I found myself walking around Ávila this morning in the very early hours, before most people were stirring. Shortly into my walk, an illuminated sign outside a farmacia told me that the time was 06.33 and the temperature was 2°C. If I’d had any kind of a brain at all, I would have been tucked up in bed, but Trinny and I were in Ávila for just one night and I wanted to get a feel for the place without the distraction of the visitors. I figured that walking alone on cobbled streets before dawn might be something to savour, and so it proved to be. Apart from one man, unsteady on his feet and likely making his way home to bed, I had the sleeping town to myself.
Continue readingArchive for October, 2026
Does the world make much sense to you? If it does, even in a small way, you are doing much better than me. Much of what I know about the state of the world I learn from podcasts as I walk my dog along the quiet, meandering tracks of our beautiful Andalusian campo. Listening to the news keeps me broadly in the loop, but it is hardly cheerful. I may be surrounded by peaceful landscapes, but my headphones connect me to the woes of distant parts of the world. Even nature struggles to help at times. A little owl may be peering down at me from a telegraph wire as news comes in of the latest madness from Washington, or some random cruelty meted out to innocents far away.
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