Where’s Bertie? He’s still in the Aire at Albocàsser
Weather: Some thin cloud around today, but still warm and sunny
We started our day with a circuit around a nearby hill, the summit of which is somewhere around 630m, although we didn’t visit it. My experience is limited, but it seems to me that whilst the Spanish love walking and trail running, they’re not fussed on visiting high spots and more often than not I’ve failed to find a path through the spiky scrub to get to summits. So, we kept to the path, which took us up to 600m, then down the other side.
It was a good route, mostly on easy-going terrain, so we made pretty good time, arriving back at Bertie just before 1030. I then gave Mick the option: to go out for coffee or to hang around for lunch? Coffee was his choice, so a quick wash and change, then it was straight out to see if we could refind the bar we’d passed yesterday. That we did easily, and seeing that they had a whole tostada menu, we added some toast to our coffee order whilst also eyeing up the tortilla that was on the counter.
The tortilla proved irresistible, so we had some of that with our second round of coffees, before moving on to the supermarket where we had to make the usual judgment call to only buy as much as we could comfortably carry the kilometre and a half back to Bertie. The most notable item amongst our purchases was the celery, just because the shortest pack we could find was still about 2 feet long. We had to cut it down to fit it in the fridge.
Back at Bertie we concluded that there was little point in moving on at such an advanced hour of day … that being all of 1pm. Clearly if we were trying to squeeze in as much as we could into a small window, we could have done more with our day, including a visit to a nearby cave art museum for its late afternoon opening session, but that would have run into tea-time, so we’ll pencil that into tomorrow morning’s agenda instead.
Seeing as we were sitting around this afternoon, I thought I’d check out one of the bonus facilities of this Aire. It’s located at a sports facility and the changing rooms are open and available for use. I ventured in with low expectations, but had a shower that was ridiculously powerful and so oversupplied with hot water that I struggled to make it cool enough. So, a free Aire with free electricity and with better showers than on most campsites (if I overlook the fact that the cubicles are tiny and the locks all broken).
Given the attractiveness of the countryside, a perfectly pleasant town, and all of these facilities, why is it so quiet here? We were joined by a French couple yesterday who initially only stopped for the service point and a meal, but once they realised there was free electricity they decided to stay. They left this morning, and this afternoon we have been joined by a German chap. I can only think that people are being put off by the reviews. The most recent review said that there are only really 3 spots here, rather than the advertised 8, due to low trees, and the reviewer had found them occupied. Others reported that the entrance is really awkward and that the place is infested with processionary caterpillars. The comment about only three spaces nearly put us off, but I’d say there are a couple more that would be feasible even for a 3m high van, and a new entrance was created late last year so it’s no longer difficult to access. The comment about the caterpillars is true, but as we don’t have a dog and can easily avoid them ourselves, they’re not such a concern to us as they would be to others. Also, no-one has yet publicised the fact that the electricity is now free and no one has raved about the showers.
The randomness that is Blogger has decided that we're going in reverse order with the photos today:
(As I've just finished up typing, would you believe that in the space of three minutes, 3 more vans have arrived. Given they're 3 different nationalities and they don't seem to be conferring with each other, I don't think any of them are together.)
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