Where's Bertie? He's at a free municipal Aire in El Real de la Jura, with free electricity as well as the usual service Point. Exact location: 37.95083, -6.15818
Weather: Wet start, brightening up later. 14 degrees at dawn, warming to at least 19 this afternoon.
As we readied Bertie for the off this morning there was no avoiding going out in the drenching drizzle. I consulted the weather forecast and hoped the prediction that it would dry up between 9 and 10am would hold true, as there was no point in having got an early start if we were going to reach the village of Zafre (just 10km along the road) only to find ourselves disinclined to go outside.
I'd not been able to find anywhere to spend a night in Zafre*, so it was only to be a quick stop-off en-route to our destination, and happily the weather perked up in the ten-minute drive there. Not entirely trusting that it wasn't going to rain again, we took waterproof jackets. A few minutes later we rued not having waterproof trousers or an umbrella with us, and hoped that a bar would appear before us at any moment.
Public lavadero. Top photo taken in the rain, second taken on our way back to Bertie at the end of our visit demonstrates the view that those using the facility would have enjoyed.
It didn't take us long to locate a bar, but by then we were pretty damp. They must be used to tourists in this village, as the occupants of the bar all said hello to us, and not one of them stared!
Usual second breakfast. Before putting bread under the grill for us, the chap behind the bar brough over to us two plates containing three different types of bread (big slices, small baguette-esque rolls and big round rolls), and asked which we wanted. We should probably have asked what each of them was known as, for future reference, but he was a busy chap, so it was kind of him to take the time to ask.
Eventually, someone walked past the bar without an umbrella up, so out we headed to explore the rest of the village.
A really nice place was the verdict. A few snaps:
16th century town hall...
...next to the modern town hall
Look at all those swift/swallow/martin nests!
Across the square is the church
Looking up at the church from a lower viewpoint
Weather: Wet start, brightening up later. 14 degrees at dawn, warming to at least 19 this afternoon.
As we readied Bertie for the off this morning there was no avoiding going out in the drenching drizzle. I consulted the weather forecast and hoped the prediction that it would dry up between 9 and 10am would hold true, as there was no point in having got an early start if we were going to reach the village of Zafre (just 10km along the road) only to find ourselves disinclined to go outside.
I'd not been able to find anywhere to spend a night in Zafre*, so it was only to be a quick stop-off en-route to our destination, and happily the weather perked up in the ten-minute drive there. Not entirely trusting that it wasn't going to rain again, we took waterproof jackets. A few minutes later we rued not having waterproof trousers or an umbrella with us, and hoped that a bar would appear before us at any moment.
It didn't take us long to locate a bar, but by then we were pretty damp. They must be used to tourists in this village, as the occupants of the bar all said hello to us, and not one of them stared!
Eventually, someone walked past the bar without an umbrella up, so out we headed to explore the rest of the village.
A really nice place was the verdict. A few snaps:
Typical street
For the detour of just a few hundred metres from the main road, definitely a worthwhile visit.
El Real de la Jura was another twenty-five minutes away, and only after arriving did I realise I had erred. Yesterday I'd looked at the location of supermarkets and thought there were a couple here. Turns out they were in a place we passed through 7.5km back along the road. And Bertie's fridge was almost bare of veg.
A walk along what appears to be the main street of El Real revealed two shops: one tiny and the other very small. In the second one we poked around in their displays of veg (all well past best) and managed to find enough stuff in good-enough condition to feed us for a day or two.
I had been in two minds as to whether to go for a run today (mildly sore ankle after turning it on a rut yesterday) but at quarter past three I set out for a low-level 8km circuit. Really lovely it was too; I was glad I went.
Snaps:
The Aire here is uncommonly unattractive. It's just some parking spaces at the roadside, behind a housing estate and next to an abandoned industrial building. Whilst we're not too fussed on having attractive park-ups (practicality wins; they all look the same once the curtains are drawn at night), I'd rather be somewhere that wasn't this skanky-looking. That said, we'll likely stay here two nights, as by the time we've explored a longer and lumpier walking route tomorrow, then done a bit of work, it'll probably be too late for us to feel inclined to move on.
(*The place we parked for our visit was too sloping for a comfortable night stop, and having visited the village car park on Street View the access road looked a bit narrow. As it turned out when we recced on foot: 1) the car park was just being dug up; and 2) the width of the access road would have been fine; but 3) the steepness of the cobbled access road, with a hairpin bend, would have been an issue in the rain.)
Your first photo compilation looks like a Salvador Dali painting, just an observation, not a criticism. The rest are great, again when enlarged. I had not come across "skanky" before and was mildly surprised to find it listed in my Oxford dictionary; a good word - the visual version of onomatopoeic.
ReplyDeleteI perhaps should have put a bit more effort into choosing the layout of the collage; it was laziness on my part. That said, I've no objection to the end result being compared to Dali!
DeleteI may be misremembering, but didn't I also introduce you to the word 'nesh' several years ago?