Saturday 8 February - Still Peñíscola

Where's Bertie? Is it surprising or entirely predictable that he's still not moved?

Weather: There's been a bit of cloud around over the sea the last couple of days, but it's soon cleared up to give gloriously sunny days. 16 degrees today.

The sight that greeted me when I arose this morning. This is what happens when, in a warm climate, you forget to put your (sourdough) bread dough, that has been proving all day, in the fridge overnight.

Against expectations, we still ended up with a good loaf.

We had good intentions to move on yesterday morning. As I'd done quite a few times before, I started the day by considering where we may go next, but I came upon the perennial problem: I want to go slightly inland, into the hills, but I also want the good weather and warmth of the coast.

A particular consideration this time was that I was down for a long run this morning, so wherever we went, it needed to be a location where I would have a decent, relatively flat route. One option was somewhere near Valencia, so I could jump on the Via Verde. Another option was half an hour north, where there's another Via Verde - but I'm hesitating to go north for fear of losing a degree or two of temperature.

My final, considered opinion was that we could stay here and I could run laps from the campsite.

That wouldn't just put our departure back by one day, but by two, as with Mick working Sunday, it makes sense to stay so he can use the big screen and have unlimited power.

Then came the slight curve ball: Mick saw that a couple of pitches had come up in the middle of the main section of the campsite and we decided that if we could move onto one of them, then we would stay another couple of weeks (thus getting the 'one month stay' special rate).

We haven't moved. Why? Because even though all the pitches cost exactly the same, apparently Bertie can't have one of those pitches because he's too small. Hmmm. So, we've been on a concrete car park for two weeks, paying the same as everyone on proper pitches, but he now can't have a proper pitch because someone in a bigger motorhome may come along (even in our area, 8m vans comfortably fit). We walked back through later and there were small vans on those pitches - the only difference between them and us being that they are new arrivals. (I'm making it sound like I'm disgruntled about being in the concrete car park area whereas actually there are some benefits to being here, like catching the morning sun and not treading grit into Bertie. The only real downsides of being where we are is the slope that even the ramps can't quite iron out, and occasionally annoying neighbours, although none of them has stayed long.)

So, we are still here and don't currently know whether we'll be staying until Monday or for another two weeks.

I can think of worse places to be at this time of year!

Back to this morning, I went and ran three laps of 11-12k each, in glorious sunshine, but my goodness, it was windy. I got blown sideways at times on the prom, and was stopped in my tracks coming back up the hill, but even in the wind I was plenty warm enough in shorts and t-shirt. Locals were, of course, wrapped up warm, and lots of locals there were. It being Saturday, the prom was positively bustling, making me curious as to what it's like here in summer when the hotels, flats and holiday homes are full - most are sitting empty at this time of year.