarkably wiggly road saw us gently climb first through grassy, rolling cow-filled pasture, then into sparse forest. Eventually, only about 7km before our destination (total journey: 32km), we started descending again, before the final small climb to Berrocal.

Even though what I knew about Berrocal made it appeal greatly to me, it seems it's not a popular spot: we arrived to find just one other van in residence and they left about ten minutes later.

A while later we set out for a look around the village. It's a small place, but very tidy and well presented.

S along the valley from a viewpoint by the village

Village street

Looking past the front of the church into the square.

See the people gathering in the last snap above? As soon as I'd taken the photo, one of them approached us. Had we been in the UK the purpose of the approach may well have been to admonish for taking a photo including children (yes, that has happened to me in the UK). Today it was to tell us that there was a flamenco thing about to happen in the Square.

We took a seat situated nicely in the sun and out of the wind and for the next while we baked whilst observing what I can only describe as an alfresco Zumba class with a flamenco twist.

We were just as interested in the lady in the doorway on the right, who we named 'Bathilda Bagshot'. After watching what was going on for a while, she disappeared indoors, then emerged with walking stick in one hand and a flimsy food bag in the other (slippers on her feet). Off she went somewhere, then returned with the bag full of eggs.

Flamencan Zumba?

Back at Bertie we decided to move him down to the dead-end road just below where we'd initially parked him, giving the benefit of this view from his door...

...and no shade in the morning when we will appreciate early solar gain through his cab windows (he didn't get the sun in his original spot until gone 11am, and it's forecast to be 4 degrees again tomorrow morning).

After lunch, a period of work before the laptop was stowed and we took a walk out to a viewpoint to the S of us. The view from there wasn't ideal, but another distance down a rough downhill track allowed us to see up the Rio Tinto:

We'll hopefully get a better view of the river tomorrow (as in, we'll descend all the way to it), but this snap probaly confirms how it got its name.

I did a bit of reading about said river today, and also about the big wild fire that devastated this immediate area in 2004, decimating the cork oak production and halving the population (through people no longer having a livelihood and moving away, not by death). Handy that I've been learning Spanish for the last three years, as I couldn't find any information about the latter in English.

Some information signs aren't very informative. No idea what bridge this was talking about (there wasn't one obviously nearby), and a bit of context to go with the mention of the English would have been useful.