The temperature has dropped a few degrees and we are now holding a steady 18-19 degrees during the day, dropping to 6-7 degrees over night…. the mornings are fresh to say the least when we have been used to the sunshine warming the van before we get out of bed! None the less it has remained dry and mostly clear skies.

After a couple of swims in the sea I managed to catch a bit of a cold – my first since we have been travelling which is a bit of a shock to the system. Apparently something to do with the fact I was wearing a wetsuit, Pilar (the lady who runs the campsite) assures me that I wouldn’t have caught it if I were swimming as nature intended 🙂 … It has gone now thankfully, but I think for the benefit of others I will risk getting a cold for now and keep the wetsuit/swimsuit close by!

I am embarrassed to say that the last couple of weeks have been even more focussed on food and drink than usual. The Aire we are staying on celebrated its first birthday just over a week ago and the owners (Yolanda and Jorge) put on an incredible spread to celebrate, rounding off with a ‘Paella a Banda’ which had Tuna fish, Calamari and Artichokes as well as the usual …. cooking a Paella for 50 people on the surface of it appears easy…. expensive, but easy – although I am sure that is just because Yolanda and Jorge were well prepared and have done it several times. It was a lovely afternoon and not only did I learn a bit more about the art of making Paella, we also met some really lovely people.

Miguel (senior) had planned to go to Madrid last weekend to see his parents as it was his mum’s birthday and asked a few of us if we wanted to go as well. In the end five of us (Santi, Manolo, Veronica, Keith and me) rented an apartment through Airbnb for Friday and Saturday night and took in a tour of the Canas and Tapas of Madrid.

Madrid is famous for its small beers with (generally) free tapa and we managed to take in a handful of excellent examples over the weekend

The weather was perfect, cold (going down to about 0 overnight) but with clear blue skies, so armed with layers we were fine.

We did a fair amount of walking, managing to see several of the key sites in between our Tapas (well you had to build up an appetite) and then on Sunday we took a long walk through El Retiro, which is the main park through Madrid…..if you didn’t know it, we could have been in Hyde Park.

…. and I almost forgot, wait for the drum roll…….we had our door fixed. We had to travel down to Murcia, but they had the parts and fitted them in about an hour – it seems very odd to be able to get into and out of the motorhome through the door….almost a bit too normal 🙂

So, we are now on our trip back to the UK for four days to see family…. the question is how many mince pies and Christmas cake can we eat in four days – the pressure is on 🙂