A route I’ll never forget
Some places hold you in ways you don’t fully understand until you’re about to leave them. For me, it has been a stretch of road in Sotogrande – a hilly 5.4-mile loop that rises towards the Sierra Bermeja and has shaped my mornings for the past three years.
It begins simply, the moment I close the gate behind me: empty tarmac, palm trees lined like sentinels, lamps that for years stood unlit, waiting for future developments that are still yet to arrive. The road curves, climbs, demands. Six hundred and fifty feet of ascent in just a handful of miles. Some mornings I’ve fought it, every breath heavy, every step unwilling. Other mornings, I’ve floated – legs light, the horizon opening, Gibraltar appearing faint and improbable in the distance.
Soon I’ll leave this route behind. But not completely.
Tranquility
Always there is silence. The hush of an unfinished landscape. My only company the measured fall of my Hokas against the road, their rhythm becoming a kind of moving meditation.
Sometimes I extend the loop, jogging past villas that seem more sculpture than home – vast planes of glass and concrete reflecting the rising sun, pools spilling into views that money alone can’t quite explain. I pass through these spaces almost as a ghost, a runner with a stretch phone belt and an impulse to capture what I see.
There is one view I’ve photographed over and over, unable to resist it: the Reserva Club lying beneath the Sierra Bermeja, framed in the wide sweep of a 16:9 lens. Each time I round that corner, nearing the end, the scene seems both unchanged and entirely new. A reminder that running is not about arrival, but about returning.
Departing
In a few weeks I will leave Sotogrande, and with it this route that has steadied me through so many unsteady days. I will miss the struggle of its hills, the stillness of its mornings, the quiet gift it has given to my mind as much as to my body.
"There are runs you tick off, and there are runs that live inside you. This one, I will carry." ~ Kieron James
Kieron's "Avenida de la Reserva" running route in Sotogrande, Andalucía is available on Strava.