Hola de Lleida!

Hi from Spain. Paul was at a conference at Lleida (pronounced YAY-da) last week. It's an old city in Catalonia about 200 km inland from Barcelona and 600 km N of Madrid. Pop. is about a quarter of a million and the modern city is on the banks of the Segre river with the old cathedral up on the hill dominating it. There's a nice running path for 12 km along the river. Training up from Madrid, it was flat, hot and dry - like the slopes & plains of NSW on the other side of the GDR. FYI, the "Central" train station in Madrid we departed from, Porta Atocha, was the one bombed by the terrorists a few years back. As part of the social side of the conference, we went to a recital in the cathedral on Friday night. It was built in the 13th century and has a incredible cloister but used as a barracks during the Franco era and stripped out. It has a famous bell called "Monica".... The view is spectacular from up there. But as the graffiti indicates, they are clearly doing it tough in Spain what with the abdication of the king, the austerity measures and lots of North African migrants in the town.