February frolics

[Nigel]

Hi there, Bierzo Baggie. I just wanted to say how much I am enjoying your account of living and running through a Spanish mountain winter. It reminds me of cold and wet March and April field seasons, doing geological mapping in Salas de los Infantes and San Leonardo de Yagüe, where I learned the important but chilly lesson that the Mediterranean climate does not extend to 1 200 m altitude in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula. It may have seemed quite cool in Almería in January, but for the real thing I can still remember being snowed out in the middle of May in Burgos. Not the hot Spanish sunshine one sometimes imagines.

Bierzo is a part of Spain I have been fairly close to, but never quite visited so far. It seems an interesting and place to settle, and I wonder how you came to find yourself across running the mountain trails of that particular countryside.

As for the pain of a West Brom supporter, these are woes I can understand all too well from my own love-hate lifetime following West Ham United. I can remember running the middle miles of a Shakespeare Marathon alongside a gutted West Brom supporter in 2003, that fateful year when we shared a relegation. West Brom have bounced back, of course, although it may be only temporary as yet. On the positive side, at least we could perhaps look forward to renewing our recently exciting and evenly matched series of games between the two sides next season. Such is the real life of a football supporter, I think. None of this unreal world of chasing trophies - surely it is the relegation and promotion struggles which demand real resilience and loyalty. The trouble is, though, that both of mine are being sorely tested again this season, as perhaps they always will be.....