Weather: A showery morning, then we drove out from under the cloud to sunnier conditions on the coast, albeit with a couple of short, light showers this afternoon. 8 degrees this morning inland; 17 this afternoon.
With a drive of just over 2 hours to get to the coast today, we were in no rush this morning, so I didn't have to spring out of bed too early, nor worry about how slowly I was going on my run. Was my tiredness real, or psychological after Thursday's 31km outing? I think probably the latter, but either way, today's 10.5k was more effort than I would have liked.
Fortunately, save for the first and last few minutes, down to the town and back up to Bertie atop the hill, it was a pretty flat route, along dirt roads around a loop in the river and there wasn't a breathe of wind.
Back at Bertie, washed, dressed and breakfasted, we were just ready to move when our only neighbours suddenly made their own move and beat us to the service point. We patiently waited, our turn came around and finally we were able to leave town.
The timing meant we were going to arrive in Peñíscola at lunchtime, when I doubted that the campsite reception would be open. We optimisitcally came here anyway, found an 'open' sign on the door, and after ten or fifteen minutes of me loitering at the desk, a chap came along to serve me.
It's not a large campsite, and they only had two pitches left, adjacent to each other. Unfortunately, they weren't one of the hedge-boundaried, grit pitches in the main campsite area, but effectively spaces in a concrete car park out the back. Mick was a little miffed that the 'car park' spaces cost the same as the proper campsite pitches, but beggars can't be choosers, and we get all facilities for €13 here, including electricity and wifi, whereas if we went to the nearest Aire we would be paying €10.50 just for parking and a service point.
I'm searching my memory, and I think this may be the first campsite we've visited in Spain since we've had Bertie ... and we picked him up eight years ago on Monday. So, a campsite isn't a normal choice for us, but for this year, at least, it will serve a purpose. (Almost immediately I remember that we spent 6 nights at a place in 2023 when we needed electricity during a wet week when there wasn't enough solar power to run the laptops; can't quite remember if that was an all-singing Aire or a campsite. It's still a rarity.)
Walking into town this afternoon I did wonder whether we had made the right choice of campsite. It's the best part of a 3km walk into town, and it's not an attractive route. The Aire we stayed on last time we were here (two nights in March 2022) was almost on the seafront. We've booked in here for a week, but when I'm out for a run I will take a look at another campsite that is also 3km from town, is more expensive, but is also practically on the seafront.
Performing a loop in the town before heading back here, we passed a Chinese shop. Outside we paused, frozen, whilst we both thought hard. We both recalled a conversation in the last couple of days that involved the statement "When we see a Chinese shop..." but neither of us could remember what the end of that sentence was. Eventually it came back to us, and a few minutes later, having spent €1.90, I had a bigger sieve for our kefir making (I've been using a tiny tea-strainer sized one), and 25m of ribbon, to add an additional anchor point to the new driver's seat cover that I made quite badly the week before we came away (the old one, which I made really well (even if I do say so myself) had worn out to a holey mess).
Photos from this morning's run, in reverse order, because that's what my blogging App does if I add multiple photos at once:
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