Thursday 9 March - El Real de la Jura

Where's Bertie? He's still at the Aire in El Real.
Weather: Rain until 2pm, then increasingly sunny, reaching 20 degrees.

We had a quiet night last night, once the choir of local dogs had finished their practice. Goodness, they made a racket before then! Even though the Aire comprises spaces along the side of the road, I didn't notice any passing vehicles in the night.

This morning we had a bit of a rejig of our intended schedule (using the term loosely!) for the day. Given that it was raining this morning, but forecast dry this afternoon, it seemed more sensible to do indoor things this morning, then go for our run this afternoon.

We stared at the laptop for about an hour until 10am, when I suggested that going for coffee would be a good plan. We probably would have gone out for coffee today anyway, but the fact that carelessness in the grocery shopping has left us with only one day's worth of real coffee left helped the decision. Waterproofs were donned, and through the town we went, stopping at the first place we saw, which happened to be a cafeteria, rather than a bar. The difference? There were still spirits being served, but all the servers were women, and so were half the clientelle.

We paused on the way to watch the storks on the church spire. There's two nests (with a pair of birds on each) on the corners, plus a bird on the very top. The one on the top was joined by a partner with a beak full of sticks, which it proceeded to drop onto the lofty nest site - it seems they build their nests more by luck of which sticks, ummmm, stick, rather than by careful placing.

Incredibly, in all of our trips to Spain, we've never before had churros. I wasn't convinced that I'd be a fan, as I'm not too fussed on doughnuts (as a teenager I worked in an ice cream kiosk that sold freshly made doughnuts and spent 7 summers stinking of the things), so I had my usual tostada, whilst Mick had churros. Obviously, I tried some too, with the verdict that they're not as doughnutty as I expected. Next time we'll have to find somewhere that sells them with stand-your-spoon-up hot chocolate*.

Two coffees**, a mass of churros and a tostada = €3.60

Back at Bertie, more work then a spot of lunch, before at 2pm we headed out in shorts and t-shirts.

Our circuit today (a 13km Petite Randonnee route) turned out to be an easy one, without much ascent (100m) and mainly on good tracks. We didn't go awry as much as the person who had recorded the gpx track that we were following, but there was one point where we realised we'd just missed a turn. Back we headed and I was so busy pointing out a waymark over to our right that I failed to notice the uneven bit of road. We shouldn't have even been on tarmac, but it was onto the tarmac that I crashed. A skinned palm, a sliced palm and a skinned knee resulted.

Having looped back towards El Real along the same waterway I'd followed (but in the opposite direction and on the opposite bank) yesterday, when we reached the road, I opted to take the short cut back to Bertie, so as to be able to rinse the grit and dirt out of my grazes. Mick continued on for the final 2km.

He met a dog. To give context to the scale, the shepherdess next to it here is about the same size as Mick. Fortunately it was friendly as it approached Mick, leant against his leg and demanded some fuss.

It was another good route, although not as clearly waymarked as most.

As we drove in yesterday I'd spotted the piles of boulders in this wooded grazing land and it soon became apparent that there were far too many for it to be dolmens.

We also saw this picnic area, complete with brick-built barbecues, as we drove in yesterday. It's vast, extending for a few hundred metres along the river.

This isn't the same castle as included in a snap in yesterday's blog. Mick got to see this one on the last bit of the circuit, that he did solo. The Aire here may not be attractive, but there's certainly stuff to see hereabouts.


^{(*That had been our final mission in Aracena, but the chocolate y churros place was only open in the mornings, and we were doing other stuff every morning that we were there.
**We had some language issues with our order of dos cafés Americanos. We clarified that we didn't want milk, so she said 'solo'. I replied that we wanted a big coffee (dangerous description - you sometimes get a double espresso) made of a café solo (espresso) but with hot water. 'Ah!' she said 'Americano!'. Must work on our accents!)}