The town square of Horcajo de las Montes.

Faye headed off on her mammoth 28-mile run at 5am, loaded with water, and returned by 10am reporting it to be easy but very boring running along a single road with literally not a person around - we really are in the middle of nowhere here. Apart from the tedious road running, though, we are loving it - there's a real sense of place and countryside.

Dylan and I walked down the steep, short hill from the campsite into the town this morning, to do the shopping - bread, coffee, fruit, vegetables, chocolate, and (alcohol free) beer. We observed the church and its bell, that rings every hour on the hour, sometimes twice, as we've been noticing. Funny how quickly you get used to it, though.

The bell in the church tower.

After a baguette and salad lunch, I settled down to plan my livestream DJ set for tomorrow, downloading, sorting and practising the transitions between the 15 or 16 songs I want to use. These livestreams are definitely a labour of love, taking many hours of listening to music every fortnight, plus probably eight hours in total of preparation time including publishing the mixtape version, writing the descriptions, making the artwork, uploading test versions and so on. And then there's the actual performance.

But as a discipline for keeping me up with new music, I think it's worth it. Things develop when they're given a chance to, and while committing to DJing once a fortnight on top of everything else that's going on is hard work, and sometimes annoying (especially when the tech lets me down, usually internet connection), I've only been doing this for a year and a bit - I wonder where it could lead if it keep it up for five years? I think the trick is to keep trying to enjoy doing them, and not to worry too much about where it's leading - give it time to become what it may become naturally.

We decided to treat ourselves to a meal in the campsite restaurant this evening, sat on the terrace watching the sun go down over the dehesa. We've been impressing on the kids how important it is to eat more vegetables and fruit, so ordered a large salad and some grilled vegetables to go with the usual meat and chips for them today - to be fair, both kids were very good, and Dylan especially was game enough to eat quite a few padron peppers and some asparagus. That said, he absolutely hated the honey dressing on the salad - "Why ruin a perfectly good piece of lettuce?" 😂

The kids were playing around the site between food courses with the cheap walkie talkies we bought last year, running around, swinging on the swings, challenging the other kids to games in the games room. They've enjoyed this site - Dylan says it's his favourite campsite so far, because there's a great swing just 10 metres from our pitch!

So quite a late night in the end, Faye having to prise the kids away from their Spanish pals, who tend to keep much later hours than us Brits. We settled down into a very warm night, with an even hotter day predicted for tomorrow...