Bracknell, UK & Gargantilla del Lozoya, Spain

UK heatwave! The mercury rose rapidly as we left the Lake District for the trip down south to spend a night down at my Dad's in Bracknell, arriving mid-afternoon in broad sunshine. We spent the evening sat in the garden catching up, before a wonderful, huge dinner with chicken and potatoes plus multiple home-made dessert options (chocolate cake! tiramisu! lemon drizzle cake!). We certainly felt looked after, with stepmum Christine's Irish family feeding instinct kicking in.

After a very warm night, next day we all headed for lunch to the beer garden of The Cricketers in nearby Warfield which was lovely, the way an English country pub should be, lacking only the thwack of leather on willow from some distant village green to complete things. We very much enjoyed our meal and the chance to spend more catching up time together, and we all rose above the decidedly anti-social barman who only reluctantly let us pair two tables in order to fit everyone on, then point blank refused to own up to an error in taking our food order that left us one meal down. One way to make sure you don't get a tip, I suppose.

Dad had told us about his 'noisy neighbours' - boisterous, uncontrolled kids next door who live life at high volume and whose football regularly flies over the fence. Apparently they shouted 'Alexa, play Eminem!' so loud one time that Dad's own kitchen radio starting blaring out ear-splitting rap too. As if on cue, on our return a chorus of noise hit us from next door and a ball flew over the fence, Faye returning it. That said, admittedly we did spent the next half hour instructing Dad's Alexa to produce various types of fart. Well, if you can't beat 'em...

The cross-country drive down to the ferry terminal at Portsmouth was easy and we took in yet more picturesque villages, many new to us. An attempt at playing pub cricket failed though, through a lack of pubs, many now seemingly converted to takeaways or guest houses. To be honest there was a lack of legs, too - we could have done with The Cricketers again, for sure! Bizarrely on the journey, at one point Faye pointed to a runner and proclaimed, 'I'm sure I know him!', confirming later that indeed she did by checking on Strava. Arriving at Portsmouth as the sun set, it was time to board the Brittany Ferries ship for the two-night crossing to Santander - not as long as it sounds as we started very late in the evening and arrived very early in the morning two days later, all without event.

The drive from Santander to our next campsite, Camping Monte Holiday near to the tiny village of Gargantilla del Lozoya in the mountains north of Madrid, was again a memorable one, although on a much grander scale than Bracknell to Portsmouth, with big rivers, sweeping switchbacks, fields of sunflowers and panoramic views. As we crossed several remote mountain passes, the temperature climbed from 20 to 32 degrees. Still, Maya had been craving guaranteed sunshine for 'essential' tanning all summer, so at least we could now promise that to her.

Or could we? Just after a late breakfast on arrival at the spacious hillside campsite, the temperature dropped as a thunderstorm hit, with windy and showery weather all day and into the evening - although bizarrely the temperature rose for a burst of tropical-syle heat as it got dark. The weather was to continue a little bit variable for the rest of our stay here, just on the border of what Maya considers acceptable but in truth, mainly fine.

The site itself was great. Huge yet laid back, with a wide variety of accommodation (camping, motorhomes/vans, touring and static caravans, huts, tree houses, glamping), plenty of trees for shade, and a very family feel, with lots and lots of kids of all ages roaming free - a marked contrast to the more couple-oriented and much older demographic of the Bowness site. It was a bit loud as Spain tends to be, but everyone was polite and friendly, and the setting was wonderful, the mountainside location providing impressive hills above and a wide vista south across the valley beneath us.

We also noticed that just about everyone had a dog! Skye definitely got to practise her barking as countless dog/owner combos paraded past the end of our pitch several times a day. One that stood out in particular was a Spanish water dog, same breed as ours, but with a distinctive white and brown long coat and show-off haircut, owned by an equally distinctive woman with striking curly ginger hair, funky clothes and permanent sunglasses - the pair of them made a very cool combo.

One day Maya and I cycled the 20 minutes or so along a rough dirt track to the village itself in an attempt to get supplies, only to be told by an old lady on her balcony in the town square that the tiny village shop 'only opens in the morning'. No surprise, really: Gargantilla del Lozoya is a classic semi-deserted Spanish mountain village, with an old church, a diminutive village square, and very little else. Even when later on I cycled on my own to the Coviran supermarket in the bigger nearby town of Lozoya I couldn't get what we wanted (decent fresh fruit and veg, basically) - we did wonder where people get such things from around here.

We got our answer - at least as far as campers go - on our final day, when a well-stocked fruit and veg market rolled into the campsite offering all manner of fresh produce for sale. However, by the time I got to it the queue was huge and everyone seemed to be buying a week's-worth of produce, so as we were leaving that day I decided to wait until a supermarket somewhere on our route to stock up. Thank goodness for frozen peas from the campsite shop, a large bag of which had been providing the vegetable content of our meals for a few days by this point.

Faye and I had been squeezing in some memorable runs throughout this part of the trip. Back in Bracknell, both of us had made use of a favourite from my childhood, Mill Pond, a little oasis of greenery among the houses, with its little mid-lake island populated by cormorants and a convenient 1km run around its perimeter. I'd used it for a challenging tempo session with 1k repeats, Faye for a broken 600s tempo session that she smashed. Meanwhile in Gargantilla del Lozoya, we both headed down the hill to the Pinilla Reservoir in the valley, a huge body of water in comparison to little Mill Pond, where Faye did an 18k easy run, and I did a 23k long block run. The running was great, but there were literally swarms of insects which we unavoidably inhaled/swallowed, and which had stuck to our necks and faces by the time we returned (having had to negotiate a herd of cows blocking our way just outside the campsite). For our next runs we headed the other way towards the village and through the countryside, Faye doing some ascending hill repeats and an easy 10k trail run, and me an easy 11k trail run - there was no avoiding the hills, even if you wanted to.

And so it was time to move on to our final destination of the trip, as we continued our journey south. This time, Maya was certainly going to get her guaranteed sunshine, as we were about to find out...