Peniscola - Monday 10th to Sunday 16th

Monday 10th

Neither of us was running; neither of us was working – we had a whole day free to do stuff together!

“Let’s go to the castle” Mick said. Once my first reaction (“It’s Monday, so it won’t be open.”) was disproved, off we went down the hill.

It’s hungry and thirsty work walking to a castle that’s 3km away. We had to stop for coffee and toast on the way. Then we came upon the weekly market, so we took a wander around that (unsuccessful in terms of finding the item I was after). By the time we’d done that we’d decided it was a bit too cool to enjoy a walk around a castle, and even though the forecast said it was only going to be overcast, not wet, it was looking ominously like rain. So, we fell into another bar for more coffee/tea. By then it was lunchtime, and a ten minute walk took us to our favoured eatery.

A single course plus drinks came in at only €10 less than three courses, including drinks and bread, followed by coffee.

Tuesday

Having now sampled so many of the paths through the Sierra d'Irta, I’d convinced myself that the first route I did, a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t as overgrown and scratchy on the legs as I remembered, so was worthy of repetition. I also decided it was more runnable than I remembered. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. My legs were smarting by the time I got back to Bertie!

With the weather having returned to sunshine, I noted that my legs are getting their usual ‘shorts and ankle socks’ tan. Such a good look…

Wednesday

There was a birthday to be celebrated and we’d thought we’d do a repeat of Monday, but this time (in the absence of the market) we would be successful in our mission to see the castle, in between morning coffee and a big lunch.

We woke up to rain. When rain is very much the exception, we felt no inclination to walk around in it.

So, we pottered until lunchtime, before walking down to town for lunch.

Failed to take a photo of the starter, failed to ask for birthday candles in the pudding, so here’s the main course.

By then the day was brightening up and it turned out to be much warmer (and more humid) than I’d expected. So sunny was it over lunch that we probably would have gone to the castle this afternoon, had we not been so stuffed full of food.

Thursday

I managed to find a couple of nearby paths in the Sierra d’Irta hills, on the N side of the range, that I’d not yet trodden, so I went off to tread them. Absolutely lovely it was – nice paths (not too scratchy, except through a few sections of stunted holly bushes) under a clear sky.

Gorgeous! You can see my onwards path over the next lump.

The only fly in the ointment was the realisation that I had in fact been on the path involved in the return leg of the loop, and it was the steep/slow/plates of ball bearings path that I used last weekend. Realising that before I made the turn allowed a quick replan on the hoof – the longer distance of my revised route was certainly much quicker than the steep/slow/ball-bearings path would have been.

Friday

Valentines day, and being the romantic couple we are, we decided to celebrate by going out for coffee, tostada & a crossword … exactly as we do most weeks of the year. This time we beelined for the same bar as we’d found on Monday – it’s our usual sort of a tostada location, being full of old men and workmen (we must have spent 2.5 hours in there this week and the only other women present have been the serving staff).

Our elevenses, but also a surreptitious snap (actually taken on Monday) of old geezers, having spirits with their breakfasts and putting the world to rights

A small indication of how busy it was on Friday

The bar was full to the gunwales when we arrived. By the time we left they were sweeping up around us – by then the only customers - in the lull between breakfasts and lunch, which we took as our cue to leave.

Saturday

We’ve had more than our fair share of cloud this week, and today was another overcast one, although reasonably warm.

Leaving the campsite together at around 9am, I soon left Mick behind as he set out for a 5k run and I set out for a differently-paced 20k. Out of Peniscola, into Benicarlo and out the other side before I ran out of coastal pavement and turned back.

Murky weather with poor air quality

As I sit and type this on Saturday afternoon, it’s raining. I might have to put in a complaint about this weather!

Current plan: we are leaving the campsite tomorrow. We’ve had that plan quite a few times before. Let’s see if we can extract ourselves from the vortex this time!

Sunday

As I failed to post this in a timely manner, I may as well retrospectively add a note about Sunday. Goodness, once you get sucked into the vortex of a campsite in Peniscola, the pull is strong! That is to say, that once again we failed to leave as planned.

I had a need to use the campsite wifi to do a particular task before it ground to a halt (which generally happened at around 8am, as too many other people came online), so we got up at 0630. I used the wifi for as long as possible, then continued offline until lunchtime. With more computer work to do in the afternoon, it didn’t make sense to leave, but we resolved that we absolutely, definitely, without any doubt, were going to leave on Monday...