How time flies… I can’t believe that it was two and a half weeks ago when I last updated the blog, not only have the clocks gone back and the evenings drawing in, but it will surprise you to learn that we are still awaiting the door handle parts.

Mika is now two years old, so officially out of warrantee but as we have been in contact with Burstner we are hopeful that it will get fixed this side of Christmas, just in good old Spanish style… ‘manana’ (tomorrow), or possibly ‘el mes que viene’ (next month)!

With the weather in Portugal and southern Spain not looking too great and having started to increase our network of friends and activities over here, we have decided to relax into it and settle in for the winter…… if you can call it that as it rose to 25 degrees today.

The sea is hovering around 21 degrees at the moment, so although you can swim without a wetsuit – and we both happily did so today – I did take mine for a test run last Monday. The process of getting it on probably took more energy and time than I spent swimming, although I obviously have one arm stronger than the other as I found myself going round in circles. Each time I tried to get back into the shore I found myself heading out to sea again…. thankfully I finally made it back in, although I was good 100m further down the beach, possibly something to do with the strong currents rather than the strength in my right arm!

Needless to say I haven’t been back out in it again yet as it has been pretty choppy, but I am sure it will get an outing next week…. if you don’t hear from me within a couple of weeks start looking for me in Africa…

We ventured up the coast to a pretty little town called Altea which is just north of Benidorm, the old town providing a beautiful example of a historic Spanish hill village

We have also been stretching the legs and ventured up into the hills again with the bikes, a nice 45km round trip with 450m ascent all to have lunch in a bit of tranquility….

Unfortunately the new running shoes have as always made their mark on my ridiculously soft feet … after 5 runs (to be fair I didn’t make any allowances for them being natural running trainers) I had to take a week off to let the blisters heal, so will just have to see how I get on this time round… second run in the morning 🙂