Saturday & Sunday 4-5 February - Xeraco

Where's Bertie? He's still on his pitch at Xeraco Campers.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine, 18 yesterday, 19 today. It's now a week since we last saw a cloud - alas, the forecast says we're going to see far more than we would like next week.

It's only another week and a bit before we will likely start to do some slightly interesting stuff. In the meantime...

Saturday

Frost-covered skylight after another cold night.

Mick opted to do his 19k run/walk around the Platja area. There's no nice seafront promenade here, so it's the stitching together of streets, all of which have good pavements and side roads aren't a problem as there's almost no traffic.

Meanwhile, with my left quad still protesting after last Wednesday's efforts, I let it have another rest day and took myself off for a walk to see how far away the hills are.

They look pretty close, don't they?

Not a cloud inversion, but smoke hanging in the air. It's the time of year when brash gets burnt.

Four kilometres took me to the start of some waymarked routes into the hills...

Looking across the valley from the trailhead.

...and it was tempting to ascend a little way to see if there was a viewpoint. I'm now glad I didn't, as it seems my shins, which have historically had a very short memory, have got so used to running that they've forgotten the strains of walking. They were noticeably sore by the end of the day, and still are now. If I'd gone up the hill, I'd have been kicking myself, thinking that it had been caused by the descent*.

Taking a different route back through the town of Xeraco (which doesn't look to be a remotely interesting place), I stumbled upon what might be the only point of interest there:

The town cistern, built in the 1880s, made obsolete in 1939, and now a museum.

The rest of the day passed off pretty much the same as those that came before it.

Sunday
Seeing how many people have had washing hanging out over the last couple of days, and with there only being three washing machines here, I suspected (correctly, it turns out) that the laundry would be a popular place first thing in the morning. So, I moved early (about three minutes before they turned the power on to the machines, as I now know) and by half past eight my fingers were freezing as I erected our rotary clothes airer and pegged everything out to dry.

Wanting to run in the heat of what was forecast to be our warmest day yet, we didn't head out the door for exercise until gone 11am. Mick headed one way, to look at the town, I went the other - to discover that if you go south along the coast, cross the river and take the boardwalk onto the beach, you find yourself in soft sand. Perhaps inadvisedly, I continued along the sand for about 700m before turning back.

The point at which I realised this was not where I wanted to be

I then discovered, more happily, that tracks run along both sides of the river. Unfortunately, I didn't find another bridge to join them, but even an out-and-back was nice. So, with the hills, the riverside track and the beach, this isn't a bad location ... except for the lack of businesses that are open (there are a few bars in town, but none of them appealed as we passed).


^{(*I knew that sore shins were in my near future, but didn't expect it to occur on a relatively short, relatively flat walk. My plan post-marathon was already to rest for a week before doing a couple of short downhill sessions (i.e. walk up, hammer it back down), knowing that the initial reaction of my shins take me out of action for a couple or three days before they adapt. I will then be launching into long distance training on lumpy off-road terrain, having spent months running on flat tarmac.)}