A regular feature of these holidays is me attempting to keep my religious running regime. By religious I mean that I only do it on a Sunday because I feel I should and even then only do it half heartedly. (Hopefully most readers will see the irony in that last sentence). I tried it in Colmenar with little success due to the massive hills, but I had throughly recced this area on Google maps and had concluded it was a lot less hillier and so may be worth at least having a bash at a run.

As I have already said (in previous blogs) we are surrounded by olive groves and there appears to be quite a good series of tracks through the fields. I had worked out a circular route which I guessed was about 5km. It took me through the fields, onto the main road and back through the village to the villa. Now that I am here I am reassessing the hills. I keep looking at them and thinking “is that more or less steep than Gretby Hill” (which I run up most days. I say run, its the beginning of my run so I’m still warming up and probably walking whilst waiting for RunKeeper to find GPS. I spend a lot of my running time “warming up”).

On Friday evening (before Cava O’Clock) I decided that I would give it a go. I headed down the track next to the villa and the first problem hit me. These dirt tracks were obviously fine for a casual walker or a tractor, but when you are running its like running on shifting sands…well shifting stones anyway. I decided to take the route straight through the olive groves, which was fine, but then the second problem hit me. Manure.

I think I have written before about my delicate nose. If not, I have one. Just google “Andrew Fenner Bulll Market Wales taken out due to smell embarrassing story told by mother” and it should pop up. If I have told you before, I apologise. I have written over 200 blogs and like my parents, I do tend to forget what I have just said. If anyone fancies indexing this nonsense I would be very grateful. Anyway, it would appear that they use chicken sh…waste to fertilise the fields, which could explain the problem we have with files. (Nothing like the problems we had at Paco’s place, but you won’t know anything about that as it was in a more simple time before I blogged). If we thought the flies in the villa were a problem, the the flies in the field were ten times worse (might be worth activating your “Andrew Exaggeration filter” at this point).

The other thing I hadn’t taken into account was that the olive trees and track were diverging with the olive trees going up and the track going down. So about 100 meters along I had to scrabble down a wall to get back onto the track. The next task was getting up the hill, which wasn’t too bad considering I am carrying some “holiday weight” as they say. I turned around to see the villa and waved at my my co-Holidayers (© Andrew Fenner 2018). They were nowhere to be seen, but I did think I heard the distant sound of laughter and a cava cork being popped wafting over the hills.

When I got to the top of the hill I seem to remember the track turning to the right, but I could also go straight ahead, which I did. 10 minutes later I was over another hill, the villa was to of sight, as was the town and I was still running away from civilisation. I then seemed to run out of track and so concluded that I should have taken that right turn so I doubled back, still being attacked by flies.

When the villa came back into sight I took the right turn (which was now on my left) and 5 minutes later, I ran out of track. I decided to give the whole escapade up for a bad job and just headed back. When I got back to the villa RunKeeper gleefully told that I managed to complete 2.5 km in 30 minutes and that it was my 13th worst run (out of 13) for that distance. So, that was all worth it then.

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