Well, with Summer Time officially commenced, I have faced facts and joined a gym.  Had to be done - between the wonderful food and cheap wine, Spain is officially bad for my health.  Combined with the typical homeworker tendency to sit on one’s backside all day, it’s a great recipe for said backside to spread indefinitely.

It’s not helped by the difficulties in walking around here.  It’s funny, because going for an evening stroll, a ‘paseo’, is very much a part of Spanish culture.  However where we live it’s just not easy - streets are narrow and without pavements, hills are steep, and every other house has a loud and aggressive-sounding guard dog to freak at you (and make you leap off the non-existent pavement into the path of the car struggling up the steep hill in the middle of the narrow road).  I do try and walk when I can, eg down to the mailboxes centre a couple of times a week, but the local leg of the journey in our urb is dangerous and weird… and so not done, people slow their cars down to stare at you, or ask if you’re ok or have broken down!

I do have to say that if you don’t mind driving somewhere first, there are numerous beautiful walks and strolls to be had - whether up in the hills, or along the beach, or whatever.  I just do find it weird that I cant start my walk on the doorstep easily.

Anyway, the gym.  I have to drive to it, naturally, but its only 10 minutes or so up the hill in Balcon al Mar.  Run by a very friendly Dutch couple, and has lots of scary equipment… in fact the only thing it hasnt got is a big room empty of equipment for general aerobic leaping about in, which is the kind of class I usually go for at a gym.  But they have lots of complicated looking gear to make you fit with.  I enquired about doing pilates once a week, and was told in a very blunt but polite way that there was no point doing any toning until I had done several weeks worth of fat burning!  So that’s what I have signed up for initially.

Fat burning class is 1 hour long, the first half of which is ’spinning’ - like cycling, only without the dogshit and lorries - and then half an hour of circuit on the ‘Easy Line’ equipment - a minute of step, then a machine, then step, and so on round about 8 stations.  Its quite fun, and a very friendly and supportive group of people.  They also have a power plate machine, which is a kind of migraine-generator that you stand on, and it’s supposed to vibrate your cellulite away.  They play cool and funky music, which helps a lot - I couldnt stand the mixes used at gyms in the UK.  They are very scientific about measuring your heart rate, and I need to get a proper monitor.  They’ve given me a cheststrap transmitter, but often when you’re in the bikes room there are too many people close together, and the monitor on the handlebars in front of me is probably picking up the triatheletes on either side instead of foretelling my imminent infarct as I try like mad to make it register in my predicted ‘fatburning zone’.

Anyway I am trying to find the space in the week to pop along and do 3 classes a week - that’s what I’ve paid for but so far averaging 2.  Watch this space, beautiful beach body here I come.  Maybe…