Where's Bertie? He remains unmoved, at the Aire in Jerez.
Weather: Sunny and warm (22 degrees this afternoon)
Saturday night in Jerez wasn't wasn't the most peaceful we've ever had, although none of the disturbances kept either of us awake for any length of time. There was music going on until some time after 3.30am; apparently there were some drums at around 5am (I slept through that); and various groups of loud people and tooting cars passed by pre-dawn. Perhaps that's a good excuse for the fact that we overslept for an hour and a quarter after the alarm, finally waking up at 0830.
Weather: Sunny and warm (22 degrees this afternoon)
Saturday night in Jerez wasn't wasn't the most peaceful we've ever had, although none of the disturbances kept either of us awake for any length of time. There was music going on until some time after 3.30am; apparently there were some drums at around 5am (I slept through that); and various groups of loud people and tooting cars passed by pre-dawn. Perhaps that's a good excuse for the fact that we overslept for an hour and a quarter after the alarm, finally waking up at 0830.
Fortunately, that still gave us enough time to do what we had on the agenda today, which started with walking an undulating 8km circuit around the small hill on the east side of town (small hill = 600m, but the town is at 550m).
Whilst the photos I took aren't adequately illustrative, we enjoyed some excellent views, including of a cloud inversion first thing. There were rather more dogs than we would prefer on the route (a few were loose and friendly (if you can count playfully biting Mick's hand as 'friendly'! No blood was drawn; more of a worry after last week's experience were those behind fences that they would clearly hop over if they so chose), and we may have indulged in a bit of trespass.
I'd surveyed various route options and chose this one for the fact that it stayed on tracks. We'd just negotiated the loose dogs and proceeded along a green lane with tricky gates, when our route suddenly took a hard right. There was no track on the ground, and no gate, but it was clear that other people had stepped over the fence there and it was only 0.5km until we intercepted the next track, and we really didn't want to negotiate the gates and dogs by retracing our steps, so over the fence we went. Nervously we climbed up the field (at quite a rate; if you think you may be trespassing, best get back on track ASAP!), only to find there wasn't a gate at the top either. Another fence was crossed, and onwards we went.
About 2-300m later Mick realised he no longer had his sunglasses, however, he'd only just taken his jumper off, so back we went. They weren't easily found, but it turned out they hadn't gone flying off his head at the jumper stop, but had simply fallen at the upper fence-crossing - fortunately after climbing it, so they were easily retrieved. I was having visions of a search akin to the incident in 2020 when Mick lost his door key in a field of knee-high grass.
Back to Bertie, after a coffee and a crossword, I retreated to Bertie's bathroom and emerged some considerable time later smelling nice and with my gladrags on (which is to say, I put on my only top that isn't a t-shirt, and a clean pair of jeans). Then out to lunch we went.
We wouldn't ordinarily chose to eat out at the weekend, but we've done such an incredibly poor job of going out for anything other than breakfast on this trip that we were determined to have a lunch out whilst we were here. Having failed to find an eatery that took our fancy during our wanderings around town on Friday, I'd resorted to TripAdvisor and Google, which is how we came to walk 1.8km across town to a place on a residential street on the outskirts. We arrived two minutes before they opened at 1330, and thus had no trouble getting a table in the no-reservations, 7-table eatery. It was completely full, with people waiting, by 1345.
It was the perfect location for us. A small place, with a limited menu, and full of locals. The food was spot on too, although it did defeat us and we waddled back across town.
More expensive than a menu del dia, but we've struggled to find any on this trip. I do hope they've not become a thing of the past (a casualty of Covid closures and/or food price inflation?), as we really do like the basic fare and excellent value you get with a 'menu'.
Ah! Back on the food again. Country walking in a foreign country can be tricky I guess when one is not familiar with local custom, access rights, and the like. When I think about it nearly all my walking in France was on marked GRs so that sort of problem did not often arise, except when I got lost from time to time.
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