Got up very late, coffee shop closed so we brewed our own using the just bought mobile aero press. Great piece of kit.

Decided to take a walk along the cliffs and through the forests near Bareta with the intention of grabbing lunch in a small seaside village to the west of Bareta before walking back to the car.

The drive out was great, parking wasn’t a problem and we headed into the woods.

After a km or so we got close to the sea.

We continued along the path which now ran quite close to the cliff edge until we came to a large round tower.

Must be useful for something 🤷.

Visibility isn’t brilliant but the hills you can see in this next image are in Morocco.

This is where we were headed – overlooking Trafalgar where a somewhat famous sea battle was once fought.

Unfortunately when we got to the village everything was closed meaning no lunch so somewhat despondently we trudged back to the car.

Much like the rest of Spain it looks like this area is subject to forest fires 😞

The path seemed to meander much more going back than it had coming out but that tends to be the case when one is getting tired and hungry.

Having got back to the car we drove gently into Bareta intending to revisit the restaurant where we’d eaten a couple of evenings previously. Unfortunately as with last time, parking was difficult but whereas we had eventually found a space, this time we were out of luck, so, stomachs rumbling we drove back to Conil and to ALDI where we picked up spinach etc for a very late lunch.

Indeed. Just the right side of slimy with a taste roughly compatible with the real thing this turned out surprisingly well 😊

After a couple of hours chilling out we donned our Rab jackets and walked to the evening’s gathering at Cerveceria Entre Cañas to find the table set for 14. Dorothy sat opposite Frank and I and unfortunately for Anna (ex spokesperson for the German President for many years) she drew the short straw and sat next to me. I couldn’t possibly lose the opportunity so we chatted extensively about European geopolitics for the last 20 years or so followed by a somewhat one-sided discussion of the clear and present danger of developing sentient AI.

I enjoyed the evening. Anna to her credit assured me that so had she. i chose to believe that she did.

It’s actually really interesting to read ChatGPT’s response to the question ‘Is it possible to provide mechanisms to constrain the future use of sentient AI or is it now too late?’

I won’t include the response here but for anyone reading this blog it’s worth the few minutes or so that it’ll take to do so. It’s sobering to say the least 😞.

We left with our farewells to everyone. It’s an interesting group of people – I hope we have the chance to see them again one day.

Buenas noches.