And so it's (not) Christmas

That was it. The party's over. We're into the new year with a bang, and for me, well, it's the tired old cliche - losing some weight. Getting fit. Meh.

Yesterday we set off to feed some cats, the owners are away for the holidays: Just 15 mins drive away, but their track doesn't take kindly to cars at the moment unless they're 4x4's. Our old jalopy is not, so we abandoned her at the top of the track and went down, and down. Our friend tells me it's 1.3 kms, but it's also 200 metres high at a gradient of 18%. I am 5 feet high at a fitness level of zero - so was a nice shade of beetroot by the time we climbed back again.

This morning, after finishing some work, Stan stood behind me, merrily jiggling the car keys.
- Need to go to Cadiar.
 - Go on then...
 - Coming?
- Why?
- Nice easy route next to the village of Lobras, there's an old aqueduct - we COULD drive there....
-*Sigh
.It's useless arguing.

We reached Cadiar, we bought the groceries, and some nice stale rock hard Barra de Pan. We drove to Lobras, we saw the sign.

- Lovely day, he says, we might as well walk.

Stopping for a quick wee (I'm old) I waved at a friendly goatherd on the top of the mountain. There's always a goatherd. My ladybits have been logged by most of them. It's like trainspotting for them, only the number 88 keeps turning up.

After a kilometre or so the clouds rolled in. We tramped on and the rain hit us in a nice horizontal fashion. We climbed over boulders and crossed rivers, as branches lashed me in the face. Lovely. We came to a turn after crossing a soon-to-be-raging torrent, and decided to go left. After another trek into the unknown we came to a dead end.
No signs of human life. No rusty tuna tins, no spent gun cartridges, no spent condoms.
- Wish I'd brought the guide book and map, left them in the car....Crocodile Dundee announced cheerfully.
 - Or compass, water, knife, torch and flares, I grumbled.

CD marched merrily on back towards the general direction of the car, stopping to root in bits of poo. He does that. He can tell by taking it apart what animal it came from. With his fingers. Please. I have no idea what attracted me to him in the first place either.

Finally seeing the car I collasped into it, breaths coming in rasps now. I toyed with the idea of going back to Cadiar for oxygen.

 - No, we should have turned off here , see?
He was fiddling with the map again.
 - Shall we....
-NO.

- I'll DRIVE.

Back we bumped along the track. We managed to make the correct turning. Finally, a ramshackle building, some cars and vans without wheels - it was  similar to a New Age camp in Orgiva. 4 large and snarling hounds prevented us from exiting the vehicle.

There was the famous Aqueduct. Three arches of broken stones. Meh.

A Spanish man walked towards us. Visions of a log fire, some homemade wine and a bit of pig innard cheered me up. I waved my nice stale bread enticingly and got ready to shout Howya in my best Spanish. He turned up his collar, and ran into his house, slamming the door.

So much for the friendly locals!

Wonder where we'll go tomorrow?