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Well, we may well have sauntered into the month of November but my goodness we haven’t half galloped through it, and now we find ourselves stepping through the door into the month of December 😲 So let me commence, with what I hope you will find is an enjoyable read and further insight into our lives down here on the Costa del Sol, by first asking whether you all enjoyed your recent holiday ? ‘What holiday 🤷‍♂️’ I hear you ask, with perhaps a slightly bemused look upon your face. ‘The one where you have just enjoyed an extended break from having to endure reading another of my rambles’ I reply 😂

Yes I know, it has taken me a lot longer than usual to publish this my latest piece of verbal incontinence, however, the plain truth of the matter is that there really hasn’t been very much going on in our lives over the last two or three weeks to write about, well nothing truly scintillating and to be honest, it was bound to happen at some point as normal life is, well just that, normal daily life, for it doesn’t really matter where we were to be living, we wouldn’t be heading off here there and everywhere every single day or week 🤷‍♂️ So, other than our normal everyday routines, there has only really been the usual Global media’s ‘Doom and Gloom’ reporting, and of course, for us, the very recent UK Government’s Autumn Financial Budget of course, which generally just tends to slot into that same ‘Doom and Gloom’ category, all of which appears without fail to fill the pages of all the news headlines each and every day. I guess that there may be some who will wonder why, when we now live in Spain, we should still be interested in what is going on financially back in the UK 🤷‍♂️ Probably the main reason is because we get all of our Income payed via UK Pensions and so, with the exception of the Government State Pension (Which is now taxed here in Spain) we do still pay Income Tax on the remainder of those Pensions, in the UK. Additionally, we do also maintain personal savings over there, so things like the Annual Personal Income Allowance, Interest Rates and of course the Exchange Rates (£ to €), all of which are impacted by that Government Budget, so we do still need to keep up to speed with the important stuff going on back there, as well as similar sort of stuff here in Spain too, their is no escaping the clutches of the Tax Authorities, in either the UK or Spain. Apart from that, I am not going to comment on the consequences of this current UK Budget announcement generally, as everyone will have their own personal views on how it will, or will not, effect them, although I am making an educated guess that their will not be very many in the ‘Will Not Be Affected’ category 🙄

So whilst I do not want this ramble to be a downbeat read for you, just sticking with the ‘Doom and Gloom’ topic for just a moment longer, I have to say that personally speaking I am genuinely surprised that with all of this constant doom and gloom reporting around the world, 365 days a year, that the 24hr telephone helpline service, for those with depressive and suicidal thoughts, the ‘Samaritans Organisation’, are not one of the largest global employer’s 😲 For all I know they may be, although I believe most are ‘Volunteers’. I know that I certainly couldn’t be one of those sat on the end of a telephone every day having to provide some kind of Solice and Hope to some of these poor desperate people, realistically, even as a volunteer, I would probably get the sack after only one day, due to me telling all of my particularly unlucky callers to, “Stop worrying about the things that you have no control or influence over” and then listen to the fading screams of Aaaaagh!! as they leap out of the window, or off the cliff face 😂 However, I am also guessing that you, my reader’s, are probably very well aware of much of that doom and gloom stuff in the media for yourselves, for no matter which part of the world you may live in, I feel sure that you too encounter much of the same issues as anybody else, irrespective of the country or time zone that you may be in, and so the last thing that you need is for me to keep reminding you of what terribly unhappy lives you must all be leading 😂

Anyway, and in case my lack of on-line presence did have you perhaps wondering (or hoping 🤔) whether I may have succumbed to deep depression, and thrown in the towel myself, deciding to shift my mortal coil from this world on to the next which, if I had, would then undoubtedly have been swiftly followed by me commencing to publish a completely new set of more spiritual ramblings from the after-life, perhaps even entitling them ‘The Difference Between Heaven and Earth’, or perhaps, if I did end up going in the other direction 😈 my blog may have been entitled ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Down Here’ 😂 But I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I haven’t gone in either direction, well not just yet at least, and just to confirm that fact, I have cobbled together a few ramblings to fill you in on what has been happening down here on our little piece of the Iberian Peninsula since my last ramble.

Now of course, it would be rude of me to fail to mention the ‘biggest’ news event for down here in our particular part of the world, although the ‘Costa del Sol’ description has not lived up to its title very recently, well more at the midpoint period of November, for yes, we did have rather a lot of the wet stuff, which believe it or not, for this part of Spain at least, it was actually ‘A Cause For Celebration’, rather than a reason to be miserable like it may be elsewhere. Although I do appreciate that for some reading this, even in other parts of Spain, who live in areas where regular rainfall is a common event and nothing out of the ordinary, this may not actually come as any sort of earth shattering news for you but, in this, our little bubble of existence tucked away in a small corner of Spain, unsalted water still remains a very valuable and precious commodity, but we also know that such wet weather events never last too long so they become moments to appreciate and treasure, okay that is perhaps overstating it just a little 🤭

You may recall that over the very long two year drought period that we endured down here very recently, during 2023 & 2024, and in almost every subsequent ramble that I published over that long period, I continually reported on the very low levels of water in our particular Embalse (Reservoir), however, since the end of that drought period, which was several months into this current year, I have barely mentioned them again, primarily because we have had plenty of water in it since then, but also because the ‘Drought Committee’, and yes, it isn’t just ‘other’ Countries Government’s that like to have Official Committee’s for almost everything, they also like to have them here in Spain too, but I digress, the ‘Drought Committe’ had notified us that we were no longer on personal water restrictions but more importantly, that we had sufficient reserves in ‘our’ particular Embalse to keep us off their ‘critical’ list for risks of another potential drought in 2026, although to be completely honest, we were not given the absolute ‘All Clear’ as they stated that this would depend on whether we got the usual ‘anticipated’ rainfall during these Winter months. So, with that in mind, I have had no reason to keep a particular eye on our particular Embalse water levels, or to report on them to you my reader’s, so that is perhaps one thing that we can now take off our own personal ‘Doom and Gloom’ list, well for now at least 🤞

Now, when all of the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, and I do mean ‘All of them’, report in their fourteen day advanced forecasts, that we are going to get a non-stop consecutive six day deluge of rainfall, followed by several days thereafter with sporadic rainfall, as a consequence of ‘Storm Claudia’, then we do tend to pay just a little bit more attention to them, but it also prompted me, just out of interest, to go and have another look at the current levels in our Embalse.

I took a look at the level of our Embalse on the day the rain started, and I would take another look once the six day deluge had finished, although there would be continued ‘Run-Off’ from the mountains for several days after that, so the level would increase just a little bit more, although perhaps not significantly so.

Now of course, as the majority of my regular reader’s will no doubt already know, what the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts predict, to what actually materialises, can, and generally is, two completely very different things. So yes, we did have ‘wet stuff‘ over the stated initial six day period, but even that was not consistent rainfall from dawn to dusk, it also varied from being very light drizzle, to what I would call ‘normal’ rainfall and, on some occasions, yes there was some ‘Torrential’ stuff, whereby the rain didn’t just tap on the windows, it hammered on them 😲 In between these periods we did however also experience some very unexpected blue sky, warm sunshine and even very brightly coloured rainbows, you can tell how rare they are in these parts when everyone is taking photo’s of them on their cameras 🤭 But yes, generally speaking, during those initial six days it was mainly very dark and cloudy overcast skies, and their was no way of knowing when, or if, those brief sunny periods were going to appear. There were the odd flashes of lightning, and occasional rumbles of thunder too, but certainly nothing very dramatic which, personally speaking, I found a bit disappointing, as I do like to watch and listen to a good thunderstorm from the safety and comfort of my balcony. Shazza and I had anticipated being confined to barracks for that whole six day period, so of course we had re-provisioned accordingly a couple of days earlier, akin to as if we were going to experience a nuclear attack and food would be in very short supply 🙄 Unfortunately, as that did not turn out to be the case, I not only have to eat copious amounts of ‘Plant Based’ produce on a daily basis but, as we purchased far too much to keep in the normal storage cupboards, we have to sleep with a lot of the extra stuff under the bed 😳 Although, on the positive side, their has been an unexpected advantage to this, as the lingering heavy scent of Garlic and Onions has stopped Shazza’s snoring 😂

As it turned out, we did also, somewhat unexpectedly, manage to get out on a couple of those wet days for our routine walks, and of course the associated refreshment stops 😉 and even an impromptu lunch on one of the days, which meant that I was not completely deprived of my regular doses of ‘Anti-Covid Vaccines’, which as you know are taken purely for medicinal purposes. I do have to say though that we were extremely lucky on that particular lunch occasion, as we had just returned home and pulled up into the car park when the heavens opened again, a good job I hadn’t decided to order a second dose of Anti-Covid Vaccine, I thought to myself. Now as for the remainder of the ‘forecasted’ days of continued drizzle, after that initial six day period, well I am sure that you will not be surprised in the least to read that the more usual standard of ‘inaccuracy’, by those ‘Works of Fiction’ numpties, returned and so the normal sunshine service was resumed, the ‘Wellies’ and ‘Raincoats’ came back off and were replaced with the more comfortable and lightweight flip-flops, shorts and tee-shirts. Oh yes, and we could return to calling this place the ‘Costa del Sol’ 😎

In my last ramble I may have mentioned, and not for the first time I know 🙄 about the normal slow pace of daily life here, and so it probably does, now I stop and think about it, go some way towards understanding the ‘Mañana, Mañana’ attitude that you often hear about, not just here in Spain but also in several other European countries too. And, although I am somewhat reluctant to usually mention anything positive about any of the ‘Bureaucratic’ Authorities or processes here in Spain, to be fair it perhaps does also go some way in understanding the reason for some of those slow services as well 🤷‍♂️ However, let me tell you, by way of an example, at just how this Mañana Mañana attitude is often not the case, especially when it comes to the normal smaller businesses promptness at getting things done. Our dining chairs, six of them, which we have had now for around ten years or so, covered in a beige coloured ‘Faux’ leather as it is better known, which sounds a little French to me, but in English we spell it ‘Fake’, which is a much less posher but more accurate way of describing it 😂 Anyway, this ‘faux’ leather had started to peel very badly, on all six chairs, and we had been saying for months that we needed to get around to having them re-upholstered, so finally we decided to get our arses into gear and do something about them. We were fortunate to find an upholsterer in our local town, so thank you ‘Senor Google’ for your assistance once again. Martin originates from Argentina, although he has lived here in Spain for the last 25 year’s, so, and as you would expect with him originating from a Latin American country, his Spanish was excellent, although his English was probably about as good as our ‘current’ level of Espanol which, in our defence, I have to say is very much better than what it was only a short few months ago, so with a mixed combination of ‘Spanglish’, where appropriate, we managed to communicate with each other very easily. We visited his small workshop, which was in more of a converted small Spanish terraced town house, as opposed to being in a proper retail shop, we showed him a photograph of one of the chairs, picked our new material, this time a cloth fabric rather than leather (‘Faux’ or otherwise), we negotiated a price, which included collection and delivery and that was that, then we just had to wait until the ordered fabric arrived at his workshop premises so that he could commence the job. It took just seven days, and that included a weekend, from the day he called to collect our six chairs, to the day he returned them completed, so no ‘Mañana, Mañana’ attitude here, and now, we no longer need to feel embarrassed when we have visitor’s. But whilst I am speaking of Mañana Mañana, I did have to smile to myself recently, there has been a massive ‘Tsunami’ exercise in the Cadiz Province, involving not only all the Emergency Services but also vast numbers of the ordinary public, but even that, as reported in our local newspaper, had an element of Mañana Mañana about it.

For the last couple of weeks or so, bearing in mind that that did consist of very nearly a week of, well let’s call it ‘inclement weather’, for the sake of a better description, we didn’t really get up to very much, just the usual routines which you will be very familiar with by now. Although, we did vary it a bit, by paying a rare visit to Estepona, strange how it is literally only a short twenty-minute drive away but we seldom go there 🤷‍♂️ However, just by way of a change of scenery and to have a slightly longer walk, we parked up at the Estepona Marina and then walked along almost the whole length of their relatively new and capacious seafront promenade, we stopped for a coffee, it would have been rude of us not to, then had a wander around the shopping streets and Plaza’s, and then we both unanimously agreed that we may as well stop and enjoy a Tapas lunch. We selected what was advertised as a Wine and Gastronomy Bar, one that we have often walked past but never stopped at, and one that serves more ‘refined’ Tapas, and very enjoyable they were too. For any English reader’s, or those familiar with a certain well know British High Street retailer with food halls, probably more specifically, their particular television advertising slogan, let’s just say that these were not ‘Just Tapas’, these were ‘Refined Tapas’, and of course, they also came at a ‘Refined’ sort of price. We could certainly have got a similar sort of lunch at one of the many other local Spanish Taperias, but without all of the pomp and ceremony, and of course without the additional Euro’s that their refinement required, but hey, it’s good to treat ourselves once in a while, the sun was shining, the ambience was good and their were plenty of people watching opportunities. As for the Anti-Covid Vaccine, which I also anticipated would come at a ‘refined’ price, well that did surprise me, for it was no more expensive, and of the same usual good quality that I can, and very often do, partake of in any number of my more usual local hostelries. Well I guess we are in Spain after all, where drinking Vino is as normal as drinking Agua (Water), that is not intended as a derogatory comment in respect of the quality of the wine, but more by way of confirmation that, whilst you can often find a large variation in the quality and standard of the food, from one establishment to another, the Rioja always remains the same excellent quality, irrespective of the producer’s label, and it will come as no surprise to you I am sure, to hear that I can personally confirm that fact 😂

The days that followed consisted of just conducting our normal routines, shopping, cleaning, walking and of course drinking coffee (or other refreshment) at our usual haunts, even a visit to my local Moroccan Barbers. But then a moment that we had both been looking forward to, a kind of mini-adventure, away from our more usual stomping ground. You may recall me mentioning many times in these rambles over the year’s, a couple of our good friends, Paul and Debs, who we still get to see occasionally and who we remain in contact with via social media. They are still Motorhome Fulltimers but they also have a ‘Spanish Bolt Hole’, that they regularly visit during parts of their 90 day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ trips. Their bolt hole lay approximately a 5-6 hour drive North of us and so, during one of their recent ‘bolt hole’ visits, we had pre-arranged to have a meet up with them, at the half way point, in the coastal city of ‘Almeria’. Now Shazza and I had briefly made a stop there, back in our own more nomadic motor-homing days, but it was as I say only a brief visit comprising of two nights and one full day, although it had rained on that full day so we didn’t actually do very much exploring. It was where I purchased my first, and only, Spanish Guitar and so, by now, a few year’s later, you would think that I should be quite an accomplished self-taught master of the strings. The truth is, that it had ended up being one of those, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ purchases, and only very rarely does it see the light of day. Maybe I could purchase a second one on this upcoming visit, at least then the original one wouldn’t be sat all by itself, alone in the wardrobe 😂 I know, I do have a habit of thinking about doing certain things, whether it be playing my guitar, or perhaps finally getting around to doing some of those jobs on the list of DIY tasks, but I just tend to not quite get around to physically doing anything about most of them, some may consider me as ‘Lazy’, however, I prefer to just consider it as retaining my own ‘Freedom of Choice’ 🤭

We were in no rush to leave to head for Almeria, we couldn’t officially book into our selected hotel until 3pm, so we departed at 09:45am and enjoyed a leisurely drive along the coastal A7 route. Although it was sunny whilst sat in the car, the outside temperature showed a cool 14 degrees and we found ourselves having to turn on the heating, we had elected to travel in shorts which turned out to be not the wisest decision, it is so easy to fall into a false sense of security here as, whilst the afternoon temperatures during the Winter’s here may still be pleasantly warm, the morning and evening temperatures decline rapidly, but we had come prepared with long trouser’s and our thicker hoodies, we wouldn’t make the same mistake once there. We stopped briefly on route, at the small town of ‘Alda’, quite an anonymous little place nestled on the coastline amongst the ‘Sea of Plastic’. This part of Spain is the largest growers of Fruit and Vegetables and it supplies the majority of Europe, however, that involves having to contend with far from scenic views, as the hectares of ground covered with Poly tunnels extends for miles, literally as far as the eye can see and again, quite literally from the Beaches up into the Mountains high above us, no wonder this particular Province suffers during periods of drought, although it may also be one of the major contributors towards it 🤔 However, the sea still sparkled a very bright blue, and turquoise green, and the light shimmered gently on top of the near still water. The long exceptionally quiet motorway stretched for miles in front of us, the only stimulation for our eyes being the seemingly never ending row on row of orange and white traffic cones, I guess the quieter Winter season is the ideal time for the road re-surfacing or tunnels maintenance, the continual changes to the speed limit serving to make the journey appear even longer, going from 120Kph, to 100Kph, to 80Kph and even down as far as 60Kph, along almost the full length of our route, it was pointless even considering setting the cruise control option as the speed variations were that frequent.

There were no car parking facilities at our city centre hotel, which is not unusual, but they had an arrangement with a company who operated one of the numerous underground public parking facilities nearby, so we would get a discounted rate, fortunately it was only a couple of minutes walk from the hotel, or let’s say that it would have been, if we had checked the directions from the parking location 🤭 Not long after we had arrived, Debs text us to say that they had also arrived and checked into their room and so, without further ado, we agreed to just get straight out and commence exploring the city.

Like a lot of large Spanish Towns and Cities, there is an ‘Old Town’ and then the more modern areas, within an easy walking distance of each other, even so there was still a lot of re-modernisation going on, one area, just outside our hotel, on what had been a tree-lined road, was now being re-vamped into a large tree-lined pedestrianised area, there were already pre-existing modern retail stores on either sides. Just behind the hotel were the outskirts of the ‘Old Town’ with its narrow streets and alleyways, a Cathedral overlooking a Plaza, which had been temporarily roped off whilst they completed erecting the huge Christmas Lights and, behind that, up a hill was the ‘Alcazaba’ which I have to say, from the outside and stood right at the bottom of it, didn’t look overly impressive, compared to other’s we have visited previously that is. But we would withhold our opinion until we had taken a closer look the following day. That first afternoon we just generally sauntered in between both the old and new areas. After a short break back at the hotel we then went out again, we walked just the few minutes to the harbour, where the larger freight vessels and Balearic Passenger Ferries depart from, then we took a leisurely stroll along the very nice promenade before making our way back into the old town where we stopped for a pre-dinner aperitif (Vermut) before eating Dinner at an Italian Restaurant we just happened to stumble across. Shazza informed us that during that afternoon and evening, we had actually walked a distance of a little over 5 miles, so although we hadn’t given it much thought beforehand, we were still getting our daily exercise 😉

The following day we spent doing much the same, just sauntering around various parts of the city, although we did agree to go and take a more in depth look inside the Alcazaba and boy, what a great decision that turned out to be 🤗 Now it may take a lot to impress me these days when it comes to Castles, or Alcazaar’s, or even Alcazaba’s, however they choose to refer to them 🤷‍♂️ but if you start with the word ‘Free’ then it tends to grab my attention, especially when the Cathedral would have cost us €7 each, just for going inside and having the privilege of looking at all the gold they had amassed over the centuries, yes I still have my cynical view when it comes to certain aspects of religion, needless to say we kept our Euro’s in our pockets on that particular occasion.

It wasn’t a very long walk to get to the foot of the Alcazaba but it was very scenic, through the atmospheric narrow streets and alleys with small Cafe’s, Retail outlets and Restaurants, through impressive Plazas, some with fountains other with monuments, like the one above, the location of the Town Hall. It was a friendly local man who stopped to tell us where the entrance was to the Alcazaba, and who had also advised us that it would cost us nothing to go inside and look around, “Unless we wanted an Official Guide, then we would have to pay for one” he said, in perfect English. We agreed that it must have been Paul who made us stand out as tourists, him the only one choosing to wear shorts, it certainly couldn’t have had anything to do with myself or Debs taking zillions of photo’s of the external ramparts on our cameras 😂

It had not been obvious, from our lower observation point, just how many steps there were to climb to just get up to the entrance, but the whole area was well manicured, lovely colourful plants and flowers set amongst green lush tree’s and bushes.

With the sun now beating down upon us and with little protection afforded to us from any shade, we ventured up to the next level, then the next and the next 😲 This place was vast and their were areas that were still being excavated, this has to be one of the best that I have visited, not withstanding that it will take something extraordinarily special to top the Alhambra, although this one is by far the best, as far as value for money is concerned 😉

It was nice to eventually start the descent 🥵

Now as you can probably already imagine, for those with any sort of walking, or respiratory, impairment then this is probably not one that you should add to your visit itinerary however, for those with no such restrictions I would say that this is a ‘Must Do’ as it is well worth every Euro 😂 Upon reflection, we should probably have worn shorts and taken a bottle of water 🙄 But there was a lovely Cafe/Bar right at the foot of the Alcazaba. We wandered slowly back to the hotel, exploring other little nooks and crannies on the way. After a short ‘Siesta’ period we re-grouped and made our way to the ‘English Pier’, a historical bridge that used to take trains, filled with iron ore, to boats in the harbour, we watched the sun set, which was not as good as the sunset the previous evening but it was still nice to see it and to look back over the city landscape as day turned to dusk.

Paul had seen an Art Gallery shop that he wanted to visit so we strolled from the seafront back into the modern centre. With the ‘Siesta’ period over the shops were open once again, as were the vast array of Cafe’s and the evening Bars, the streets were busy with traffic and pedestrians, there was a busy but not rushed ambience about the place and with all the neon lights from the shop signage and display windows, the lights that lit up the Plazas and the street lamps we could have been in any city in the world. Unfortunately the Art Gallery was not open so we went to a nice music bar, not one that blasted out loud pop music but more modern soothing style ballads and we enjoyed another pre-dinner Vermut, well it would have been rude not to. We had pre-booked a table in an authentic Moroccan Restaurant in the back streets of the Old Town, so after finishing our drinks we sauntered towards it, passing through busy Plaza’s with their pavement Cafe/Bars and the older style buildings. As we passed one of the buildings I could see a light from one of the open arched basement windows and stood for a moment or two just observing a pottery class in progress.

We arrived a little early at the restaurant but the front door was open so we walked in, the family owner’s were sat around a table eating their own meal and the young male, who we had pre-booked the table with earlier that day, stood up and showed us to a table by the window. I apologised for arriving early and told him to go and finish his meal with his family as we were not in any hurry. The kitchen in the establishment was small and was located right next to the main internal dining room, from our table we could see right into it and so I watched as they hand-made and baked the flat breads which they served to us with a large plate of Humus. No alcoholic drinks were available but we were happy to sample a jug of their freshly made mint lemonade and then a jug of Orange/Lemon Lemonade, we were able to watch as one of the women peeled the fresh fruit. Initially we were the only customer’s and it was good to watch the two cooks, the elderly mother and her daughter work in total synchronisation with each other, and in such a small space, preparing each dish from scratch. As we finished each dish that had been served to us the two women looked across at the table, I signalled that it was delicious and they said ‘Thank You’ and put their hands to their heart, a sure sign that they wanted their customer’s to enjoy everything that they had prepared with their own hands, from the Flat Breads, Humus, Fresh bowl of Salad, Veal Kefta’s, Lamb Tajine, Jugs of Lemonade, and the Traditional ‘Arab Biscuits’ served with Mint Tea at the end.

It had been a long day and by the time we returned to the hotel at the end of the night, Shazza informed us that we had walked a little over 8 miles. We did not need to check-out of the hotel until 12pm but we did, although they did let us leave our bags in their luggage room whilst we had a final walk around the town. We visited the Central Market, where we also had breakfast, and then returned to the Art Gallery shop, which was open this time around and then, after a casual saunter in and out of a few shops we returned to the hotel to collect our bags. It had been a really good few days, first because we were able to once again meet up with Paul and Debs, we always meet up in different places dependent on where each of us are at the time, UK or Europe, who knows where the next venue will be 🤔 But it was also good to get to explore the wonderful city of Almeria for it truly has so much to see and do, no matter what time of year it is, and we felt completely safe wandering the streets, day and night, and without exception, everyone we met, or talked to, were so friendly so, if you ignore the ‘Sea of Plastic’ in getting there I certainly highly recommend a visit.

On our journey home we stopped at the ‘Mirimar’ shopping mall in Fuengirola, which was still about another hour’s drive from home, however, inside they have a ‘Holland & Barrat’ store that sells Shazza’s preferred flavour of herbal tea, the only shop in our area that sells it, so she got a stock to last her several months as it is not somewhere we go to very often. As it was getting quite late into the afternoon we decided to eat whilst we were there, a late lunch and early dinner sort of affair, so that once we were home, and after sorting ourselves out, we could then put our feet up and do absolutely nothing, apart from watch TV. I also suggested that we didn’t need an exercise walk the following day either, as we had plenty of credit on that score, thankfully Shazza agreed and so I was able to look forward to starting to draft, edit and then publish this ramble, which even by my own standards is, I confess, one heck of a read 😳 However, I hope that it was worth it and that you enjoyed it 😉

PS: Just in case any of you were wondering, no, I didn’t purchase another Spanish Guitar 😂

Until the next time……………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

We sauntered silently into the month of November and, although it was just another Saturday for Shazza and myself, in the religious calendar it was ‘All Saints Day’ which, here in Spain, meant that there would be religious gatherings at many of the Churches, both large and small, in every village and town. Although neither Shazza or myself are what you may consider ‘actively’ religious worshippers, meaning we rarely attend church on Sunday’s, but we had taken part in a service in the town church on one occasion a few year’s ago, more because we were just being nosey and joined the large crowd that had gathered outside and, due to the large numbers attending, the service was held outside. We stayed to watch the full service, along with the locals, expats and other tourist’s alike, although naturally, the service was all conducted in Spanish, but at the end the head priest, for their were three priests delivering the service on that particular day, and in perfect English, also thanked all of us non-Spanish members of the congregation for attending the service, a nice touch we thought. We have not attended one of these services since though, as from that first experience we knew how difficult it would then be afterwards to get a table at any one of our favourite Cafe/Bars 😂

What is notable here in Spain is that ‘All Saints Day’ is another opportunity for much social interaction and merriment although, this event is very much generally a family and close friends occasion, and not one that falls into the category of a ‘Fiesta’, so none of the usual ‘Pop-Up’ Bars and fairground attractions. It is primarily an occasion for all generations of a family to come together to break bread and drink wine, not just the sip of wine from the chalice and thin circular wafer taken during the ‘Mass Service’, but the more substantial offerings taken during lunch in the local restaurants. The church service, the one in the main town, is held late morning and finishes just before noon, allowing people to go for a stroll along the promenade, or to take their ‘Little Darlings’ to play in the parks and burn off some steam whilst the other’s sit, or stand, just generally chitter chattering between themselves before the start of the official Spanish lunch period at 2pm. The dress code for this event, well as usual there is none, although the older generation tend to dust off their best bib and tucker, because that is the way they were brought up to be dressed when they were children when attending a religious service, as for the more modern younger generation these days, well that is always a case of whatever they feel comfortable in really, more casual attire, for this is more about getting together as a family, rather than a fashion contest. Many of the ‘Spanish’ restaurants are pre-booked months in advance, so getting an available ad-hoc table is, generally speaking, very unlikely, although, this only applies to the local Spanish restaurants in the town itself, the Marina, being a mainly tourist enclave always have tables available in their wide choice of establishments.

We went for our usual morning walk and refreshment stop, as we got into the town and walked past the row on row of restaurants, the tables were being readied for the forthcoming on-rush of diners, their were numerous place settings with tables pushed together to accommodate the six, eight and even ten pre-booked groups with almost every table having ‘Reserved’ signs placed upon them. Now of course this just had to be a day when Shazza and I had elected to eat lunch out and, as always with us, this had been a spur of the moment decision and we had forgotten that it was ‘All Saints Day’ 🙄 However, we are always confident that we would find somewhere to eat and, if the worst did come to the worst, and we could not eat at a restaurant in town, then we would just saunter back to the Marina and find something there, it would be no big deal and it was actually en-route back to where we had parked the car anyway, so we were pretty confident that we would not end up having to return home starving 😉

As we walked through the back streets, where it was shaded from the direct heat of the sun we kind of got sidetracked, as we passed by another Plaza, which just so happened to be yet another location of another one of our favourite Cafe/Bars, well it would have been rude not to now, wouldn’t it 🙄 This one however was not on the seafront and so is always generally dominated by Spanish customer’s, rather than foreign tourists. We found a table located in the centre of the throng of people which was represented by all age groups, groups of women chitter chattering whilst their children played football in the centre of the Plaza, some of the older generation, yes even older than myself 😂 who nodded their silent greetings in our direction, we smiled and nodded back, as you do, and then their was a young couple, obviously a blossoming romance as they couldn’t take their eyes off each other and were continually leaning in towards each other and exchanging gentle kisses 😍 We were not the only people watcher’s out that day, as the people sat around on the other tables were nudging each other, looking in the direction of the young lovers and smiling, of course the young lovers were totally oblivious of the dozens of eyes focused in their direction. You could see the difference in the opinions of the onlookers, the women all smiling and planning this young couples wedding day celebrations, the men folks eyes told a different story as they whispered to their male counterparts, out of the hearing of their female companions, ‘Just wait until she snares you into putting a ring on her finger lad, then believe me, things will change in that department’, then the men chuckled and their female companions asked ‘What was so amusing’, stupidly, one must have revealed their thoughts and got a slap on the arm for doing so 😂

This is what we both enjoy about this lifestyle, which I guess we could enjoy anywhere when I think about it, weather permitting that is of course. But to feel the warmth of the sunshine, to have beautiful views that extend for miles, the sounds and the sights going on around us, the opportunity to enjoy very nearly twelve months of the year being able to get out for our walks if we so choose and not dominated by the weather or climate, but generally, we just enjoy the leisurely pace of life, being in no hurry to be anywhere in particular and coming to terms that actually, nobody else is either 🤷‍♂️ Except that is if your stomach is beginning to feel as if your throat has been cut, yes we were more than ready for lunch now and so we headed back towards the seafront. Like the Cafe/Bars, their are numerous restaurants but, funny old thing, Shazza and I have our favourites which we tend to stick to. We agreed that it would be nice to try and get a table at our favourite seafront Fish restaurant. At first it wasn’t looking very good as we saw the tables and their ‘Reserved’ signs, but the waiter came out to greet us, we know several of them just through our regular use of them, they know now that we are ‘locals’ and not ‘visitor’s, he cast his eyes around the outer terraced area and then smiled, he pointed towards a table for two, positioned nearer the back of the terrace but which still afforded nice views of the beach and sea, and of course the promenade, with all the essential ‘People Watching’ opportunities. We sat with our drinks, Shazza a glass of Cervesa sin Alcohol, (Alcohol free) and myself a small beer (with alcohol) and then later, during our meal, Shazza enjoyed a second beer and I opted for my more usual glass of Anti-Covid Vaccine, it would have been rude not to of course 😉 We selected dishes that we could both share, rather than individual plates, Fresh slices of Tomato coated with with finely chopped Garlic and Olive Oil, then bubbling hot, and slightly spicy, Prawn Piri-Piri with bread, Fried Pollock fillets in Tempura Batter and Half a portion of small squid in Tempura batter, each dish served separately making the whole dining experience much like the lifestyle, something to be enjoyed at a leisurely pace. The walk back to the car did enough to aid the digestion of our filling meal, followed by, once we returned home, the mandatory afternoon Spanish ‘Siesta’ 😴

The tranquil days that followed just blended into each other, although we have certainly started to feel the shift in the temperatures now, and whilst the sun may still be shining, the early morning temperatures are beginning to feel just that bit cooler, and again in the evenings, once the sun slips behind the mountains and darkness falls, which is now around 7pm. During the day’s we can still just about get away with going out on our walks, or doing the shopping, wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts but there have already been a couple of occasions when I have had to resort to wearing lightweight full length ‘Chinos’, and a lightweight hoodie top, mainly due to the chill factor that comes with the breeze, felt more so when sat having our cafe con leche’s but not so bad when we are moving and, as yet, we have not had to resort to digging out our heavier denim jeans which, hopefully, will not be required until we get towards the end of December and into January 🤞

Shazza and myself don’t tend to do very much forward planning anymore, well not unless we really have to that is, in fact these days when we are asked by friends or family what we are doing, we are more likely to respond with “We have no plans”, when asked about Holidays, Christmas or even what we are doing at the weekend or the following week, for these days we tend to just make each day up as we go along. Sure, we have got some regular routines like shopping and cleaning the apartment, but the actual days that we do them are not exactly enshrined in stone, and yes of course there are certain times in the year when we have to do ‘some’ important stuff within a certain set time period, annual tax returns, residency permit renewals, even car service and ITV testing, all that sort of stuff, but generally speaking my OCD Buddy has all of that in his calendar and gently pokes me in the ribs just prior to needing to focus when such events are due, but apart from that, basically these days, each day belongs to us to do with as we like 🤷‍♂️

Many year’s ago, when I used to look forward to being able to retire, I did wonder what retirement would look and feel like. I had spoken to former colleagues who had retired before me, some said that after the first six months of enjoying not having to be ruled by the alarm clock, and the daily routines of going to work, and after they had caught up with the long list of any outstanding DIY or Gardening jobs that had been on the back burner, that after that initial period of relaxation, they felt lost, they missed the social aspects of a working environment, and the comfort of having a specific daily routine. I already knew that no matter how many outstanding DIY jobs that there were on ‘my’ particular long list, that that list would just continue to get even bigger as I found myself with much more time available to avoid them 😂 Other’s though had loved it, finding more time to engage in personal hobbies, or finding new one’s, or spending time with family and grandchildren, going on more frequent travel trips to places both near and far, and being able to stay for longer if they so wished.

So, we actually retired ‘properly’ in October 2022 and so the question I guess is, how are we both finding our retirement ? It is a ‘real’ question and one that we actually have both discussed between ourselves and, to be completely honest with you, we can honestly say that it looks, and feels, pretty much a lot like we thought that it would, although at that earlier point in both our lives, when at least I was first thinking about it, we obviously did not know that we would be spending our retirement year’s in a totally different country to the one that we then called home. But, would our lives have been very much different if we had remained in the UK to live out our ‘Golden Year’s’ 🤔 Apart from the obvious Climate and Language differences, we pondered and deliberated over the question and we both came to a similar conclusion in the end, that everything would pretty much be the same. the only real unknown for us was in respect of the ‘Costs of Living’ in the UK, or put another way, how well could we manage back in the UK living a similar sort of lifestyle on our personal pension incomes, maybe one day, who knows, we will discover ourselves the answer to that particular question 🤷‍♂️ One factor that you cannot put a price on though is ‘Quality of Life’ and yes, we consider that we have a damn good quality of life here, but, and it is a big but, had we not have experienced life here in Spain, who is to say that we would not have had a similar quality of life in the UK, for surely it is what you do with your life that determines how enjoyable it is 🤔 Shazza and I quite often have these contemplative discussions between ourselves, and agree that it is easy to let media articles distort your views and images of things, and so we try to look beyond many of those, which are often biased in one direction or another, and they seem to just want to provoke a feeling of disgruntlement, unhappiness, insecurity or scaremongering to do with all facets of normal daily life and that I have to say, applies Globally, and not just to the UK. Just in case you are now wondering whether this is leading to us announcing a major upcoming change to our current lifestyle status, no we are not contemplating returning to the UK anytime in the near future, but it is always good to keep you options open, for you just never know what may be just around the corner, we have had a peek and cannot see anything just yet 🤭

Now where am I going with this I hear you ask ? Because usually when I start to ramble on about certain subjects in these blogs, there is generally a catalyst for doing so, although it can sometimes take me a while to get to the actual point 😁 Since publishing my last ramble and over a period of just a few days, I had read a number of media articles that gained my interest, enough to actually go past the headline and read the articles themselves.

The first was an article in the UK media, about a young British working couple, with two school aged children, who had recently returned from Spain, after choosing to live there permanently, but very quickly decided that they wanted to return to the UK. Of course I was interested to learn what they had discovered about ‘Living the Dream’ that hadn’t turned out that way 🤷‍♂️ They stated in the article that ‘It wasn’t the same actually living in Spain on a ‘permanent’ basis, to what it was like when they had been coming here, on numerous occasions, on their holidays’ 🙄 They had initially encountered issues associated with their residency application, or at least the husband had, and of course they encountered the slow, often illogical, Spanish Bureaucratic processes. Then they had an issue with their long term rental property and so purchased a Villa, with a pool, but then, after the purchase, discovered that they had major problems with that property, subsidence which required urgent, and very costly, remedial work. So I could sympathise with their plight, one thing on top of another, the worries of not being granted residency, problems with two properties, it was certainly not the perfect start to the dream and yes, we had been there as well at one point, and I had been ready to throw the towel in, but patience, a little bit of hard work on our apartment and also a lot more patience with Spanish Bureaucracy and it all payed off. But after reading the article I remember thinking, that one of the problems was in their own pre-conceived thoughts on what permanent life in Spain would look and feel like, based on their previous ‘holiday’ experiences. You certainly have a different sort of mindset when you are going somewhere for just a holiday, than you have when you are actually living permanently in a totally different country, or at least, in my personal opinion, you should have 🤷‍♂️ Even with the problems with their Villa, although they did not mention whether they had got it surveyed prior to purchase, which would have highlighted the issues, something that you would normally do in the UK before committing to such a large outlay of capital, but I think their problems may well have started before that point with the vision in their heads as opposed to reality 🤔 Shazza and I have lost count of how many places that we have been to over the year’s, either on a holiday, or during our motor-homing travels, and said at the time, “Wouldn’t it be nice to live here”, but then when we thought realistically about both the Pro’s and the Con’s then generally we had a different perspective on those places. Some of you who have been following my rambles for a very long time 🙏🙏🙏 may also remember that even coming to live here permanently in Spain, in the very property we actually live in now, was absolutely never on my own long-term radar, France would have been my first choice to be completely honest, but now just look where we are, and thoroughly enjoying it. So for me, being probably a bit judgemental, and of course probably not in possession of the full facts, only what the reporter had edited and included in the article, but it seems to me, on just reading the article, that perhaps this particular couple let their hearts rule their heads and that there was a lack of any real Prior Preparation and Planning. But all’s well that ends well, as the saying goes, they are now all settled back into UK life 👍

Then, quite coincidentally, within only a day or so of reading that first media article, I just happened to be scrolling through a selection of my Canal Narrowboat Vlogs on ‘You Tube’, and yes some of you will recall that back in 2013, before electing to go down the route of the Motorhome full-timing lifestyle, we had considered purchasing a Narrowboat and becoming full-time liveaboards on the British River and Canal systems. However, even now, some twelve year’s on, that is an ‘itch’ that Shazza and I still continue to have, but we agree that it is one that we will probably never end up ‘scratching’ as we continue to list both the ‘Advantages’ and ‘Disadvantages’ of such a lifestyle, especially now having to consider our growing seniority in years 😉 Anyway, the list of ‘Disadvantages’ now far outweighs the ‘Advantages’. So back to the point, our attention was attracted to not one of our favourite Narrowboat Vlogs but to one that had the title, “Why we gave up living full time on our Narrowboat”. I looked across at Shazza and said, ‘Let’s see if any of their reasons for giving up, are the same downsides that we had thought about”. Now this was not a retired couple but again, a youngish 30’s something we guessed, but on this occasion, they were a childless couple, who had selected the lifestyle, for many of the same reasons other youngster’s have taken this route e.g. unavailability of affordable housing, cost of living, mental health issues and because they could both work remotely etc. etc. But like many of the other’s they had also elected to publish weekly ‘Vlogs’ on ‘You Tube’ about their new adventures and, because Shazza and I are both becoming very judgemental, we also assumed that like many of those other’s, they had assumed that they could earn a reasonable income from their ‘Vlogging’. Don’t get me wrong, many have and still do earn a decent income, like the many that also publish a ‘Vlog’ about full-timing in their Motor-homes and also the Self- Sufficiency one’s, you know the one’s to which I refer, ‘I bought a cheap property and land in France and grow my own produce in, Portugal, Bulgaria etc. etc. etc.’ Don’t get me wrong, some of them are actually really interesting to watch, hearing both about their back stories and then watching their progress, we have many of them on our own list of ‘favourites’ that we have been following for several years, some even started out as Motor-homing nomads and have since diversified. Being of the old-school generation, we do also often wonder whether the ‘You Tube Channel’ is their only source of income, where do they go from there, if or when, that income starts to dry up 🤷‍♂️ My daughter of course tells me off, “Dad, they are young, they are living life and enjoying it, the future is the future and they will cross that bridge when they come to it” she says. Of course, she is absolutely correct, after all, although we were hardly youngster’s, there were quite a few people who thought we were insane to sell up our home and all our worldly possessions to go off and live full-time in a Motorhome and, although we were then debt free, there was very little left in the coffer’s if it had all gone wrong, but look at us now, Immigrant Pensioners stranded in a foreign country 😂 But there is much more to ‘Vlogging’ and Publishing than just speaking into a camera or showing nice scenery, it is time consuming, editing takes hour’s even days and their is no guarantee that you will get the subscriber’s to your particular channel when there are so many other’s out there doing exactly the same thing 🤷‍♂️ But at least this couple both had ‘proper’ jobs and so any additional income would just be a bonus 👍

However, from their viewing figures we could see that, if gaining any sort of reasonable income from it had been their motivation for starting ‘the channel’, then they were failing miserably. This of course was not one of the numerous reasons they said was responsible for them deciding to go in a different direction, without the Narrowboat I hasten to add. So some of the reasons they listed were, having no regular social life with ‘permanent’ neighbour’s or friends………. hang on a minute 🙄 It was they that had opted to become ‘full-time’ live aboard ‘Continuous Cruisers’, meaning that they had to move on from their ‘temporary’ moorings every fourteen days, rather than them electing to rent a permanent mooring in a Marina 🤷‍♂️ Then they complained that the constant movement was too transient 😲 but isn’t that the point of being ‘Continuous Cruisers’, the clue is surely in the wording on the type of licence they themselves had chosen 🤷‍♂️. Now the Narrowboat they had purchased for their particular adventures was 60ft long x 6’ 10” wide, pretty much the maximum length and width if you wish to cruise and explore the ‘full extent’ of the interlinked British Canal and River waterways system, however, they found that the space in their ‘Narrowboat’ was too restrictive, did they not go and look at it and thought about the space they would have, or needed, before purchasing it 🤷‍♂️ Then of course the quite important and extremely relevant matter of living in a steel tube on water in the extremely unpredictable British climate, generally with regular rainfall for at least 9 months of the year, meaning wet and muddy towpaths, and at least 3-4 months of Frost, Ice, Snow, Strong winds and freezing temperatures 😲 The list of complaints went on, not always being conveniently close enough to life’s essentials (Supermarkets, Club’s and Bars, Retail Outlets and other transport links) and so, with all of these things combined, they have said that, …………… yes wait for it, for you already know what is coming………….. it was now having a major impact on their ‘mental health’, which I believe is now one of the most common medical disorders of the younger generation 🙄 To be honest the list of their complaints just went on and on and on, even worse than some of my rambles, if that is indeed possible 😂 Of course we agreed with many of the issues that they had identified, especially the weather and seasonal stuff, but we had already said, that had we have chosen that lifestyle, over the Motor-homing one, then we would have prepared ourselves mentally for it, as for the lack of social interactions, well you know how anti-social Shazza and I are, so that aspect actually went into our ‘Advantages’ list 😂 Anyway, we only got half way through the half hour episode, then turned it off as listening to all the moans and groans was beginning to have an impact on our own ‘mental health’ 🤭

Shazza and I then got into a conversation, about both of these couples, the one’s returning to the UK from Spain and the Narrowboat one’s. How much real thought and actual research had either of them gone into, ‘before’ they decided to jump in at the deep end 🤷‍♂️ Now of course, we knew from our own Motor-homing adventures, that you cannot foresee every single pitfall, obstacle or disadvantage that you may encounter along a particular adventure, it wouldn’t be much of an adventure if there were no moments of ‘stress’ or if their were absolutely no ‘Unknowns’, but surely you should at least be aware of the more likely one’s that you would expect to encounter, before you did actually decide to take the plunge 🤷‍♂️ But yes I know, to be fair to them, perhaps it is possible that neither of them had an OCD Buddy that they can rely on to poke them in the ribs about stuff they need to at least think about 🤔 But of course, even in our earlier adventures, although I had planned everything to within an inch of our lives, we still encountered some of those unforeseen ‘Brown Trouser Moments’ 😂

So, fortunately, my equilibrium and mental health were to be restored, when I came across a much more positive article, not in a local Spanish media publication or on a ‘You Tube’ social media channel but in a European News Media Publication. A British woman, with a young family, had recently moved from London to Spain, and what had actually attracted my interest was not that it was a story from another Expat living somewhere else in Spain, but here, in our own local town of Sabinillas and, as I read the article further there were certain similarities with what I am continually rambling on about to you my reader’s 🤭

Now reading her account of the ‘Queues’, to be honest I hadn’t heard of this invisible system before, and yes, I had been frustrated several times when queuing, like the good patient Brit that I am, when someone would walk in and appear to push in front of everyone else. However, I had also personally experienced this invisible queuing system when I had gone into our Post Office, although I didn’t know about it at the time. Now it did have one of those ticket machines where you take a number and then wait for the board to tell you it was your turn, but on this occasion the number board was out of Sync with the ticket issuing machine, indicating that I had actually missed my turn even though I had just taken the next available ticket and so it just appeared to be a free for all 🤔 There was no formal queue, which is quite normal, unless you are at a checkout in a supermarket, and I looked around with a confused expression on my face trying to work out how many were in front of me and how many had come in after me 😲. Several people went up to the desk before me but then there was a pause, although there were still three or four people stood around waiting 🤷‍♂️ A woman pointed at me and then pointed towards the free space at the desk, it was my turn and, until just recently, on reading this article, I hadn’t understood what the hell had gone on during that visit to the Post Office. There are some things that language speaking tutorials just don’t teach you and you have to just learn either by experience of living here, or reading a useful and informative media article 😉

Needless to say, Shazza and I have not been up to anything much to tell you about, just enjoying ‘The Luxury Of Making Space For Life To Happen’ 😂

And In Other News……………

Sometimes, when I am perusing the media headlines there is a photo with a headline that just makes me chuckle……….

Until my next ramble……………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida es Buena

It was just another normal Saturday morning, I was sat on the balcony in the half light of the awakening day, just enjoying my usual first coffee of the morning. Shazza was still in her silent dream world and the outside world was still in its own semi-awakening state, it was quiet and so peaceful at this time of the day, apart from the very faint hum of the traffic noise passing along the coastal road at the bottom of the hill. The lower adjacent residential communities street lights were still lit offering a gentle glow and there was not even a whisper of a breeze, the outside world was a haven of stillness and calm, the heavy palm leaves lay limp and silent and strangely, even the birds were not yet awake, although I knew it would not be too long before their morning chitter chattering would commence. I cupped my hot mug of coffee in the palms of my hands and just stared out of the windows, mesmerised by the lights from the line of freighters gliding silently by on the horizon. The earth’s night curtains slowly began to open and the sun began to rise from the sea, announcing it’s arrival by very gradually turning the sky a burnt amber colour, fading to a more subtle shade of orange, contrasting with the light blue of the sky and the thin, almost translucent wispy white streaks of clouds, the vapour trails from the unseen aircraft thousand of miles above my head gradually evaporated into nothingness. The lights from the freighters disappeared leaving just the silhouette’s of the varying sized ships as they trundled slowly North and South along the skyline. Sat there in the silence it dawned on me (no pun intended) that this would probably be ‘The Last Sunrise’ that I would witness, well at least until the end of March next year, when we would once again adjust our clock’s to officially welcome back the Summertime, I cannot see me wanting to get up one hour earlier just to watch the dawning of yet another day, although I smiled to myself, at least I was lucky enough to still awaken each morning and welcome in yet another day.

It was only a few days later when I read about the passing of ‘Prunella Scales’, an actress probably best known for playing ‘Cybil’ in Fawlty Towers, although I remember her best for watching her, and her actor husband, Timothy West, on their Narrowboat Adventures. She was 93 years old and had been suffering with Vascular Dementia for the last 12 years, but that had not stopped her from continuing to live a full and active life. I read that she had passed away at her home, peacefully in her sleep and I remember thinking that, when my time eventually comes, that’s the way I would like to go 😴

Anyway, as I commence writing this current ramble, it is now very nearly the end of October, yet here we are still with our Summer duvet on the bed, I still awake, on most mornings, to find myself sleeping on top of it, and to an external temperature at 07:30am of 22 degrees(c), it certainly does not feel as though we have now officially just entered the meteorological period of ‘Winter’, especially when, just a day or so earlier we had encountered yet another sweltering 35 degrees(c) 🥵

Whilst this part of the Costa del Sol is of course known for its all year round sunshine, and mild winter’s, the current temperatures we are experiencing are way beyond what are considered normal, which, environmentally speaking, we should be very concerned about, but somehow I don’t think that the issues of Global Warming and Climate Change will be high on the list of priorities in the minds of those that still find themselves sat around the swimming pools, or on the beaches, or sat under the shades of the umbrellas at the numerous Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, enjoying a cold cervesa, or any other refreshingly cool Anti-Covid Vaccine of choice 🤭

Their were however, cooler temperatures forecast to arrive within the next fourteen days, although I often wonder how they can justify giving advance predictions that far in advance, when they cannot get it right over a twenty-four hour period 🤷‍♂️ However, once again they are also predicting some rain during that period, there are times when I really do wish they would actually get it right, we do need some rain, just to freshen things up a bit and, it does seem to be a little unfair that the North West and North Eastern parts of Spain have been getting more than their fair share recently, why can nature not distribute the wet stuff a little more equally 🤔 So, come on ‘Works of Fiction’, put some new batteries in Madam Zelda’s Crystal Ball that you purchased at the last ‘Medieval Fayre’ and try to make yet another rain ‘prediction’ one of the few correct forecasts 🙏

For the next couple of days the much more reliable ‘Forrest Gump’ weather prediction methodology had confirmed that shorts and tee-shirts were still the attire of the day, the ‘Terrel Wind’ had finally abated and the sea state was mill pond like, barely a ripple could be heard as we wandered along the promenade and into town, however, the sun in the cloudless azure blue sky still burnt the skin on our exposed arms and, as we walked at a more sedentary pace, we could feel the trickle of the beads of sweat running down our backs well before we managed to find sanctuary, in the shade of one of the sun umbrellas at Vanessa’s Cafe/Bar on the seafront. It had felt like more of a chore on that morning’s walk, but I felt a lot better as I sat enjoying my ‘Zumo de Naranja con hielo’ (Freshly squeezed orange juice with ice), it was still far too early for my dose of Anti-Covid Vaccine 🤭 Interestingly, in a country full of Oranges, it is the only Cafe/Bar that I have found along this stretch of promenade Cafe/Bars that actually serves ‘freshly squeezed’ orange juice, the rest just have the bottled variety, and with them, you can literally taste the spoonfuls of additional sugar that they contain. Shazza, when she is not partaking of her usual ‘Cafe con Leche’ opts for ‘Agua con Gas’ (Sparkling Water) as she did on this particular occasion. We sat admiring the usual views of the sea and mountains, that never gets boring, but their was a strange quietness about the place, even though it is now the ‘Half Term’ school holiday period, it only seems two minutes since they had gone back from their extended Summer Holidays, oh how time just flies 🤷‍♂️ However, we were left asking the question, ‘Donde esta todos el nino’s’ (Roughly translated as, ‘where were all the ‘Little Darlings’ 🤭) as they were conspicuous by their absence, perhaps the introduction of the new Entry Exit System (EES) had put people off from coming 🤷‍♂️ Personally speaking we were not complaining, for we still had the sunshine, we were able to take our walks and enjoy the same views, just with less noise, although their was a downside to this, as now there were less opportunities to fulfil our more usual pastime of ‘People Watching’, ‘Fashion Police’ or ‘Body Beautiful’ observations which meant that we had to engage in more conversations between ourselves 🙄

Recently one evening we entertained some of our neighbours, the English couple that own the property below us, they are not permanent residents here, they just come out from the UK several times a year to tend to ‘our’ lovely garden area just below our balcony, well okay it is legally their garden really, but the actual reality is that we tend to get to enjoy it more than they do, but without having to do any of the essential laborious garden maintenance 🤭 We sat on the balcony chatting, putting the world to rights, as you do, until gone 1:30am, way past Shazza’s usual bedtime but just about my own more normal bedtime. The balcony doors were wide open, as were the windows, it was warm and their was no breeze so we had lit two large round mosquito repellant candles, lit a citronella aroma scent stick and placed two battery operated UV lights on the floor near the open French windows. The bites on Shazza’s legs the following day confirmed the fact that the only one’s actually benefitting from all of these things, were the companies that produce these totally ineffective products, and of course the mosquito’s who must enjoy the pleasant aromas, and soft lighting, whilst they relax enjoying their scented Blood Spa sessions hosted by Shazza 😂 I am fortunate enough to not attract the interests of these small irritating insects so I remain bite free, but as Shazza was quick to point out, as she scratched away at several large red and painful looking blotches on both her legs and upper arms, that it came as no surprise to her that ‘I am obviously not to everyone’s taste’ 😲

We began to see, and feel, a change in the weather over the next few days, the temperatures dipped to the more normal anticipated at this time of year, varying anything from between 20-25 degrees(c), dependent on the cloud density, it was certainly beginning to feel much cooler now, especially with the sudden 10 degree(c) drop, although not yet cool enough to have to put the Winter duvet on the bed, or have to have the warm air heating on and of course, rather importantly, these grey cloudier days would only be temporary. We experienced some of the wet stuff, but to put it into some sort of perspective, one evening we had no more than a ‘sprinkling’ of light drizzle which was here one minute and gone the next 🤷‍♂️ The following day, the rain didn’t arrive until lunchtime, although the morning was grey and overcast, this time it was a much heavier downpour than the previous day, but nothing out of the ordinary and it lasted for the remainder of that day, and into the early evening but with outbreaks of hazy sunshine breaking through the brief respites throughout the day, natures weather patterns can be very strange at times but it makes for interesting viewing from my elevated observation post 🤷‍♂️ However, the sea remained an eerily flat calm and once again there was hardly a breath of wind, it was a slightly different story just across from us on the opposite coastline, the Western Atlantic side of Andalusia, in the Cadiz Province, and also through the Strait of Gibraltar, who, according to several ‘Works of Fiction’ weather maps, were currently being battered by storms. Although, whilst getting rain in this particular corner of Spain is somewhat of a rare occurrence, we should put it into some sort of perspective and be grateful that we are not further South in the world, near Jamaica, Cuba or the Bahamas, where ‘Hurricane Melissa’ is currently wreaking Havoc and claiming lives 😲

And In Other News……………………

Since my last ramble there has been some interesting stuff appearing in the local Spanish, and the wider European, mainstream media, some of which may impact on us personally and some which may not 🤔

One of the advantages of changing from a UK Driver’s Licence to a Spanish one was, in the UK my licence would have had to have be renewed when I reached the Age of 70 year’s and, if it was renewed, then it would only be valid for a further 3 year’s. When I exchanged my licence here in Spain it was automatically valid for 5 years, taking me two year’s over that 70 year old UK age limit, then, when it was time to renew it, after some basic health checks, it would be extended for a further 5 years. That however, may all be about to change 😲

Now although the next media headline refers to ‘Tourists’, it actually applies equally to all vehicle driver’s in Spain and not just Tourists. There has already been some push back to these, currently only ‘proposed’ new measures and you can I suppose understand why. 😲 You have to consider the type of climate and lifestyle here in Spain, the Spanish socialise a lot and tend to eat out, or go for a drink, with family and friends. Who doesn’t like a beer or glass of wine with dinner, or whilst sat chatting with friends in a Cafe/Bar, but, if these proposed new regulations do come into force, just one beer or glass of wine would put you over the legal limit to drive home, or even cycle 😲

Now a lot of businesses these days are beginning to NOT accept good old-fashioned cash to purchase things, from a simple cup of coffee, entry to Tourist Attractions, Payments of Bills etc. etc. but Governments are still insisting that we are not becoming a cashless society !! Enter the ‘Digital Euro’ 😲

Now let’s be honest, whether we like it or not, lots of things in our everyday lives are becoming digital, ‘Apple Pay’ on people’s iPhones is being used by millions all over the world, although Shazza and I still have not succumbed, but yes, on a good day we can see the advantages, because now the youngster’s don’t get mugged for their purse or wallet but for their mobile devices and even their digital all singing, all dancing, watch, yes a watch that these days doesn’t just tell you the time, but checks your vital health statistics, can be used as a mobile communications device, a calendar to remind you to buy that Birthday or Anniversary Card, It tracks its own whereabouts, it can be used as a ‘wallet’ to digitally store your bus, train or flight travel tickets and can be used to swipe across a machine to pay for fuel, groceries, and buy you a coffee and sandwich at Cafe’s or meals at Restaurants 😲 (In my day such things were called a VISA, MASTERCARD or AMEX 🤭) and now these devices also act as your wallet or purse and give access to your bank account for transfers. Just so that some of you do not think that we, the older dinosaur generation, get completely left behind in today’s society, we do still occasionally get mugged for our wallet’s and purses, but the perpetrator knows that they run the risk of getting hit very very hard with a hefty walking stick 😂 But seriously, what I do find hard to believe, is that there are lots of people actually complaining about the introduction of a digital ID Card 🤭 It’s time to break the bad news to some of them, ‘Big Brother Is Actually Already Watching You’ and you willingly invite them to do so by putting all of your private details and data into your convenient technological devices 🤷‍♂️

And, finally……………… (Thank god for that I hear you gasp 🤭)

Whilst this new digital travel stuff called EES is currently being rolled out right across Europe, not so fast on its heels as it happens, is the next phase, yes, as from 2027, you will also see the Introduction of ETIAS…………….

Isn’t life getting more and more interesting ? I was going to say exciting but thought that that would be stretching things just a little too far 🤭 I do feel a little sorry for the younger generation, but I guess they cannot miss what they never had, the freedom to travel without too many restraints, just flash the passport and smile at the stern faced official, the ability to just turn a dial to turn off the TV or Radio so you didn’t have to listen to all the doom and gloom, and it didn’t have the ability to listen in or track your shopping habits, to be able to pick up a telephone and speak directly with another human being instead of having to go through a list of ‘Options’, or to not have to speak with a piece of AI that cannot always decipher your accent so asks you to keep repeating yourself, a time when newspapers were purchased not for their content, but to be utilised as good fire starters in the grate, or as an alternative when you ran out of ‘Andrex’ in the toilet, when you could walk into your GP Surgery and not have to do battle with Rachel on Reception to get an appointment, or you could walk into your local bank and deposit or withdraw your own money. But now just look at how easy life is made for everybody, we haven’t half had it hard during our lifetime, these days everything is made so easy for folk, so looking back on it all I find myself asking, isn’t progress a wonderful thing 🤔 As my Grandfather used to say, “Eeh by gum lad, it’s a grand life if you don’t weaken”

Until my next ramble……………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida es Buena

I should have known better than to open my mouth 🤷‍♂️ In my last ramble I rather stupidly mentioned that we could just relax, as there was nothing official to be done, and additionally, no outstanding personal admin to complete, however, those ‘Dark Forces’ were listening weren’t they, perhaps I should just keep what I may be thinking to myself 🙄

Although I rarely read the UK ‘doom and gloom’ mainstream media these days, just perhaps some of the headlines but not the actual content, I do however tend to read more of the local stuff, mainly what’s happening here in Spain, but also ‘some’ headlines from what is happening in other mainland European countries. It is a good job really, for there was an article reminding foreign Immigrants (Expats) in Spain to re-register on ‘El Padron’, which is similar to the UK Council Nominal Roll, or a population census as it is known here in Spain. Now to be completely honest, we didn’t know that we had to re-register at certain periods, nobody had told us this when we first registered on ‘El Padron’ in June 2023. However, I did some on-line research after reading the article to see if it did actually apply to us, and of course, it did 😲 For those who are ‘Non-Eu residents’ and who, like ourselves, currently only hold ‘Temporary Residence Status’, then it seems that you have to re-register ‘every two years’, otherwise your residency status on the register may be cancelled 😳

Being registered on the ‘Padron’ is important because without being on it there are several ‘official’ services that you cannot gain access to e.g. Health Services, Driving Licences, or other associated renewal processes and, even simple thing’s like purchasing a car, not that we are thinking of changing it but these are some things that you wouldn’t normally think about. The first document they ever ask you for is, proof that you are registered on the “Empadriamento’ and this proof is via a ‘Certificate’ that has to be valid within three months of the product or service that you are attempting to gain access to. The most important aspect for us, at the moment, is that being on ‘El Padron’ is the official record of how long we have been officially resident here in Spain, as next year we need to renew our ‘Temporary Residency Permit’ for a further two year’s and then, at what will then be our 5 year point, in June 2028, we can finally start the application process to obtain our ‘Permanent Resident Permit’. However, if we do not re-register at the appropriate periods, and are subsequently taken off El Padron, then, when we come to apply for our ‘Permanent Residency Permit’, we would be unable to provide ‘Official’ proof that we have lived here for the required 5 ‘consecutive’ years 😲 Not being aware of this mandatory renewal process, until now, meant that we were already four months past that renewal date and so, as far as we knew, our proof of residency status may already have been removed from the register 😲

Our first hurdle in checking that status, and renewing it, was that it just happened to be the weekend of Spain’s ‘National Day’ celebrations, with a Public Holiday on the Monday, so of course all Government Offices were closed 🤷‍♂️ The next issue was discovering whether we had to drive up to ‘Manilva’, to the location of the official Town Hall, where we initially had to register on the Padron or, could we go to the ‘Foreign Residents Department’ at a smaller Town Hall Office building in our own local Town 🤔 In the end, we discovered that we didn’t re-register at either, a friendly official in the ‘Foreign Residents Department’ directed us to another Government Building in the town, only a five minute walk away. Once there, I explained to an extremely friendly non-English speaking lady, in my bestest ‘Espanyol’ of course, why we were there and asked for the appropriate form, thinking she would provide the form and tell us we needed to go away and complete it and then make an appointment to return to start the renewal process, or worst case scenario, our residency status had lapsed and we needed to start from scratch 😳 She asked for our current Spanish Residency Cards and then entered our details into her desktop computer, she asked us to wait for a moment and she disappeared into a back office. To be honest, at that point my heart sunk as I wondered whether she was going to consult with a Supervisor about our 4 month overdue re-registration 😳 However, when she returned from the ‘back office’ she had actually produced, and completed, the re-registration Forms on our behalf, which she just asked us to sign. She tapped away some more on her computer, then turned and smiled at us and announced, ‘Todos Completo’ (All Complete). She had not asked us to produce any of the supporting documentation that we had taken with us 🤷‍♂️

Once back outside of the Office I commented to Shazza at just how friendly and helpful the lady had been, and also how surprised I had been that she had not asked to see any of the supporting documentation. Shazza said, “Did you not recognise either of the two ladies in the Admin Office ?”, “Not really, why ?” I responded. She told me that they were both regular mid-morning customer’s at one of our favourite Cafe/Bars, usually sat on a table comprising of about six other ladies that we always passed pleasantries with. To be honest I still didn’t recognise her, I tend to just see a group of six to eight ladies sat around a table together and don’t really pay that much attention to them as individuals 🤷‍♂️ However, our experience that morning may perhaps justify that saying of, ‘It’s Not What You Know, But Who You Know’ 😉 Then again of course, it could just have been a total coincidence and that in truth, she was probably in fact just a very nice friendly and helpful lady 🤷‍♂️ Perhaps now though I will pay a little more attention to who I am speaking to and, perhaps, one morning buy them all a coffee, well you just never know where else some of them may work, perhaps in the local Police Station, or Immigration Office, or Driving Licence Office or local Health Centre 😂 All of which may be places with services that we will both need to access at some point in the future. However, one thing is for certain, I won’t miss the next ‘El Padron’ re-registration date, due in June 2027, as my OCD Buddy made sure that that is now already firmly marked in my diary and ‘Oh Yes’, just one other thing 🤔 “Up Your’s Dark Forces” 😂

Shazza’s mum had spent eleven full days with us and we took her back to Malaga Airport for her flight back home on the twelfth day. Prior to her arrival, we had agreed that as she had already seen most places in our area, right up the coastline into Malaga City, Up into the nearby mountains and she had also visited Gibraltar several times, so on this visit, apart from taking her back to any places that she particularly wanted to re-visit, we would just let her have days relaxing on the balcony in the sunshine, especially after her recent ‘Little Incident’, it is a nice part of the apartment where she could look out upon the views, read her book, or magazines or do her crosswords and sudoku, and of course take her frequent ‘Siestas’, something I think people of a certain age do naturally, whatever country they may be in 🤭

But that is not the way it actually turned out, for we were out every single day, mostly from late morning until the early afternoon, whilst the temperatures were a little cooler, if you could call 25 degrees(c) at 10:30am cool 😳 We had numerous morning coffees in a wide variety of Cafe/Bars, lunches out, the occasional dinners out on some evenings and lots of visits to places in the local area that she had already been to on her previous trips. She also provided us with ‘practical’ reminders of her liking for the taste of Spanish Cervesa, Vino Tinto, Tinto Verano, Sangria and the odd tipple of ‘Baileys’, she may need to enrol with ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ once she gets back home 😂 She also enjoyed the introduction and temporary membership to our ‘People Watching’, ‘Fashion Police’ and ‘Body Beautiful’ club, although we had to keep reminding her that this was supposed to be a discreet and silent activity, and not one intended to be vocalised to any ‘others’ in our immediate vicinity, especially those who were the subjects of our observations 😲 However, after apologising profusely on her behalf, numerous times, and stating that we were just returning her to the ‘Care Home’, we managed to escape without any abusive exchanges taking place 🤭 Perhaps we should have introduced her, and then left her, with the groups of older matriarches who regularly sit gossiping, and who certainly do not disguise who the victims of their observations are, often by pointing with their fingers, or a nod of their head in their direction, like a well aimed missile and when six or seven heads turn and stare in one particular direction it leaves little doubt as to who, or even what, is the focal point of their interest 😂 This, generally morning activity, is not just a privilege reserved for the older ‘female’ generation, for I have quite often observed the older men folk also doing this, sat at a Cafe, or more usually on a park bench, or low wall, smoking their cigarettes, or with the palms of their hands crossed, resting atop their walking sticks, their eyes flickering from one passing target to another, although I do have to say that they do tend to be a little more discreet than their female counterparts. I often observe them and think to myself that I would actually fit quite well into those male groups, only when my time arrives you understand, right now I would probably only be considered more of a young apprentice, learning how to hone those finely tuned skills 😂 But I have to say that I do actually enjoy watching these characters, male and female alike, a case of watching people, watching people, it has become a sort of natural progression and addition to my more usual ‘People Watching’ activities 😉

As well as visiting our more usual haunts, we also managed to find a couple of new sightseeing opportunities to visit, just to mix things up a little bit and by way of a change for Shazza and myself too. Around a one hour drive up the coast is the ‘Castello Monumento Colomares’ (Colomares Castle). Now this isn’t a typical castle fortress of any real military historic significance, those that I more generally like to explore, but it was constructed as a tribute to ‘Christopher Columbus’ and is a major tourist attraction in the neighbourhood, although to look at it, well let’s just say that it is probably more in keeping with something you would find at one of those Disney type Theme Parks.

It was not a sprawling area, perhaps summed up by the entrance fee which, for a tourist attraction was quite cheap really, €2 each for those of a more senior status (yes that did include myself 🙄), and €3 for younger adults, which came as some sort of amusement for Shazza for some reason 🤷‍♂️ Inside the grounds there was a small Cafe/Snack Bar and surprisingly, even that was quite cheap, nowhere near the usual touristy prices where you need a bank loan just to purchase a coffee.

We had selected the right morning to visit as there were very few other visitor’s, I have edited the photo’s above, so it actually looks empty, however it wasn’t. There is very little public parking nearby, which we were pre-warned about after reading ‘Reviews’ prior to our visit, so we ended up having to park up a very steep hill, Shazza’s mum did manage the walk down, albeit very slowly, as even the footpaths, which is hardly an accurate description of what we encountered, were more an accident waiting to happen, broken and raised paving slabs and Ill-fitting manhole covers, they don’t do public Health & Safety here, more a case of you being responsible yourself for avoiding the hazards. The alternative would have been to walk on the road, but with blind bends and speeding motorists the safer option were the poor footpaths. When we were finished at the castle, after about an hour, if that, we left her stood outside the castle entrance whilst Shazza and I walked back up the hill and retrieved the car, it would take the two of us to safely manoeuvre out of the tight parking space into the flow of fast moving traffic. We hoped that her mother had learnt the art of silent ‘People Watching’ in our absence 🙄 Fortunately there were no blue flashing lights when we got down to the castle (Police or Ambulance) so it seems that she had managed to behave herself and not cause a disturbance, I am not sure that I would have been prepared to have paid her bail to have got her released from custody 😂

Our next new location, not a million miles away from the Castle as it happened, was the ‘Mariposario’ (Butterfly Farm) which was housed in a very ornate Asian-style building, this however was a much more expensive visitor attraction 😳 Although we were able once again to park for ‘Free’, this time on the side of the road just a short and fairly level walk away.

In truth, personally I hadn’t expected to enjoy this place very much, with loads of different coloured, and sized, butterflies flapping around or landing on my head. However, I was quite pleasantly surprised, it was more like walking into an enchanted very humid tropical woodland, with water features and walkways and even an upper viewing platform. In the main the vast assortment of species just flew around keeping their distance, although one did decide to settle on my arm for a few seconds. Although some of the photographs (below), and I have kept them to a minimum, do not show it, their were dozens on dozens of butterflies just constantly flitting around, far too fast moving for my camera to catch them in flight, so I had to settle for those that were stationery on leaves, or on the feeding stations.

The exit led into, and through, the more usual mandatory gift shop and, to be honest, I was very nearly tempted to purchase one or two large butterfly themed ceramic wall ornaments, I thought that they would have made a colourful edition to the already resident multicoloured decorative wall vases, and the large colourful ‘Salamander’, that are already in situ on our balcony walls. However, a rather forceful tug on my arm from Shazza indicated that she thought otherwise ☹️ There was a sympathetic smile from the lady at the till counter as I passed, I did the Spanish thing, held my arms out to the side, moved the palms of my hands in an upward direction and shrugged my soldiers. It could of course have been a lot more embarrassing if Shazza had reverted to her former teacher’s method of displeasure and discipline, by grabbing the lobe of my ear and frog marching me outside 😂

We actually thought that Shazza’s mum had done quite well over the duration of her visit, coping with the constantly high temperatures, as there was just no let up whatsoever, with afternoon temperatures regularly reaching between 30-35 degrees(c). The ‘Works of Fiction’ being their usual inaccurate selves, forecasting ‘Maximums’ of ‘up’ to 30 degrees(c) and occasionally promising rain, that of course never actually materialised, unless you happened to be in more Northerly parts of the Country where they have again recently experienced severe flooding as a consequence of ‘Storm Alice’, which once again automatically started the ‘jukebox’ in my brain to start playing that 1976 pop hit by ‘Smokey’ entitled ‘Living Next Door To Alice’ 😆 Just by the way of one of those useless bits of pop trivia, the song was actually originally recorded in 1972, by an Australian band called ‘New World’, so you see, these rambles can also occasionally be quite informative and educational at times 😂

Although Shazza and I do enjoy our own company for most of the year, we do also enjoy having the occasional visits by family and friends, we are not completely anti-social 🤭 However, after nearly a fortnight, we were once again ready for our own space and to get back into our more normal routines, after being out every single day we agreed that for the next couple of days we would be happy to become complete ‘couch potatoes’, it wasn’t as if we hadn’t done any exercise walks, just not at our usual pace although their was a distinct advantage too, the partaking of ‘daily’ Anti-Covid Vaccines, and often more than just once a day😂

In Other News…………………….

Of course, one of the biggest news stories over the last week or so has been about the introduction, in the Schengen Areas of Europe, of the new Entry Exit System (EES) and how that process has effected Non-EU traveller’s. Now it depends on which News Media Publication you read as to their version of events on whether its implementation has been successful or otherwise 😉

So there you go, no chaos in Spain according to the Interior Minister, that is of course as long as you do not mention the Spanish Island of ‘Tenerife’ 🤭 But it has not been such plain sailing elsewhere it would appear and, the reason there have been no problems in other Spanish airports, well perhaps that is because they only implemented it, initially, on a very early morning flight into Madrid but have not yet started implementing them at some of the much larger airports, it will be interesting to see how Malaga for example, with its 20 million annual tourists passing through its gates each year, gets on 🤔

So I guess only those ‘Third Country Nationals’ actually travelling through Airports, within Europe, will know the actual truth of the matter but, as with any new system I guess, to be fair, their are always going to be some teething problems. Considering that the actual introduction of the EES/ETIAS system has been delayed in it’s inception for the last two year’s, it is probably considered a success, well by some, now that it is actually operational 🤔 But do not get too comfortable just yet, as it would seem that their is even more ‘Bureaucracy’ for travellers still to come, not only for you, but also for those of us that live here in Europe 😲

Now to be completely honest, this next stage of bureaucracy is actually not new at all, it has in fact been an official requirement in most areas of the ‘Schengen Zone’ for very many years, but it is not something that has been ‘routinely’ enforced, but with the introduction of the new EES/ETIAS systems, and the issues with Immigration, you can be assured that it will be the next thing to be more strictly enforced.

Now the formality below ‘Only’ applies to those visitor’s who are staying with ‘Private’ hosts and does not effect those staying in Hotels, so by way of an example, any guests coming to stay with us will mean that ‘we’, Shazza and I, will have to obtain, prior to their visit, a ‘Carta de Invitación’, which will cost us around €70 ‘per visitor’, we then send that ‘Certificate’ to our visitor(s), who must produce it at the point of Immigration, along with their Passport and proof of some other formalities e.g. Health Insurance, Return Travel Ticket and Funds available during the period of the visit 😲 So let me just stress again that this is NOT a new requirement, just one, that until recently, has not been ‘routinely’ enforced but, it would appear from recent media articles, that some European countries are now becoming more pro-active with enforcing these procedural requirements.

Now, just because I made a brief mention above to ‘Immigation’, and also, in one of my more recent rambles, I also mentioned how both Portugal and Spain were introducing tighter Immigration protocols which, I am certain is happening elsewhere too, but I also just recently saw this article……………..

Also coming soon, for us here in Spain, is the new legal requirement to carry ‘Emergency Warning Beacons’ in our cars from 1st January 2026. ‘Ditch the Triangle’, well actually don’t ditch the triangle, for this new Law is only currently a requirement here in Spain, so if you travel across European Borders you will, for now at least, still need to put out your warning triangles if you break down along a road.

Yes, like the good law abiding citizens that we are, we have already purchased our’s and are ready to go 😁 However, it would have been helpful if they could have also provided a list of what other ‘European’ countries are part of these new ‘Traffic Agreements’ because, for those that are not included, then we will obviously still need to carry our warning triangles to remain road legal in those countries 🤷‍♂️ I can actually see the good road safety reasons for this new device, if the system works that is and, the monitoring stations do not get overwhelmed, but could this also be a surreptitious way of the Spanish Authorities creating more employment opportunities 🤔 You can see now for yourselves just how my cynical nature still remains pretty active 😂 Not that increasing employment is actually to be considered as a bad thing here in Spain.

So, what else is changing here in Spain 🤔 Actually it is not just here in Spain and again, this is actually not anything new, as we have been doing it every year for god knows how long 🤷‍♂️ For yes, from the early hours of Sunday morning, 26th October, many of us will be putting our time-pieces back by one hour, it means that it will be lighter in the mornings, but darker earlier in the evenings.

But it would seem that here in Spain the agreement to continue to comply with both the ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ time changes expires in 2026, after that, who knows 🤷‍♂️ From a purely personal, and extremely selfish perspective, let’s change the clocks back to Summertime in Spring of 2026 and then, stop any further clock changes, that way it will be light in the morning just as I am having my first cup of coffee on the balcony, but it will remain lighter for longer in the evenings, when I am still admiring the sea views, all the boats and yes okay, I admit it, when I am still able to conduct some ‘People Watching’ 😂

Sometimes I just wish that certain things in our every day lives would just stay the same, I mean why can those in a position of authority not just apply the common sense reasoning of, ‘If It Isn’t Broken, Don’t Try To Fix It’ 🤷‍♂️ In my personal experience, things tend to get worse when you do try to fix them, just ask Shazza about my home DIY projects 😂

Until my next ramble…………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

‘Live life one day at a time’ is one of those sayings that is quite common in many different countries and in many different languages, ‘Vive la vida un día a la vez’ is how the Spanish say it, usually with a slight tilt of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. Well that is exactly what Shazza and I have been doing since we came to live here permanently, although the ‘Living’ part is open to quite a wide interpretation, our’s has been at a generally much more ‘sedentary’ pace, well it has since we got back from our road trip, although some of that is mainly due to the extreme heat of recent day’s, for we have spent several days doing nothing, going nowhere in particular and not even doing our normal walks, on a regular daily basis, and neither of us feel one little bit guilty about it 😲 On some days though, we had to literally force ourselves to go out beyond our front door, and only then because we were running short of fresh fruit and vegetables and Shazza needed to go to the ‘Fruiteria’ in town, but even then, instead of parking in our usual place in the village and walking in to the town, we felt that lethargic that we drove into the town and parked close to all the amenities, and so it was a very much shorter walk. Of course, being in town and so close to our four favourite Cafe/Bars, we had to stop for a coffee at one of them, to do some people watching, well it would have been rude not to after coming all this way, ten minutes in the car 😂 We tend to vary the Cafe/Bars that we stop at, which are all small family owned one’s, as it means that we can keep in touch with the individual owner’s and engage in conversations with them, just casual chit chat really, but many of them, although speaking good English, always commence in Spanish, and they help us to improve our ‘street’ Spanish conversational abilities, which is much more useful and practical for everyday conversations, as opposed to the more formal Spanish that is taught on-line, or in books. Whereas, if we go into the Marina we are always, without exception, spoken to in English, with some of the ‘foreign’ employed waiting staff struggling themselves with even basic Spanish terminology 🤷‍♂️ Whilst we prefer to use the Spanish establishments in the town, we do still use certain restaurants in the Marina, but only because there is a much wider variety of cuisine.

We were both currently in a nice period of relaxation, no official business needed to be dealt with, no personal administrative business to deal with, it was just complete calm and tranquility, and we intended to make the most of each and every minute of it. Of course normal daily life was still going on around us, shops were open with the steady flow of shoppers continuously in and out of them, the traffic on the streets was just as busy as it usually was. Back at home, I sat in the sauna like conditions on the balcony for as long as I could bare it, watching the cars as they passed underneath our windows, the dog walkers and the now familiar sounds coming from the building site close by, where they were still constructing a new block of apartments, although thankfully, we will not be able to see it even when it is finally completed. Shazza did not join me on the balcony, she preferred to be in the cool air conditioned and subdued light of the cave like conditions of the sitting room, but overall, whether in town or on the balcony we just generally enjoyed sitting and watching the daily life of other’s, as if they were performers in a play in which we were the audience and not a part of the action, just observing the varying scenes being played out before our eye’s.

As I have mentioned more than once in these rambles, one of Shazza’s regular statements is that “Age is just a number” and for me, well that number is just about to increase by one again. I guess that I should be thankful that at least their are some events in this life that I actually can rely on, come rain or shine, and of course, whilst I do still manage to continue to draw breath 😂 For at least I can be confident that this annual event will happen, on the same date, in the same month, each and every year, a bit like Christmas and New Year’s Day, events which don’t need to be marked on a Calendar for me to remember when they will happen 😉 Other annual events, like Easter, can of course both change dates and month in which they occur.

I had sat and thought about ‘Shazza’s’ statement, age may just be a number, but as that number increases, no matter how fit and well you may feel internally, their can be some very noticeable external changes to one’s physical appearance, the increase in the number of ‘laughter lines’ carved into one’s facial features, I do so prefer that particular terminology rather than the word ‘Wrinkles’, although other’s refer to them as an individuals life’s road map 🤭 The other obvious change of feature is the colour of one’s hair, although in that particular area I do have a distinct advantage, for I have had grey coloured hair for more years than I care to remember, in fact I have had it so long that I may even have been born with it, although childhood photographs would tend to disprove that theory, even so, the fact of the matter is, if their are an extra one or two ‘silver threads’ on each of my annual personal number changes, then in my case they are already discreetly camouflaged amongst the hoards of existing one’s, so for me, those additional ones are unnoticeable and so, perhaps that is why I am able to retain my youthful appearance, provided that I stand in front of the mirror that has the more youthful facial picture of ‘Tom Cruise’ stuck on it, at head height of course 😂

Now, if I am correct, it was the 21st September when the local news media reminded us that, on that particular day in question, it was the ‘official’ meteorological last day of Summer, and that we were now entering into the Autumn season. Now that started me thinking about all of the four seasons in a year and how we don’t actually really experience those same quite obvious seasonal changes, well not here in this part of Spain, as some other places do, because unlike a lot of those other places, we actually tend to spend all of the four ‘Seasons In The Sun’, it is only the gradually reducing heat of the sunshine, combined with increasing density of any cloud and the decreasing number of daylight hours, that tend to make any noticeable difference down in our particular neck of the woods.

Well that was it, the word association with ‘Seasons In The Sun’ started instantaneously, I have no control over it whatsoever and so, within seconds of those words entering my thoughts, the musical juke-box in my brain had selected the appropriate song and started to play it, of course, those of you of a similar age group to myself, will already know the song to which I refer, the 1974 hit song by Terry Jacks……….

🎶 Goodbye to you my trusted friend, We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten, Together we’ve climbed hills and trees, Learned of love and ABC’s, Skinned our hearts and skinned our knees……….🎶

Although, when it came to the chorus, I did plagiarise it a little bit, as I am quite often prone to do with some songs, but again it is something that I have no control over, it is like an instant automatic response, often to Shazza’s annoyance, especially when it is one of her favourite tunes, and so the original chorus of that song has now been subtly amended to…………………..

🎶 We have joy, We have fun, We spend four seasons in the sun 🎶

Now for those of you reading this, who perhaps also remember that particular song and tune, I wouldn’t be surprised one little bit if your own personal juke-box in your brain hasn’t already started playing it in your heads, but don’t bother trying to fight the urge to sing it, as unlike the more modern physical music players, in your brain there is no off switch 🤭

The funny thing was, several minutes later Shazza was in the kitchen doing something and I could hear her singing the chorus, I popped my head around the door and said “Catchy little number isn’t it ?”, she laughed, “I can’t get the damned tune out of my head now but, am I singing the original words or your revised version ?” I thought about my answer, well for perhaps a nano-second, “No you are singing the original one’s” I replied 😳🤭 She will never know the truth unless someone tells her, I thought to myself 🤔 “If you are reading this Dougie, about that video call we were going to have……….😲” and “Debs, Shazza has had her Facebook account compromised, best you send any messages through me and I will pass them on to her” 🤭

Anyway, back to the subject of the change of season. The usual seasonal changes are ‘generally’, in most places, observed by a change in weather patterns and temperatures, but also visibly, by the change in the landscape scenery. The changing of the colour of the leaves on the trees, or a few early mornings where the first signs of a frost appear and the much cooler air starts to nip at exposed skin, until the Autumnal sunshine brings some welcome warmth on your face.

And totally by coincidence, during the weekend that I began to cobble together this ‘draft’ ramble, these two headlines below, appeared in one of our local media news publications.

Knowing the usual dismal accuracy record of our ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts and reports, we just scoffed at it, but this time we really shouldn’t have done, as the ‘30c or more’ statement proved to be correct 😲 On the Saturday the mercury hit a little under the 36 degrees(c) mark 🥵🥵 although it was a little cooler the following day, at only 33 degrees(c), but those extremely high temperatures, even for this part of the Costa del Sol, in October, are unusual, and were not helped by the accompanying hot ‘Terel’ wind.

As has been a common practice for us during the Summer months, we were finding that we were still even now having to sit, both day and night, with all the doors, windows and outer security shutters closed and the Air Con running. However, we had elected to go out for a morning exercise walk, and along our more usual route, the mercury at that time showing just 23 degrees(c), so it was a more normal sort of temperature for Autumn in these parts, but what a mistake that decision proved to be 😲🥵 By the time we reached the town, the clear blue sky and hot sun, with the accompanying ‘Terel’ wind had rapidly increased the temperature to 30 degrees(c). We made two stops in town, at our usual Cafe/Bars, whereas more usually we would just make the one stop for refreshments, then we just sauntered back towards the Marina, where we quite spontaneously decided to eat lunch out at our favourite Moroccan Cafe/Bar, but this also served as a much appreciated bit of respite from the increasing heat of the day. By the time we had returned home the mercury was showing 33 degrees(c), and it still wasn’t the hottest part of the day 🥵 At least inside, the Air-Con kept us cool, although with the outer shutters closed it still felt as if we were living in a cave, but it was far too hot to go into the much brighter balcony. We both commented on how this, the first week into October, was supposed to be Autumn, when the more usual afternoon temperatures should have been a lot cooler at around the 26-27 degree mark and starting to cool, little by little, each and every week. But are these unusual temperatures for this time of the year due to climate change, or is it just a seasonal quirk, which can occasionally happen 🤷‍♂️

Now as far as Shazza’s mum is concerned, she cannot tolerate such hot temperatures, which is why she chooses to visit us at this time of year, so, had she arrived on the day she should have done, she would have been in for a not so pleasant first weekend. However, on the day she was due to depart the UK she met with an unfortunate accident, and literally just minutes before leaving her home to be driven to the Airport by one of her son’s, but instead, he had to take her to the A&E Department at her local hospital, where she had to have two staples inserted to a head wound she suffered when she fell over. Fortunately though it was nothing too serious and she was given the clearance to fly. She did however, due to her fall and hospital visit, miss her flight and she asked Shazza to re-organise another as soon as possible, even suggesting the next day 😲 However, unbeknown to her mum, we agreed that because it was a head wound, and we were concerned about her age and the ‘potential’ for delayed after effects, we agreed that it would be best to delay her arrival for 72 hours. Shazza kept in touch with her each day and she appeared, from the telephone conversations, and updates from other members of her family who went to visit her at home, to be perfectly fit and well, and she was still eager to commence her travels.

We collected her from Malaga Airport three days later where, fortunately, it was a more overcast day and only 25 degrees(c). She of course gave us the full chapter and verse about her ‘little incident’, as she referred to it, on the journey home from the airport, also informing us that the doctor had given her the ‘tool’ for one of us to remove the staples after ten days 😳

On that first evening, after dinner, Shazza and her mum were watching TV and I was sat on the balcony, when we saw the reflection on our walls of blue flashing lights, we looked out and saw two fire engines go past and then, at the top of the road, they turned right, in the direction of the entrance to our residential complex. Was it a wildfire on an area of scrubland across the road from us ? Was it a house or car fire ? Shazza went through to the kitchen and from those windows she could see the flashing lights and they looked as if they were in our communal car parking area, so of course, she sent me to investigate. As I approached the parking area I could see the firemen at the rear of a car, it had white smoke emanating from the boot. A small group of other residents had already arrived, some with their phones, video recording the incident, for their Facebook or Instagram accounts no doubt 🙄 I stood next to ‘Daniel’, who is one of our Spanish neighbours who lives below, and just to the right of us, only then did I realise that it was actually his car that had the smoke coming out from it. Neither Daniel, or Stephanie his partner, can speak one word of English but, in my limited Spanish, I established that he suspected the issue was with a battery in the boot of the vehicle. We watched as the fireman forcibly, but cautiously, opened the boot and then sprayed foam into it before rushing backwards as thicker plumes of white smoke filled the night air, the stench coming from it indicated that it was almost certainly an electrical issue, much like a burning clutch has its own unique smell. The firefighter’s gave warnings for onlookers to stand well back, for whilst there were no flames there was still a potential risk of a battery explosion. At first, I had not seen Stephanie, as she had been stood a little further away, but she looked across and saw me talking to Daniel, she waved and then walked towards me, tears were streaming down her face and she put her head on my shoulder and sobbed. I was a little taken aback, as I didn’t know her that well, but I guess she was still in a bit of shock, so I gave her a gentle hug and in my bestest Spanish whispered in her ear, ‘Al menos estás a salvo’ (At least you are safe). I asked her where her young daughter was and she told me that she was safe, with her mum. I didn’t ask any question’s about what had happened, there would be time enough for that in a few days time, or more likely when one of the other neighbours posted it on our community social media platform 🤷‍♂️ There was nothing else that I could do, and to be honest all I had really wanted to establish at the time was whether their was any immediate danger to ourselves, or our car. So I didn’t want to just stand there ‘rubber necking’, the fire brigade had it under control so, I said to them both, that if they needed any help, to be driven anywhere in the morning, to do shopping, collect their daughter from school, or whatever, then they should just knock on my door and I would be more than happy to help. They said thank you and I left, and of course reported back to the eagerly awaiting Shazza and her mum and imparted the information.

We have known Stephanie, and her previous partner, since they arrived here, which was a few months after we ourselves took up permanent residency here, although ‘Daniel’ is a more recent man on the scene 😉 but both of them are very nice and, although they do not speak English, we have always spoken whenever we see each other, brief casual conversations over the balcony, when they are out on their lower patio garden, but also on the occasional times we pass each other in the car park. These social interactions, with our close neighbours, as well as those that we have with the Spanish Cafe/Bar owners and staff, and even with some of the regular customers we have come to recognise, all serve to make us feel a part of our local community. Of course we also have other Spanish, English, Dutch, German, Swedish, Russian and Romanian neighbours within our small residential community, who we may not see on a daily basis, but when we do, we always pass the usual neighbourly pleasantries between each other. It is a good multi-National mixed community and although there is the usual influx of tourists, of all nationalities, who rent some properties, mainly during the Summer months for short periods at a time, you soon get to know your fellow ‘permanent’ residents who, for now at least, do still make up the much larger majority of the community. So although I cannot say that living in Spain is perfect, as I may have already mentioned once or twice in previous rambles, as there are some ‘Irritations’ and ‘Frustrations’ of living here in Spain, which to be totally honest is primarily all related to the official ‘Bureurocracy’, but this ‘Officialdom’ applies to everyone, even the Spanish themselves, so if they have to accept and live with it, then of course, so must we, well as long as we are able to do so, for their are political undercurrents that may soon change our ability to do so 😲

Reading this news, in a European News Media publication, rather than a dedicated Spanish one, of course has started to ring some alarm bells for us for our long term plans for, under our current Retirement Visa (Non-Lucrative Visa), we are not permitted to work anyway, even if we wanted to, although we could do voluntary work. As for the language, well we are already making reasonable headway with that particular element, although I do wonder how they will be able to confirm the ‘speaking with your neighbours’ aspect 🤷‍♂️ However, it appears that ‘Spain’ is not the only country tightening up on the ability for ‘Legal Immigrants’ to move to another country permanently.

The same of course could potentially happen in the UK if the ‘Reform Party’ were to win the next General Election, it appears that as a consequence of the ‘Illegal Migration’ problem that has arisen around the world, let alone just in Europe, some more ‘Right Wing’ and anti-immigration Political Parties, believe that the only way to resolve the issue is to swing the axe at ‘all’ Immigrants, Legal or otherwise 🤷‍♂️ As I have said very many times in these rambles, and personally speaking, ‘I am not going to worry about something that I have no control or influence over’, so when, or even if, Spain does introduce such a policy then that is when we will deal with it, for now it is just a debate between the existing Government coalition of parties 🤷‍♂️ Both Shazza and I agree that, if the Spanish Authorities decide that we do not merit enough points and they no longer permit us to continue to live in this country, then so be it, we will, albeit reluctantly, return to the UK, or maybe consider elsewhere, although, at our ages, I doubt that we would go through all of that Expense and Bureaucracy again elsewhere. That is why, since selling up our UK home and all our worldly possessions when, at that time we decided to live a more nomadic lifestyle in our motor home, I always used to keep a few options open, ‘in my back pocket’ as I often used to refer to them, well I do still have one or two in my back pocket even now, for you can never be certain what the future may have in store for you 😉 At the end of the day, Life is really just one big adventure, with perhaps some obstacles thrown in your path along your particular journey, obstacles that ordinarily you would prefer not to have to encounter, but even so, you still have choices 🤔 Turn back, overcome the obstacles or change direction. As many of my reader’s will already know, Shazza and I have changed directions several times in our adventures. However, quite often, if you prepare in advance for an obstacle that you perceive may arise, very often it doesn’t 😉 We are fairly confident that nothing will change by the time we come to renew our residency permits in June next year, they will then be valid for another two year’s until 2028. That is the point when our next renewal would have extended our residency for a further five year’s, so if the new points policy system is incorporated, it is at that point where it then ‘may’ impact on us. This gives us another two and a half years to improve our Spanish further, stay involved in our local community, and perhaps we could even volunteer a couple of days a month to join in with the local beach litter picking club, at least then we could still keep wearing our flip-flops 😂

Until the next ramble………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Of course, I cannot lie, yes it was nice to be home once again, there is actually something quite comforting about having familiar things around you, and I do not not just mean the usual personal things inside our home, but also the familiar scenery and the familiar noises from the outside world too, the things that we take for granted, and yes, I guess even the usual daily routines that bring the normality to our lives and combine to just make us feel comfortable. It is a bit funny when I think about it now, for it wasn’t really all that long ago when we used to enjoy the adventure of just living in our motor-home, and enjoying being somewhere new every few days, but then I guess that even then, we were actually living in what was our permanent home, with our familiar things around us, the only things that changed were the scenery and the noises and that was one of the great advantages. Covid I think changed our, and a lot of other people’s perspective, because life certainly became more difficult then, living on the road on a full-time basis. Everyday essential facilities became harder to access as Motorhome Aires and Campsites closed down, limiting where you could obtain drinking water and empty Grey & Black water tanks, or get access to Hook-Ups on cloudy days, when the Solar Panels where not getting enough energy and movement was restricted, so charging the batteries was a challenge. Although conversely, it certainly had its advantages too, like being able to find somewhere isolated to park up and wild camp was easier, as the authorities were otherwise engaged on policing the Covid rules for people in villages, towns and cities and not Motor-homers in wild-camping locations. It was easier and safer parking away from potentially infected people, yet still being able to drive to Supermarkets to stock up on provisions, or to drive to fuel stations to top up on both diesel and LPG, as long as you took sensible precautions. It was certainly a life that, at that time in our lives suited us, especially myself, and my OCD Buddy of course, as forward planning and researching for re-provisioning, re-fuelling and park-ups became an almost daily ‘essential’ requirement, funny old thing but I do still miss those nomadic days at times, but obviously not the one’s through the Covid period.

Once we had returned home from this recent road trip, it had actually taken us a good couple of days to get ourselves sorted again, catching up with the mail that had arrived, you know the old fashioned sort that gets delivered through one’s mailbox, as well as all the other stuff that mounts up electronically, I hadn’t paid too much heed to it whilst we were away, in fact, other than researching stuff that we needed for the actual trip, I managed to stay off my electronic gadgets, iPad and iPhone, for the most part and it was actually quite nice, I actually believe that I could live off grid without all of today’s communication technology, although the world is such these days that you cannot do without some of it, the Governments ensure they still can keep tabs on you if and when they need to, using paper money is becoming less and less, everything moving towards electronic payments, paperless bills, official and social communications, I cannot remember the last time I actually wrote a handwritten letter, these days it is either Email’s or Texts on various Social Media Apps, so the question is, can anyone ever really live ‘under the radar’ these days 🤷‍♂️ You need a passport to travel to other countries, you need a photo ID Card to obtain a Driver’s Licence, Banks are closing physical branches, so you need a Digital card to withdraw cash, and you need a Bank Account to receive payments, and so it goes on. Not that we want, or have a need to live under the radar you understand, but the fact of the matter is that we no longer have that choice 🤷‍♂️ Oops, I feel myself digressing again 🤭

It is another part of the year when a couple of annual payments now require renewals, things like the additional medical cover we took out last year, more as a convenience than a necessity, as we are both fully covered by the Spanish State Healthcare system, but this additional cover provides for Home Doctor visits, if we are too ill to physically go to our healthcare centre in town, where it appears that even here in Spain, getting appointments to see a doctor can now take up to a couple of weeks these days 😲 Not that we have needed to, personally speaking, but we hear about it from some of our neighbours who have. The additional medical cover we have taken out also provides for the cost of an Ambulance to hospital, if ever we should need one, for here in Spain, apart from life threatening emergencies, and unlike the UK, if you call for an ambulance here, you have to pay for it. Perhaps the UK should consider implementing a similar policy, it would free up the availability of ambulances for those that actually really need one 🤔 However, back to the renewal and, surprisingly, there was absolutely no increase in the premium from the previous year, now there’s a rarity I thought to myself. It was also nearly time to renew the Car Insurance and again, I was surprised to receive the quote that showed just a relatively small increase in the premium from last year, only €25 (£21) 👍 So I set to, and got both those things sorted, in the knowledge that another round of annual renewals was finished, and will not re-commence again, on its next annual cycle for various things, for another seven months. So the next post-trip task was to check that the bank account balances corresponded with my own personally maintained manual record of accounts as, when we have been away, we generally use a combination of Bank Debit Cards and cash, although, in truth I am usually pretty meticulous with keeping records of our finances, but I still feel the need to check the ‘official’ bank accounts just in case I have inadvertently forgotten something that I put on my card, rather than payed for in cash, some places now it is ‘Card Only Payments’, like paying entrance fees to tourist attractions. Now I could suggest that this constant need for me to double-check is an age related thing, but actually it isn’t, for me and my OCD Buddy have always done this. As for Shazza, well she had her own post-holiday list of things to do, primarily all the laundry, we actually hadn’t done any during our trip away, even though we had said that we would do it whilst we were on the road, if required, but it wasn’t, she had taken enough knickers to see her through, and of course that is what hotel bathrooms come in handy for and, as they had all provided drying lines on the balconies, it would have been rude of us not to make use of these services 😂 Then of course she stood and did all of the subsequent ironing. Then of course there was the normal ‘weekly’ shopping to do, yes including the visit to the local ‘fruiteria’, who actually stock items that the Supermarket generally doesn’t, and from that bit of information you will gather that yes, it was back to the more healthier dietary regime, having both discovered that we had put on a few extra pounds whilst we were away, which to be honest didn’t really come as any surprise to either of us 🙄 So we were really just doing all of the normal pretty mundane sort of stuff that I guess all of us have to do, when we get back from any sort of extended absence from home, but it can be time consuming and in truth, we would much rather have been doing ‘other’ things, or just doing nothing at all, I mean come on, it’s tiring being on holiday isn’t it and we needed a rest 🤭

One evening, a couple of days after we had got ourselves sorted and back into the swing of our normal routines, we went for a walk along the seafront, just to get some fresh air really and not for exercise purposes on this occasion, as we had done plenty of walking on our trip. It was fairly quiet now in the evenings, as far as the number of people are concerned, just the odd handful who, like ourselves, appeared to be sauntering, or ‘promenading’ as they refer to it in a lot of Mediterranean Countries. We were enjoying the stillness of the warm evening air, for their was barely a breeze, the relative calmness of the mill pond like sea helped, as the water gently rippled up onto the shoreline and overall, we were just savouring the sheer peacefulness of it all. Well it had been peaceful, until we reached the Marina, with its bright multi-coloured neon light’s where some of the bars were competing with each for who could play the loudest music, albeit most had little clientele now the bulk of the Summer tourists had disappeared, unlike further North where tourist season was still in full swing. So we were pleased to get around to the other side of the promenade, where normal service to our eardrums was restored.

Spanish people we find are generally polite and friendly, and like any Country, there are always the few exceptions and although you don’t know these people personally, there is still a polite acknowledgement of each other as you pass, sometimes it is just a nod of the head, a smile, or the more usual ‘Tardes’, which is generally used after 2pm in the afternoon, so it can be used to say both ‘Afternoon’ and Evening’ 🤷‍♂️ the more formal form of address at that time of the day is, ‘Buena’s Tardes’ (Good Evening) but the word ‘Buenas’ is generally dropped in casual conversation. We paused and had a coffee at one of our usual seafront Cafe/Bars in the town, where we got the question as to where had we been because they hadn’t seen us recently, and yes, it was Coffee and not Anti-Covid Vaccine on this occasion, as I confess that I ‘may’ have over indulged during our trip, as if there was any ‘may’ about it 😂 We sat silently, just listening to the chitter chatter around us, the Spanish like to come out of an evening, to sit and have coffee, or a beer or glass of wine and tapas, so it gave us the opportunity to do some people watching, as you do, it would be rude not to, and we also sat watching the freighters on the horizon, as they were rapidly becoming just silhouettes in the fading light. The wide expanse of beach in front of us was completely empty, no last minute sun worshippers, fishermen, dog walkers or joggers and their were no leisure craft on the water, it was just a picture of complete serenity and we could physically feel our bodies beginning to relax, enjoying the moment. It was a bit strange really when I thought about it afterwards, for although we were relaxed when we were away, somehow we just feel that little bit more relaxed now, probably because we knew that we no longer had any long distances to drive, or to look for the next place to visit or search for accommodations, we were back at home now, in our more familiar surroundings and we would decide what, if anything, we were going to do tomorrow, when tomorrow arrived.

We sauntered back towards the Marina, and then on to where we had parked the car, recounting some of the highlights of our recent trip away whilst doing so. When we arrived at the area that we often refer to as ‘Our Beach’ we stopped and looked back, over the sea and the mountains. The evening sky was just about to bring its night blanket of clouds over the land, but we still had the blue sky above them and could see the tint of orange of the fading sun as it reflected off the top of those clouds, there would be a colourful sunset that evening. We spoke no words for those few moments but just stood, absorbing the calm and silent scene before our eyes, then we both broke our silence and agreed on just how lucky we felt to be able to live in a place like this, and for probably the umpteenth time, said how good it felt to be home.

Shazza was first to break the silence, “Do you think we are just getting old and now just like the security of routines and familiar things around us ?” she said, although it was probably intended to be more of a comment than an actual question, I shrugged my shoulders, “I don’t think it has anything to do with getting old, in fact, I don’t actually feel old, do you ?”, she took a few seconds before answering, then said, “Sometimes”, in a thoughtful sort of way. Her answer came as a bit of a surprise to me, for after all, she is the one who is generally always saying that “Age is just a number”, and ‘How fit and healthy we both are with no medical conditions’ so we ended up in conversation as to why she felt that way, “I am noticing a few more wrinkles, I now cannot watch the TV without my glasses and, I cannot read labels when I am shopping, without putting my glasses on”, I smiled before answering, “Well I guess that must mean that you are about getting ready for me to send you off to the knacker’s yard then”, I dodged her elbow aimed towards my ribs. “But in all seriousness, Do you feel unwell ? Are you worried about any aspects of your health that you are not telling me about ? Do you feel physically unfit ?” I fired the whole barrage of question’s at her in one go, knowing that her answer would reflect that, in fact, and in all reality, she is in perfectly good health. We have always been very open with each other on such things, so I knew that she would have told me if she had any major health concerns, or had felt unwell, ‘she’ is the one that certainly sticks to a much more healthy diet, as opposed to myself who strays off it more regularly, and we both exercise on an almost daily basis. She gave the anticipated one word answer that I had anticipated, ‘No’ she said, almost defensively. The thought did enter my mind though, perhaps she has developed an allergy to ‘road trips’, for I recalled that she had taken ill during our last extended road trip. I did wonder whether she is becoming more of a ‘home bird’ now, or are these two things just a coincidence 🤔

I put my arm around her shoulder, “Well there you go then and, I haven’t noticed any extra wrinkles, well at least not since last week, can you point the new one’s out to me” then I laughed before saying to her, “Neither of us are immortal, yes we are getting older, that’s just a fact of life, but I for one certainly don’t intend going anywhere soon and I hope your not either, we still have a lot of sunrises and sunsets to see yet my love”. She squeezed my hand gently, I knew that she had just been having ‘a moment’, we all have them from time to time, and I am sure the time will come when I may have one myself at some point 🤭 although, at this particular moment, I do have to say that I feel perfectly content with my life. “Come on, I will race you to the car” I said, and before you my reader’s ask the question, of course I won 😂

Now as you know, or at least the majority of my regular readers will know, I have often referred to the word ‘Fate’ in my rambles, and had done so in one of my recent rambles in relation to our road trip, believing, at the time, that it had once again been responsible for re-directing us from our ‘intended’ direction North, and instead took us in a Southerly direction, and then West into the mountains, where we enjoyed a wonderful few days. But, as a consequence of that change of direction we continued our journey South. However, once back at home, I read the local Spanish papers and it made me wonder, ‘Had Fate Come To Our Rescue Yet Again’ ? Although not in the manner, or for the reason, that I had initially believed that it had 🤔

The main area that we had been touring in had primarily been in the ‘Valencia’ region and, at one point, before ‘Fate’ had intervened, we were intending to head a little further North West, into the city of ‘Teruel’, where we intended to spend at least three full days sightseeing and, on one of those days, we had intended to catch a train for a one day sightseeing trip to the nearby city of ‘Zaragoza’, which was about another one hour North of Teruel. However, had we have done so, during that time period, it would have put us into the ‘forecasted’ weekend of the severe weather alerts, which, at the time, we knew nothing about, but fortunately, the intervention of our invisible and silent friend, had meant that we continued to head South, then ultimately elected to return home a little earlier than originally planned and had therefore already left the areas, ‘Just Before The Weather Bomb Struck’. The town of ‘Manzanares’, the last location we had stopped in, was actually in the ‘Castilla-La Mancha’ area, and our route back, once again took us close to the Murcia Region, and of course back into our own Region of Andalucia, all of which were areas ‘forecasted’ to be hit by this severe weather system. What is it they say, about the difference between when good and bad things can sometimes happen 🤔 “It’s all about the timing” is the phrase I believe 😉

However, without getting too over dramatic about this, and I am sure you all know by now how indecisive Shazza and I both are at times, we can change our minds and directions at a moments notice, well it is extremely likely that, had we have elected to have remained on the road, for that extra ten or twelve days that were available to us, we may also have ended up being ‘nowhere’ near any of those areas, even possibly further South West, on the border between Spain and Portugal, or even over the border itself and into Southern Portugal, as I say, you just never know with the two of us 🤷‍♂️ But as it was, it had been a lucky escape by all reports, we were already at home when the storm’s hit those areas, some quite badly, fortunately it did not reach as far South as our location and, for the rest of that first week back at home, in our neck of the woods at least, there was not one storm cloud or spot of rain in sight, although there was some ‘forecasted’ to arrive over the following week, but we will continue to rely on our own ‘Forrest Gump’ method of weather forecasting for the foreseeable future 😉

Now, one thing that me and my OCD Buddy were interested in, once we had got settled back at home, was just gaining a few facts and figures about or recent trip, just out of general interest really, so for those who may also be interested I list them below, for those who are not, then just scroll past 😉

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The duration of the road trip was 12 days

We travelled a total distance of 1,850 Km (1,150 miles), that was from leaving home to returning home. In that time we did 5 separate journeys, the longest journey in one day being 278 miles, the shortest being 82 miles.

We spent €180 (£156) on Diesel

We spent €1,170 (£1,017) on 4* and 3* Accommodations (one of which included ‘Full Board’)

We travelled in, and through, 4 ‘Regions’ and 8 ‘Provinces’

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From the conversations between Shazza and myself, both during our recent trip and again on the journey home, where Shazza suddenly started to wax lyrical about exploring more of our own Region on future road trips, me, and my OCD Buddy of course, were curious to discover some information more specific to our own region and we wasted no time in doing a little more in depth research on what Andalusia has to offer. So please forgive me if I have already told you some of this before, although I don’t believe that I have gone into as much depth before, even for my own benefit. Of course, I did know that Andalusia comprises of 8 different Provinces and that it basically covers the whole of the Southern part of the Spanish mainland, right down to the ‘Straight of Gibraltar’, across to the Atlantic Coast on the West where it borders Southern Portugal, and across on the Mediterranean Coast right up to where it reaches the Regional Border of Murcia on the Eastern side, and then, up to the North where it borders two Regions, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. I know that I have mentioned this before but, Andalusia is actually the second largest Region in Spain.

So maps are all well and good, but what about what is actually in these eight Provinces, things to do, or places to visit that would be of particular interest to both Shazza and myself and which would satisfy both our individual, and joint interests. We acknowledge that some locations may be close enough to do in just a day trip, as many parts of the Atlantic coast, on the opposite side to where we live, are within easy reach, just over a one hour’s drive but, others in the Northern part of the Region could take a bit longer, a 3-4 hour drive, where we can then do extended mini-breaks of maybe two or three days, or even beyond that, if we were to include several places and areas in a round robin sort of trip, but these would be locations and places that we have not already visited, which would rule out most of the major Cities and Towns in Andalusia, as we have done most of them already. We could perhaps even base ourselves somewhere for several days, where we could then mix some village/town sightseeing with a bit of hiking. As I started to research the opportunities I began to realise just how much there was for us to do and, yes I have to confess that the two of us, me and my OCD Buddy, did start to get a little excited at all the opportunities available, but it was probably just a little too soon to share this excitement with Shazza 😉

In our previous explorations in and around our immediate area, it had nearly always been Shazza that had planned surprise day’s out, and as you may recall, always with the starting gambit of “What do you want to do today ?”, but in reality it was never a real question in which I had a choice, for she knew exactly what we would be doing on that particular day. She appears to have lost a lot of that enthusiasm these days, so I have now taken over the mantle of advance planning such adventures and boy, do I have a lot of research ahead of me, as the Region of Andalusia has :

Over 270 Castles, 39 Lighthouses, 30 Embalces (Reservoirs), 3 National Parks, 24 Natural Parks, 28 Nature Reserves and 5 Mountain Ranges. There is no exact official count of how many Waterfalls exist in Andalusia, but travel resources mention at least 20 ‘beautiful’ one’s in the region, so I am guessing there will be more, which these ‘travel resources’ do not consider as beautiful 🤭 The same applies to Natural Hot Springs, where again the travel resources mention at least 10. I didn’t bother researching how many Hiking Trails, as we already have several hiking trail books, and a couple of dedicated walking trail ‘Apps’, so we know that there are literally hundreds, some of which are graded as Easy, some Moderate and other’s that we certainly wouldn’t even consider doing ourselves, we are not stupid and know our limitations, so we will let the much younger, so called ‘Influencers’, risk life and limb to grab those scenic photo’s 😂

So now, having taken the blinkers off, I am discovering that there really is so much to see and do here in our own Region, that I had not actually realised and, a lot of it is virtually right on our very own doorstep 🤗 Of course, this does not mean that we will not fancy a change of scenery from time to time, either within other Regions and Provinces of Spain, but Portugal in all reality is only a hop, skip and jump away, around four hours to the Southern part of the ‘Algarve’, probably even quicker if ‘Luis Hamilton’ is in the driving seat 🤭 and although we did some of Portugals Western and Southern Atlantic coastline, in our former Motor-Home travel days, there is still so many areas we have yet to explore. Then of course there is the rest of Europe, so perhaps there is still time to convince Shazza to ditch the car and invest in yet another ‘home on wheels’ 🤔 Now what’s that saying about trying to move mountains ? To be completely realistic though, for Shazza these days, a 4* or 3* Hotel with all the luxuries, against a Chemical Cassette Toilet and Limited Water usage, yeah, you are probably right, you don’t have a hope in hell of convincing her Eric my boy 😂

So whilst I continue to surreptitiously get ready for our next adventure, Shazza is putting her time to much better practical use, preparing menu’s for our next family visitor, her mum, who will be arriving within the next few days and staying with us for two weeks, and she most definitely will not eat our more usual ‘Plant Based’ meal options 🤭 So Shazza has set about planning meals to suit her catering requirements. Then, just before Christmas, my Sister and Brother-in-Law arrive from Australia, to stay with us for 3-4 days, this will be their first visit to us here in Spain, they are on their own wider travels around different parts of Europe, primarily visiting their own children and grandchildren, who have now also elected to live in Europe. So I guess I still have a bit of time to continue with my research into our own ‘future adventures’ and then put my own question to Shazza of, “What do you want to do today” 😉

We had been out for our usual morning walk, on this occasion opting to have a late breakfast, it was much cooler with a temperature of only 21 degrees(c), which was actually very nice in the Westerly breeze. Later, I was sat on our balcony, looking out over an unusually grey coloured and unsettled sea, and grey, rain threatening clouds above, which the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecasted would deposit their wet cargo later that evening, and continue throughout the night and all day the following day, and I have to say that ‘Forrest Gump’ was tending to show signs of agreement, but then the occasional patch of blue sky and glimpse of sunshine appeared, reflecting that it hadn’t quite made up its mind what it wanted to do 🤔 However, after a very prolonged period of searingly hot weather over the last few months, any rain would actually be more than welcome. The wind had started to pick up and whistled at me through the French windows and, as the afternoon wore on, the clouds thickened, the arrival of the wet stuff was looking more likely. I found myself having a moment of reflection, which is quite different to a moment of personal contemplation 🤭 I found myself thinking about the last nine months, and what is still to come over the last three of this year. We would have had four sets of different family visitors come and stay with us, we ourselves have had a month’s trip away, at the beginning of the year, the majority of it spent back in the UK visiting family, and meeting up with friends, and we have just completed our recent two week road trip here in Spain. We have had a new water boiler fitted, and had a complete re-build and renovation of our en-suite bathroom and finally, we have now got our UK Tax situation sorted, he says with fingers crossed, and importantly, received our refund of taxes which they, the UK Tax Authorities (HMRC) had taken, which they shouldn’t have done. So, all in all, it has actually been quite a busy and quite a productive period. I think that we will both be quite happy now to have a much quieter last three months of the year although, we can never be completely off our guard, as we never know when those ‘Dark Forces’ will rear their ugly heads once more 🙄

So, I am not sure what I will find to ramble about in the next few weeks, although you can rest assured that I will almost certainly find something 😂

So, until that next ramble…………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

We were both a little sad to be leaving the very small mountain town of ‘Montenajos’, yes I suppose we could have squeezed in an extra day here, where we could have payed to visit the Thermal Baths, and perhaps booked another one of the evening tourist train trips, as they did three different routes, dependent on which day you selected to go, but we had already seen everything else that there was to see, so remaining for another full day, and paying for a dip in a hot bath when both the swimming pool and the river were warm enough, and another three and a half hour evening tourist train tour, albeit to a different set of villages in the lush green mountains, just didn’t really seem to make any sense and, as we had already started heading in a Southerly direction, neither did it seem logical to head North again, so we agreed that we would just continue to keep going in a general South-Westerly direction and search for another inland location.

Shazza had, somewhat surprisingly, volunteered to choose the next location on this occasion, which would also involve locating, and booking, the respective accommodation, well I suppose it did take a little bit of the pressure, and frustration of finding somewhere to stay, off me and my OCD Buddy for a change. However, we all know by now, don’t we ? That when Shazza ‘volunteers’ to do these things, and seemingly out of the blue, it very rarely is. So I already knew with some certainty that at some point over these last few days, probably whilst I had been otherwise distracted with other urgent matters, like having a period of personal contemplation 😴 she had already been looking and, I was guessing, with some confidence, that she would have already selected both our next location and the accommodation 😉

Shazza had identified the town of ‘Manzanares’, and surprise surprise it had another nice ‘Parador Hotel’ with pool, she had enjoyed the first one that we had stayed at in ‘Lorca’, although at that one we hadn’t used their pool facilities. The other reason, and in truth, probably the main one, was that it had a ‘Manchego Cheese’ museum, with of course the mandatory attached and associated cheese and wine shop. Shazza’s Achilles heel is her love of cheese, although these days she tends to stick to Goat’s cheese, Feta or Mozzarella, but if they had anything else that took her fancy I think the temptation would have been too strong for her to resist, I already knew which area of the shop I would be paying more interest in of course, and believe me it would have nothing to do with ‘Curds and Whey’ 🤭

However, the drive to ‘Manzanares’ would be back to doing yet another longish journey and at 9:15am, when we departed the hotel, the temperature was already 26 degrees(c), and it would continue to rise as we returned back to sea level, with temperatures forecast to once again reach 36 degrees(c), before we even reached our destination, so we were once again very pleased that we at least could rely on our good air-con system in the car, and once again, allowing for stops, it would end up being another relatively long travel day of around 5 hour’s.

We left Montanejos via a different route to the one we had arrived in on so, on the outward journey we still had similar terrific Mountain View’s, but this time through a slightly different scenic area. It didn’t seem to take us as long to get off the very good mountain roads and onto our first Motorway, only around half an hour, and that one took us back towards the coast and towards the city of Valencia, although we would skirt around that on the A7, as we had visited Valencia on a previous road trip we decided not to stop there again this time, so we continued on and then started heading inland again on the A3.

This particular motorway was absolutely chaotic, this being the main fastest route from Valencia towards Madrid, there were Big Trucks with additional trailers on the back, known as ‘Wagon & Drag’, normal single trailer trucks and then the smaller HGV’s, these trucks were carrying everything from Livestock, Fuel, Fruit & Veg, Building Materials, Beer and Wines, well just all the usual sort of cargo really that you see being hauled around the roads in most other countries too, nothing out of the ordinary but just a lot of it. Then there were the Tourist Coaches, fleets of them, confirming that in these parts the holidays season was far from being over, and they didn’t hang about either ducking and diving in and out of lanes to get past the slower moving HGV’s. Then of course there were the usual array of both Caravans and Motorhomes, we were interested in looking at the differing number plates, which identify their country of origin, but the largest majority were actually from within Spain, although there was also a large number from France, Germany and the Netherlands, with no more than the odd one or two that we saw from the UK, Belgium and Italy. Of course there were the usual vast array of Transit type Delivery Vans, rushing to collect, or deliver, their cargo’s of whatever 🤷‍♂️ But far the greatest number of vehicles were the Cars, with of course the usual ‘Get out of my way I’m in a hurry’ brigade, then the ‘I don’t care if I am going too slow, I’m doing the speed limit so I am not moving out of the outside lane to let anyone else pass’ and, of course the ever increasing number of ‘I don’t have time to turn on my indicator, you should know that I am going to pull out in front of you’ 🤷‍♂️ However, then, as if we needed anything else adding into this mix, the Sat Nav gave us a verbal warning that there was standing traffic ahead of us, the screen reflected a roadworks symbol and a solid ‘red’ line, rather than the usual ‘Blue’ or sometimes ‘Yellow’ for slow moving traffic. Not that any of the vehicles in front of us could have had any such modern road traffic information systems built in to their vehicles, otherwise they would not have had to violently slam on their brakes at the last possible minute, when three lanes suddenly became one, although their had also been a fair number of roadside visual warnings of this beforehand but they were probably answering, or making, phone calls on their mobile phones to notice them 😲

This was the first time that we have encountered these kind of lengthy roadworks on a Spanish Motorway, one’s that involved us being virtually at a stand-still, this one lasted for close on 15 minutes, oh well, that was a less than desirable first, on this, or indeed any other, road trip that we have done here in Spain 🤷‍♂️ However, we were in no hurry so we just sat patiently in the queue until we saw the three lanes open up again, it wasn’t as if we could have done anything else, there was nowhere else to go, but when we saw the ‘All Clear’ sign we moved over into the middle lane, we couldn’t get into the inside for all the trucks, we waited for all the formula one racing drivers to sling shot past us, in a hurry to die it seemed at the speed they were going, even though my own little Luis Hamilton was herself already doing close to the maximum permissible speed limit of 120Km (74mph), but they all soon became just a speck in the distance and then the traffic started to thin out a little bit.

At the risk of upsetting any other of my Spanish reader’s, I do have to say that the landscape along a lot of this part of the route that we were on, was very flat, and very boring, the earth a parched rusty red colour for miles and miles, although some of it was dispersed with neatly planted straight rows of Olive Groves along with several miles of grapevines, which did add a little more colour to the proceedings, confirming that the farmer’s irrigation systems were doing their job.

We were grateful when we left this A3 route, leaving the hoards of vehicles to continue their journey towards Madrid, whereas we now started heading South West, on the very much quieter, and much more scenic AP36, where we took the first opportunity we could to stop for a coffee, and comfort break, and also to take the opportunity to change driving positions. Shazza had done the first, and what had turned out to be the more chaotic leg of this journey, well I guess some you win, and other’s you don’t, but in reality we had both lost out on this second part of the journey, for on this second stage, where I was now doing the driving, it turned out to be the much more scenic part, with hills and greenery in abundance, but you know what that meant of course, with Shazza in the passenger seat, exactamundo, no photo’s 🤷‍♂️ Although in all honesty, I guess one virtually traffic free motorway, and mountains with perhaps the odd church, castle or white finca on it, must tend to look just like the last one, well to you my reader’s at least.

I was a little surprised when we arrived at the hotel, for these ‘Parador Hotels’ are ‘generally’ perched on hilltops, in the grounds of grand historical estates or castles, looking down on the towns spread-eagled below them, or over vast swathes of mountains and countryside, but not this one, no this one was at ground level and sat virtually alongside the A4 Motorway. Although there was an advantage to that, the estimated half hour walk into the town would be on the flat and so quite an easy one. It looked, once we had driven through the arched entrance, as though this particular property had once been part of a large estate of stables, from all of the now brightly painted stable type doors in the very large inner cobbled courtyard, and there was some horse and cart related paraphernalia dotted around. However, once inside, in the nice air-conditioned reception, it was modern, albeit that the main large interior of the building still retained a lot of its former character and charm, with large wooden doors and large wooden framed windows with the older style heavy iron window latches, with some antique looking furnishings dotted around the reception entrance hall. Shazza had pre-booked for just the two night’s, we had agreed on just the one full day of sightseeing the following day would suffice, as by now we had both seen quite enough of historical architectures, castles, churches, convents etc, and the statues of Kings or Knights on horseback, or other famous former residents emblazoned for eternity in grey concrete, marble or brass, stood in Plaza’s, or at road junctions, towering over everything else, the usual kind of stuff you find in most large towns and cities all around the world.

Shazza just really wanted to visit the cheese museum, wander through some of the narrow cobbled shaded streets and enjoy a leisurely breakfast, at a nice little street cafe/bar, people watching, as is our want, that was if we managed to get up early enough to beat the worst of the day’s heat, another scorcher was forecast. I had looked on Google to see if there was very much to interest me but, other than the usual museums and churches there was very little that sparked any real excitement. So once we had done our walkabout, perhaps, before returning to the hotel, we could partake of a light lunch, which may, or may not, have required partaking of a dose, or two, of Anti-Covid Vaccine medication 🤭 Once we had returned to the hotel, we would then probably just relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon taking cooling dips in the outside pool, so it sounded a pretty decent plan to me although I knew that at some point during that afternoon we would have to commence looking for our next destination and accommodation.

Once we had checked-in and settled into our very nice room, we made our way to the more ‘informal’ Cafeteria for a light lunch, They had quite an extensive menu, from starters to main courses and sandwiches, we knew from our previous ‘Parador’ experience that they were never going to be just a ‘sandwich’, so we ordered a Salmon and Creamed Cheese Bagel each, there were no egg and bacon butties or baked beans on toast here I will have you know 🤭 Okay, so all of these ‘Paradors’ looked a bit posh on the outside, and during the height of Summer they are in high demand and the more popular one’s, in the more touristy locations, can command up to €400 per night 😳 and that is on a room only basis, we were fortunate to catch them in ‘their’ low season period and so had only paid €80 per night. We were initially a bit surprised, as whilst they look a bit on the more ‘Upper Class’ style shall we say, they are actually much more casual than they first appear, most of the guests wore shorts and short-sleeved shirts, which is a good job really as I had left my ‘Jodhpurs’, ‘Hacking Jacket’ and ‘Cravat’ back at home, although I was still rather hoping that Shazza had remembered to pack the ‘Whip’ 😂

Once again though, no tea or coffee making facilities in the rooms, but at least they did provide a stocked ‘Mini Bar’ comprising of Bottled Beer, Soft Drinks and Snacks (All of which would have incurred an additional cost of course), however, as stated previously, we always come prepared to cater for our own needs. The rest of that late afternoon and evening we stayed at the hotel, I sat on the nice shaded balcony and commenced drafting my blog, the previous one to this, the ‘War and Peace’ volume, which some of you will be forgiven for, if you are still ploughing your way through it 😂 Shazza sat on her double bed, yes we had one each again, she checked her social media stuff and then read something or other on her ‘Kindle’ device, it was nice with the room air-con doing its job very efficiently. Later that evening we went back down to the Cafeteria area and ordered a meal off their quite extensive menu, we couldn’t be bothered going to one of the two on-site restaurants, for although it wasn’t ball gown and tuxedo attire, it would have meant wearing long trousers and a smarter style shirt, or a dress for Shazza, we couldn’t be bothered with any of that and I am not sure whether Shazza had even packed a dress anyway 🤔 We sat outside on the terrace, although their were no dramatic views like their had been at the one in Lorca, but it was pleasant enough as their was enough opportunities to do a spot of people watching.

We did manage to get up relatively early the following morning and head out in the direction of town, the early signs were promising, as we passed by lots of expensive looking houses, set in their own grounds and protected by high walls and electronic gates, okay yes I confess, I glimpsed through gaps in some of the gates or fences, well it would have been rude not to, but I refrained from poking the lens of my camera through to take some photo’s in case one of the neighbour’s was watching, and reported me to the Police, who may have arrested me, thinking I was casing the joints 😂 We passed the town’s ’Plaza de Toro’s’ (Bullring), on the outskirts of the town, but their was no external indication of whether it was still being used for that sometimes controversial traditional event, although the building itself looked in a good state of repair. In many towns now, where the bullfighting no longer takes part, the buildings are used for different events, mainly musical but occasionally, as wedding reception venues or, as the one near us in Estepona, the weekly ‘flea markets’, although that one in Estepona has not been maintained and looks rather scruffy, some are just left to fall into a state of total disrepair, a shame really as they are rather iconic traditional Spanish looking buildings.

One thing that was very noticeable to us though, was just how quiet everywhere was, we had seen just one or two people in the half hour it took us to walk to the main periphery of the town, and their was hardly any traffic, literally just the odd car, and it was a weekday 🤷‍♂️ We were beginning to wonder whether we had arrived on a local ‘Public Holiday’ perhaps 🤷‍♂️ However, I saw what looked like market stalls in the distance ahead of us, so we walked in that direction and sure enough there was a market, it was a big market with lots of stalls, but just the usual array of clothes, shoes, kitchenware and plants and shrubs, no food produce of any description, not even the usual fruit and veg stalls, however a lot of these stalls were selling exactly the same sort of stuff and they stretched along the street for quite some way. At least there were actually people here, although not crowds and we could just saunter without being shoulder barged every couple of minutes, but there were enough people to at least prove that we hadn’t arrived in a ghost town.

Once we had walked the full length of the market stalls there was no obvious indication of which way led into the main town area, it was just narrow empty streets of two or three storey residential buildings, often there is a ‘Plaza Espana’ sign, pointing to its location, nothing here that we could see and strangely enough, none of the other more usual ‘Brown Coloured’ tourist signs pointing to a central Church, or other places of interest, not even one indicating the location of the Cheese Museum. To be completely honest, it just all seemed a little drab compared to a lot of the places we had visited recently, it made us wonder why there were so many large luxury houses that we had seen on the walk in, it didn’t look a particularly affluent area but perhaps the owner’s made their money in the nearby cities but invested in properties here that were not only cheaper but had lots more open space 🤷‍♂️ I checked Google Street Maps and then followed a route leading towards a central area that showed shops and bars, somewhere to at least sit and have a coffee and tostado.

We kept walking, aimlessly really, just following the Google Map directions and eventually, well within probably five or ten minutes, we did come across a much larger, and quite impressive looking church. Outside it there were umbrellas, tables and chairs stacked up, indicating that it would have been a nice area to sit and have a drink and watch the world go by, but not today it would appear. There was the odd shop here and there, all with their external metal shutters down and no signs of life so we looked at the sign on one of the shop doors with the opening hours, to see if we had arrived on the day everything was closed, but no, it indicated that it should have been open from 10:00am, but it was now 10:30am 🤷‍♂️ We continued wandering, in search of that elusive Cafe/Bar, most other cities, towns or even villages have Cafe/Bars on almost every corner, but not in this one. We came across some other nice looking historical buildings but our question was, ‘where were all the other tourist’s 🤷‍♂️’

More by luck than judgement we found our way into ‘Constitution Square’, this would have been the ‘Plaza Espana’ in most other town’s and this was where the ‘Ayuntamiento’ (Town Hall) was located, and other Government Offices, an arched pedestrianised walkway ran across the lower level and their were a couple of nice looking Cafe/Bars with their plush looking ‘wicker’ style chairs and tables outside, but there was absolutely nobody about, no waiters or customer’s, surely the whole town couldn’t all have been at the market 🤔 There were no obvious signs or banners that would indicate that a ‘Fiesta’ had just taken place or that one was about to happen, nothing, the place was almost completely devoid of people, except the market of course.

After a little more aimless wandering we finally discovered the main shopping street, pedestrianised and with shops on either side of the narrow precinct. We discovered one Cafe/Bar, which was open 🥳 however, it had only three tables outside and all three were occupied ☹️ There wasn’t enough room to swing even half a cat inside, so we walked on. The hostelries highlighted on Google Maps were either still closed, or looked as if they were no longer in business and, to top off a rather disappointing morning, the Cheese Museum didn’t open until midday, still an hour away. Shazza didn’t want to hang about and wait, it was getting hotter and hotter and we had nowhere to sit and wait anyway, so we decided to head back towards the hotel, a few minutes away from it there was a ‘Repsol’ fuel station with an attached Cafeteria, we would stop their for a coffee and maybe a Tostado, if we were lucky.

Whilst we were finally getting to enjoy a very good, and hot, Cafe con Leche, and Tostado, Shazza asked me how long it would take to get back home from here. She said that she was about done with sightseeing now, and she was getting fed up of living out of a suitcase, she really just wanted to get back and enjoy her home comforts again. It came as a bit of a surprise, as although I knew she was getting ready to head home, and I knew before we even left on this trip that we wouldn’t in all reality, remain on the road for a full three weeks, I had thought that we would have got at least one more location in, potentially for another couple of nights. The scenic town of ‘Jaen’ which, by coincidence, also had a ‘Parador Hotel’, located on a hill within Castle Grounds and which had a nice swimming pool, was actually on the route home anyway 🤷‍♂️ Yes I had done a Shazza, and already looked in advance knowing that it was a place that she had said, in a previous conversation, was a place that she would like to visit at some point. But not even the temptation of another ‘Parador Hotel’ could tempt her, so I looked at Google Maps and it indicated that we could be home in just a little over four hour’s, although we would have to get back to the hotel, re-pack our bags, check-out and re-fuel, and allowing for a comfort break, I estimated that we could be sat on our own balcony by 6pm that evening. So the decision was made.

It was telling that when we went to check-out and I explained why we were leaving early, the female receptionist gave a knowing smile, but why would they have a ‘Parador Hotel’ here on the outskirts of this anonymous town was the question in my head 🤷‍♂️ Shazza wanted to drive the first part of the journey, not just because she knew it would be relatively quiet but she wanted to stop off when we got nearer home to do some shopping for some groceries to see us over the next few days as we had emptied the fridge before we departed, so she wanted a bit of a break before trudging through the shopping aisles. It gave me an opportunity as the passenger to take the last photo’s of this trip, especially as we would be approaching the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges from the North, and then driving through a part of them before heading South. She also knew that we would have to do battle with the heavy traffic around Malaga and Marbella, she didn’t fancy that as it would be in the middle of the Spanish rush hour, the end of the Siesta period when everybody rushes back to work.

We had only been on the road for just a little over an hour when we decided to stop for a cold drink and then we also realised that apart from the tostado, we hadn’t eaten lunch, so we pulled in to a roadside Cafeteria, it was very busy although the road up to here had been very quite. Shazza managed to find an empty table and we looked at their menu, we both opted for a hot Calamari Sandwich and I went up to order. A very nice lady, who spoke absolutely no English, took my order and then checked back with me to confirm that she had understood what I had ordered, before telling me to go and sit at the table, which I had pointed to so that she knew where we were. She brought across our cold drinks and a huge bowl of crisps covered with plump anchovies, she must have seen my expression as I hadn’t ordered these, but she said ‘Gratis Tapas’ and then smiled. They were just crisps and anchovies, but boy were they delicious, the saltiness and vinegar of the anchovies, with the plain slightly salted crunch of the crisps, were an explosion of loveliness in our mouths. Shortly afterwards came the hot Calamari ‘Baguettes’, there were oodles of Lightly battered Calamari rings in a half fresh crisp baguette, with the usual small side portion of French Fries, and the total bill, including the drinks, a mere €13 (£11). This is what I enjoy about these road trips, no not just the value for money at places like this and not just getting to a particular destination, but the experiences along the way, the unscheduled stops, time to pause and enjoy the surroundings and the people that we meet, but the next stop would be the ‘Mercadona’ supermarket, just twenty-minutes from home.

As we left the rest stop, Shazza had said that she didn’t really want to drive anymore, which I didn’t mind one bit as I really enjoy driving and, to be truthful, I would do all of it if I could, but the eye issue that I now have since my detached retina operation in March 2022, means that I am less confident in places which have very narrow and busy streets, but as it was now Motorways all the way home, bring it on 😁 We had been back in our own ‘Region’ of Andalusia for some time, but it wasn’t until we reached the outskirts of Malaga City that we felt as if we were in home territory, although we were still a little over an hour from home. Unusually, it was Shazza, and not me for a change, that started spouting lyrically about the scenery, we could see the sparkling blue of the ‘Mediterranean’ on one side and the lush green forested mountains on the other, “Look at what we have on our own doorstep ?” She announced. I had been telling her this all the time we have owned a property here, and although we have explored quite a lot of it, there is still so much that we have not ventured into, but she had always been dis-interested when I had mentioned having weekends away in a ‘Casa Rural’, or even a hotel, in our own nearby mountain ranges or even in some of the plentiful coastal areas that lay to the East, South and West of us 🤷‍♂️ Finally, and I think a lot of it has to do with the short period we spent in the mountain town of Montanejos, which she thoroughly enjoyed, but I believe that she may be coming around to my way of thinking and, if it took this trip to make her realise it, then it was ‘Worth Each And Every Mile, And Day’ that we had just spent away 🙏

The ice-ing on the cake, when we got home, was to discover some exceptionally joyous financial news. You will recall from my recent previous rambles of the process I was going through with the UK Tax Authorities (HMRC), to claim a refund for the ‘UK tax’ that I had paid, which I should not have been paying over the last two year’s. But I was not expecting to hear from them quite so soon, but they have already come back and officially confirmed that I had overpaid, which I guess must have stuck in their throats a bit 🤭 and advised me of the amount of refund they would be giving back to me, which I should receive ‘within’ the next 14 days, so Christmas will have arrived a little earlier than anticipated this year. They also notified me that my tax code has now been changed accordingly, but I will still be keeping a close eye on any future income tax deductions they take from me 😉 but what a lovely way to end a two-week vacation, and at least this time, unlike our previous month long holiday in the UK at the beginning of the year, we were not coming back for urgent work to a water boiler, or any other domestic crisis 😂

It does feel good to be back at home in our own surroundings though, it is certainly true that whilst it is sometimes good to get away from the same four walls, and routines, it also feels very nice to be back home again.

Until the next ramble………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigo’s, La Vida Es Buena

Whilst Shazza had been enjoying herself in the sea, and apart from me being entertained watching her, and the other’s, battle with the waves, as well as obviously being engaged in a fair bit of both ‘people’ and ‘boat’ watching, I also spent some time researching routes, and accommodations, for the next part of our adventure. On my original route I had planned to head a little further North, but go a little more inland, I had been using a guide book that gave ‘Spanish Driving Routes’, and had found one route in the area that would cover two small historic towns/villages in the one day, the first being a relatively short ninety-minute drive away from ‘Peñíscola’ and, the second just a further one hour drive away from their. But by the time it would have taken us to drive to and between both locations, and spent time visiting them both on foot, making the stops worthwhile and doing these places some justice, it would be time for an overnight stop. The frustration came when I tried to find suitable available accommodations at such short notice, in or near these locations, and which also had on-site, or nearby, parking. But unless we wanted to book a whole ‘Casa Rural’ property, for a minimum of at least five nights, then it was not going to be and the one’s that did let out individual rooms were all fully booked 🤷‍♂️ As for Hotels, well we could forget that, they too were very much a case of ‘No Room At Any Of The Inn’s’, perhaps if we had been travelling astride a Donkey, with Shazza in the family way, we may have been offered a stable, although they would have probably have then told us to come back at Christmas 😂 We did consider whether it would be best to just bite the bullet and rent one of the ‘available’ Casa Rural accommodations for the week, using it as a base camp, but most of these places were out in the wild and the places of interest to us, or worthy of visiting, would have involved driving miles each and every day, returning to the accommodation at night, we didn’t fancy that idea. I didn’t give up though and, after running out of all of the usual options, I just started to scroll through ‘Google’ using the search term ‘Places To See” and came across this……………

Further research revealed that in this small hillside town they also ran a tourist train that, on certain days of the week, took you around the local area, to other small villages and stopping at scenic locations along the route, each trip lasting three and a half hours and running during the late afternoon from 16:00-19:30. So, with the River and Thermal Spring, ‘Fuente de Los Banjos’ and the tourist train trip, this sounded ideal, but to be able to enjoy these we needed to find suitable nearby accommodation 🤷‍♂️

Within this relatively small town of ‘Montanejos’ we saw a 3* Hotel advertised, it looked perfect, sat overlooking the small ‘Rio Mijares’, and directly below the hotel, less than 25 metres away, was a ‘River Club Restaurant’ which also had its own swimming pool, which, for Hotel guests was ‘Free’ to use, the bonus being that the hotel was also just 100 metres walk from where the ‘Tourist Train’ departed and only a fifteen minute walk from the ‘Fuente de Los Banjos’. What’s that saying, ‘When something sounds too good to be true’ ? So what were the chances of them having a room available for the three night’s that we would require ? I got myself ready for another huge disappointment 🤷‍♂️

Shazza looked on our usual on-line hotel booking site and to our absolute amazement discovered that their was availability for the three nights that we required, so she hastily made the booking and had the reservation confirmed 🙏

I planned the route, however, instead of our intended direction being North, this particular location whilst still heading inland, it would be two hour’s South but, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’ as the saying goes. However, the journey would take us up into and through National Park Areas, up into the mountains. I started to get excited, not just about the destination, but the road journey to it, for whilst Shazza had just had her preferred beach resort break, now it was my turn to enjoy the more rural and natural landscapes that I particularly enjoy, although, even Shazza commented that she too was looking forward to a slightly quieter environment now, although I reminded her that if these accommodations were all generally still fully booked, how quiet they may be could be quite a different matter 🤔

We didn’t bother with breakfast at the hotel on our morning of departure from Peniscola, first stop was a quick re-fuel just ten minutes down the road, we didn’t really need to, it was only an 80 mile journey and we had half a tank of fuel, but we know how scarce fuel stations can be in these inland areas, well, scarce of the more branded one’s like Repsol, Cepsa, Galp etc. and we had learnt a rather expensive lesson, twice in fact, in the past about using fuel from the more locally branded one’s 😲 At least we would have enough fuel to get us, not just to our next destination, the small town of ‘Montanejos’, but also to the next location beyond that, wherever that maybe as that was still in the research and planning stage 😳 Shazza is finally beginning to come around to my way thinking, with the ‘Planning Ahead’ business, as there were several places within this large Valencia area, towns and villages, that she would have liked to have stopped at, for a day or two, but where ‘suitable’ accommodation was not available. But life is a learning curve as they say, although I did take the opportunity to remind her that our ‘former’ travels where a little more flexible, when of course we were travelling in our own ‘home on wheels’ 😉 You may well ask how that comment went down with her, let me just say that my black eye now matches her purple nose 😂

When I looked at my ‘paper’ road map, before planning the route using ‘Google Maps’, I had expected the first part of our journey to have been on the A7 motorway for the first part, up until ‘Castellon’, before then heading inland, but ‘Google’ took us straight onto the CV13, so we decided to go with it. It was actually a very good road and relatively traffic free, compared to the Motorway. However, for anyone from the Valencia area, who may be reading these rambles, I wholeheartedly apologise for probably sounding a little disparaging about the landscapes of this region in my previous ramble, for just minutes away from the coast we entered terrific lush green vistas that were a feast for the eyes and, as we ventured further inland and uphill, the scenery just got better and better.

We have often heard other’s use the expression, ‘When you go away, once you return you really appreciate what you have on your own doorstep’. Well my comment, and title of my last ramble, is certainly beginning to ring true and now Shazza is beginning to realise that fact too, for yes we do actually already live in a lovely beach resort holiday location ourselves, so why on earth do we need to go to another holiday beach location just to appreciate what we already have 🤷‍♂️ But, as she too pointed out to me, we also live within a thirty-minute drive of some beautiful lush green forested mountains, with rivers, lakes, thermal springs and even Castles. So I guess that whilst we are enjoying our individual aspects of this particular road trip, you could say that it is also actually turning out to be a ‘reflective trip’, personally for the both of us, and so, whilst we do not want to give up on exploring other ‘Regions’ in Spain, or even other Countries in Europe, we are now in total agreement that, as our home Region of Andalusia is actually the second largest region in Spain, perhaps we should spend a little more time exploring much more of our own inland areas too, and I guess the occasional beach location wouldn’t harm either considering that in Andalusia we have both the Mediterranean and Atlantic Coastlines to choose from 🤔

It wasn’t long before we found ourselves heading up into the thicker forested mountain roads, the CV10, CV13 and then CV20, which I have to say, were all extremely good, albeit a lot more twisting and winding, which is why 80 miles on these roads takes longer than 80 miles on faster motorway routes, but the drive is certainly far more exhilarating, in a good, not a scary way, and as for the scenery, well all we could say, around almost every corner, was how ‘Absolutely Stunningly Beautiful’ the scenery was, and picture perfect, with a cloud free gloriously blue sky as a background. Shazza may not be into photography herself, she enjoys seeing the landscapes through her own eyes, but I think that she may now also be beginning to appreciate why I feel the need to capture these views, to perhaps look back upon in year’s to come, and of course, to share with you my reader’s, and who knows, maybe provide some inspiration for you to take your own road trips, but please remember that having an OCD Buddy is not always a bad thing and could save some disappointment 😉

Of course, I took dozens more scenic landscapes throughout the journey, but to be honest, I am sure you can visualise it for yourself with the few that I have included above, but it really is a case of having to see it with your own eyes, to fully appreciate the expanse and beauty of the surrounding landscapes. Perhaps the one downside to these roads is the fact that there is a severe lack of ‘safe’ stopping places to take the photographs, so the majority of the time, provided that, as on this occasion, I am the one in the passenger seat with the camera, they have to be taken from a moving vehicle which, sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn’t 🤷‍♂️

We were in no hurry as ‘officially’ we could not check in to our hotel until 3pm, Sat Nav had us getting there at 1pm 😲 But we decided on a ‘Brunch’ stop, if we could find one in one of the small villages or towns along our route, we could see several picturesque places as we drove along, but many of them were up in the hills and too far off our particular route, however eventually, and we nearly missed the turning, we saw a sign that said ‘Cafe’, right on the turn where it was located but which you couldn’t see until you were virtually on top of it, so we followed the narrow gravel road until it came to the outskirts of what looked like a very small hamlet, one of those one horse sort of places, but it had the most amazing views. This was not a typical Cafe/Bar, but a small cafeteria that occupied a small corner of the local community hall. Outside, a handful of white plastic tables and chairs, at one, their were four elderly ladies sat chatting, they stopped their conversation as we approached, smiled and said ‘Buenas Dias’, as if we were regular faces in the village, we returned the pleasantry. A very pleasant young girl who was inside, took our order, our usual, ‘Cafe con Leche y Tostado’s’, she told us to take a seat outside and she would bring them to us.

The four ladies departed before we had finished our very late breakfast, but they stopped at our table, wished us “Ustedes una bien Dia”, or words to that effect, (Have a nice day) and then “Adios” as they walked off down another dirt track in the direction of the small unassuming village. We resumed our journey for a few more miles and then, as we crossed a bridge that spanned a small babbling river we saw a parking area just up from the river bank below, so of course, we stopped to have a look. Once we had walked down the small hill, we saw a traditional old style drinking fountain in front of a brick building, which we discovered were Public Toilets, although the doors were locked, a good job neither of us needed to use the facilities, albeit there were obviously plenty of trees and bushes if we had been that desperate 🤭 A gravel path ran down towards the river, well more a stream really, and then we saw a smaller bridge that ran across it, to one side there was a grassed area, with a small wooden fence around it, which had the words ‘Bar Area’ painted on it, so we guessed that this was a picnic spot primarily for the local residents, as it was not indicated on the map as a ‘tourist attraction’

We continued our drive through even more lush green mountain vista’s and headed towards the town of ‘Onda’ where, quite conveniently, and somewhat surprisingly, there was a large ‘Mercadona’ supermarket, we needed to stock up on Coffee, Sugar, bottled water and some fresh fruit. None of the hotels we had stayed at so far had tea or coffee making facilities, although they all had a small fridge, but not a mini-bar as such, as their was not even a bottle of water or soft drinks inside, fortunately though, we are quite accustomed to this here in Spain, so we always take our own travel kettle, cups and any other provisions we may need.

Although we had attempted to delay our arrival at the hotel, until nearer the official check-in time, we failed miserably, but hoped that they would permit us to at least park the car in their car park where we could leave our luggage until the time came to check-in, then we would go for a wander through the small town. We pressed the buzzer at the parking barrier, the lady who answered asked for our names and then raised the barrier. We left our bags in the car and reported to the reception where the very pleasant receptionist proceeded to check us in to our room, informing us that it had already been cleaned and so was ready for us to occupy. There were actually two receptionists on duty, both spoke limited but reasonable English, but they also acknowledged the fact, in a positive way, that we were also communicating with them in Spanish, “Ustedes Espanyol es Muy Bien” they said, (Your Spanish is very good), we were well chuffed, even if they were just being polite as we know our limitations and that our sentence construction was probably not perfect, but understandable, which is what counts in my book 😉However, our check-in process was interrupted, on several occasions, by them having to also answer incoming phone calls, we could hear them saying to each and every caller without exception, “Lo Siento, No es possible, Hotel Completo” (Sorry, it isn’t possible the hotel is fully booked), I couldn’t understand why they bothered answering if that was the case, it wasn’t as if they were losing any immediate business, but there again they may have been advance bookings, not everyone books within 24 hour’s of requiring a room 😂 Shazza and I looked at each other, we were thinking, but not speaking, exactly the same thought, ‘How lucky were we to have booked when we had’ 😲 We went straight back down to the car and got our belongings and then made our way to our room.

We had stayed at two 4* hotels so far on this trip, and we had no complaints with either the facilities or the rooms in either, but this was a 3*, so we were not expecting quite the same amount of grandeur, or size of room. However, sometimes you get the best surprises when you least expect them, we were not expecting the very spacious room, which matched each of the previous one’s, or a large quite modern en-suite bathroom, with one of the best showers that we had yet experienced, by way of water pressure and very hot water. We were not expecting two full size ‘double’ beds, a modern automated and amazingly efficient Air Con system, or a 60” flatscreen TV that was more like having a Home cinema screen, and we certainly were not expecting a balcony, upon which their was a domestic sized clothes drying rack and also two chairs and a patio table, but best of all, we were not expecting the most amazing view from the balcony, or through the full floor to ceiling glazed patio doors. “Are you certain that this is only a 3* Hotel ?” I asked Shazza. This was, by quite some margin, the best of the three hotels that we had stayed in so far, perhaps ‘fate’ had worked in our favour once again, directing us towards this small town in the Valencia mountains and to this particular hotel, for it just seemed absolutely perfect, in every way 🙏

Getting into our room so early, we then decided to go straight to the ‘Tourist Train’ office in the town, a five minute walk, to see if we could get tickets for that evenings trip. Unfortunately, it was already fully booked, so we booked for the following evening. We decided that we may as well go on a bit of a walk around the town as we now had some time on our hands, and to get our bearings for a deeper exploration at some point over the next two days 😂😂 I laugh because, the town was that small that our very short reconnaissance ended up being the full tour, a handful of small Cafe/Bars, a Church, a Police station, a Chemist, a small Supermarket, a ‘Panaderia’ (bread shop) and a handful of other small local traders and, ‘three’, yes three other, but smaller, hotels 😲 If all of these hotels were full that would probably be more than treble the size of the population of this town 🤭 Oh well, we could now return to the room, have a nice coffee sat admiring the views from the balcony and then, perhaps some time for a period of personal contemplation before dinner 😴

However, although this mountain town may have been small, it had everything that I was particularly looking for on this visit. A beautiful riverside restaurant with tremendous food, that catered for both of our dietary requirements, not one mention of ‘Goats Cheese Salad’ which impressed Shazza as she had numerous other tasty alternatives that made a nice change for her, both on the Starters and Main Courses, as for desserts, well let’s just say that she was on holiday and so probably not quite so disciplined with that particular aspect 😂 As far as activities were concerned, the beach club also had the lovely swimming pool, which had a small poolside bar that served ice-cold ‘Alhambra’ beer, I am not much of a beer drinker but I have taken a liking for this particular brand, although one bottle is plenty otherwise it tends to bloat me, unlike my more usual Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 We would spend ‘at least’ one morning, or afternoon here at the pool, but their was also the ‘Fuente de Los Banos’, only a short fifteen minute riverside walk away, which we would visit and have a swim in, and then there was the three and a half hour tourist train in the evening, so anything over and above those things, in our short visit here, would just be a complete bonus. And no, I have not mentioned the weather, well when you are dining out in the evening at 9pm, dressed in smart Shorts and casual collared short-sleeved shirts, it say’s it all really 🥵

We had paid for ‘Room Only’ on this occasion, €18 for breakfast, that was the total not per person, seemed just a bit steep for the little we ate, and we knew we could get our more usual breakfast’s for a total of €6 at a local Cafe/Bar. We tended not to eat lunches if we had a latish breakfast and so we had a nice three-course dinner in the evening’s.

So, on Day 2 we started with a rather leisurely morning before having a late breakfast (Brunch) at a small Cafe that we had discovered on our first, and only, town wander. We returned to the hotel and got changed into our swimwear and spent a good couple of hours at the pool before then getting changed and getting ready to board our tourist train. We were two of twenty other passengers, but we were the only ‘foreigners’, the remainder were all Spanish tourist’s on their own vacation. Tony the driver, and tour guide, spoke a little bit of English, and after doing his commentaries in the local lingo he would then come and check with us what we had, or hadn’t, understood, then he would fill in the important essentials we had perhaps not grasped. At first we felt a little like outsider’s as the rest of our travel companions spoke very little English, the odd word here and there, but we soon bonded, talking to them in Spanish, albeit not perfect, they seemed to warm to us and as we got off the train at certain points to walk about they would engage in conversation with us, the usual stuff, ‘Where are we from ?’, then on discovering we lived in Spain, ‘Which part of Spain ?’, ‘How longs have we lived here ?’ all the usual sort of stuff, by the end of the tour, which ended up being a little over 4 hours 😲 we felt a part of the group and we were quite flattered at how many of them made a point of coming to say goodbye to us, as we disembarked to each go our separate ways. Just by coincidence the following morning, we were returning to the hotel after our Cafe breakfast and two ladies, who had been on the train tour, recognised us, before we had even seen or recognised them, and they shouted across the street to us, “Buenas Dias Eric y Sharon, Como Estas ?” 🥰

So as you can imagine, during the tour, my clicker finger never stopped, but I will not bore you with too many photo’s, just enough to give you a flavour 😉

Our first stop was at the top of the quite large and impressive Reservoir, the ‘Embassement d’Aronos’. The tourist train stopped and we all disembarked, Tony, the driver and tour guide, did a rather long talk about the history of the reservoir, the small hamlets that had to be evacuated and the families that had to be re-housed to make way for it. He gave lots of technical information, capacity of water, the area that it provides water to, and the future plan to make it a Hydro-Electric facility. We picked up most of the general stuff and so he just imparted some of the more technical stuff to us in English, we both tried very hard not to yawn though, but we appreciated his effort to make us feel part of the tour group. We then walked down to the base of the reservoir where we were lucky enough to see a mother deer with her fawn cross our path, then a large Eagle flew right across the top of our heads, too quick to get a photo of it though and the deer were gone too 😢 I said to Tony that it was good bit of marketing on his part, to bring an Eagle shaped drone and fly it just at the right time, he laughed and put his fingers to his lips, “Don’t tell the other’s” he said.

Near the base, a long bridge ran towards an entrance into the mountain. Tony explained that inside, it dropped 500 metres to where the machinery was located to control the flow of water and release the pressure when needed. He said that there was a continuous flow of water from the reservoir at the base, this was because one of the Reservoir’s sources was from the upper level of the ‘Rio Majares’ and that the construction of the reservoir could not restrict it’s flow, he took us down to show us it.

Now some of you know, from my previous rambles, that whenever I am amongst large clumps of rocks that I can often see faces of strange creatures looking down on me, I know, I should really seek out some medical help for my condition, or get some better glasses 🤭 or perhaps I have just watched too many horror type movies 🤷‍♂️

We were already into the second hour of the trip when we re-boarded the tourist train, but we continued onwards and upwards further into the mountains, the views were absolutely amazing and we were quite surprised at how many farmhouses and larger more luxurious houses there were, mostly hidden away from view in the dense forest, but we occasionally caught a glimpse of them, but never quite quick enough to point and shoot the camera ☹️

We found it quite amazing to think how they must have got the materials up here, to build Castles, Convents and Monasteries, let alone whole villages and towns and, as in the below photograph, on remote forested outcrops of rocks 🤷‍♂️

We had made our next stop in a small hilltop village, at a local Bar for a drink and comfort break, as I entered the small dark bar interior to order a couple of cold refreshing beers, there were four elderly men sat around a table playing dominoes, ‘Buenos Tardes’ they said in Unison, without lifting their eyes from the table, I made the instant assumption that this was quite obviously a regular stop for this tourist train as they did not appear at all surprised by this sudden intrusion. There were tables and chairs outside, under a canopy of hanging grape vines, full of their ripe green and red fruits, we all sat around chatting, well Shazza and I listened mainly and only interjected appropriately, when we understood what they were saying. One lady in our group came out with a jar of fresh natural honey she had purchased from the lady bar owner, Shazza suddenly disappeared, and then re-appeared moments later, clutching her own purchase of sweet nectar.

We had one final visit to a small town on the descent, it was already 7:30pm, the time we should have arrived back at our starting point 😲 Nobody was particularly bothered though, it had been a good trip with a great bunch of fellow tourists and we finally returned at 8pm, we were glad we had reserved dinner at the restaurant for 9pm, time enough to get showered and changed and although it was now dark, it was still very very warm and humid 🥵

Our final day arrived and it would be a more leisurely day, a late breakfast at our now usual Cafe in the town, then we returned to the hotel, got changed into our swimming gear, grabbed a towel and off we went on the fifteen minute walk to the ‘Fuente de Los Banos’. It was a pleasant enough walk along the wide riverside path, the sun was high in the sky but there was lots of shade along the route.

Once there, we discovered that there was a Kiosk that sold ice-creams and snacks, although we had been unaware of this so had taken our own, obviously not ice-creams though 🤭 there were also some very clean toilet and changing facilities, which we also had not known about. In this area of the river, no chairs, sunbeds etc. were permitted and the beach area was all stones and gravel, so we sat on our towels. The recommendation was to wear water shoes, due to the large underwater rocks and shingle river bed, we again were not aware of this beforehand or we would have brought the ones that had been laying dormant in our wardrobes at home for some time, but we managed to get by with our flip-flops, and we had seen other’s go in barefoot. Now this was not the ‘Thermal Spring’ that we had read about prior to coming here, the one were the water was a constant 25 degrees(c), no, that was, as we later discovered, in a purpose built building in the town 😲 and which we soon came to realise when we initially entered the water in the river 🥶 Actually, I am exaggerating for the water wasn’t actually that cold, although it did come as a bit of a shock when we were expecting to enter a warm bath 🤭

We ended our final evening, once again, at the very nice River Beach Club restaurant. We had only spent two and a half days here, 3 nights in the wonderful hotel, but we had done everything that we had come to do and we both agreed that this had in fact been the highlight of the trip so far. We had decided that we may as well keep heading Southwards, towards home, and so had picked our next destination, but more about that in my next ramble 😉

So, until then……………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

The ‘Forrest Gump’ method of weather prediction once again proved to be much more accurate than the official ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast, why should that no longer come as any surprise to us 🤷‍♂️ We departed ‘Lorca’ on a bright and sunny morning, with not one grey, or black, rain cloud in sight. Our next destination would entail another longish drive, around 270 miles and it should again take us a little over 4 hours, we shared the driving and anticipated making a couple of stops along the route so, all things being equal it would once again end up being around another 5 hour journey.

The first part of our journey would see us remain inland but, after skirting around the city of Murcia we would gradually start to weave our way across to the East Coast towards Valencia, when we would then follow the A7/AP7 Coastal route to our intended destination, normally the AP roads are generally toll routes, but the particular stretch that we would be using would not incur any such costs 👍

Initially, the scenery and landscapes were very much similar to what they had been driving through the Andalucia landscapes, mainly green and lush, however, we noticed the visual change around the outskirts of Valencia, where in parts it became much more arid and certainly very much more Industrial, large quarries that had, and still were, scarring the landscapes, rocky grey granite mountains and miles upon miles of Poly Tunnels, essential for protecting the delicate fruits and vegetables from the harsh heat of the unforgiving sunshine, and the large row on row of factory outlets, the fruit co-operatives that we had often seen as a common place agricultural necessity, and convenience, for the surrounding farms, replaced here by car and truck manufactures, large scale furniture manufacturers and large freight distribution centres, another necessity in today’s modern world. Yes, we had entered twenty first century Spain, but don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bleak, there were some nice areas, it was just a very noticeable landscape from those that we had witnessed only a day or so earlier. I guess we should consider ourselves still lucky to have the lush greenery that surround the areas where we live, although we are not certain how much longer even that may continue to be the case ? Even the demands of today’s more modern world are racing rapidly South towards us, from the city of Malaga 😲

Another significant observation that we both made was the increased intensity of the traffic, which kept our minds and eye’s very firmly focused, as they were coming at us from all sides, and it appears that modern cars and trucks these days are sold without operational indicator lights, although the brake light’s and accelerator pedals seem to be in good working order 😲 Perhaps we should have chosen to use the less crowded roads, rather than the much faster Motorway routes, but this would have increased our journey time even more and, as we were already discovering, finding short notice accommodation availability, even the ‘Casa Rurals’, was not going to be easy, those that we had looked at beforehand were either fully booked, or only offered rentals of the complete houses, not just a room.

Although the Tourist Season down our neck of the woods appeared to be beginning to slow down, here, further North, it still appears to be in full swing but more so with the Spanish domestic tourism, so finding an ad-hoc room for a night or two was not going to be quite as simple as we had imagined that it was going to be, what was I saying in my last ramble about missing the freedom of our former Motorhome 🙄 However, we did have the forethought to pre-book our next accommodation and after a brief, but very welcome, lunch stop we knocked the remaining miles off in the knowledge that there would actually be a very nice reward at the end of it 🤗 Fortunately, I had smuggled my OCD Buddy into my suitcase, we would certainly need to work together as a team once again to try and plan our following weeks road trip accommodations, although, as yet, we still hadn’t selected a direction of travel 🤔

Our destination today though was the seaside resort of ‘Peniscola’, located on the ‘Costa del Azahar’ (Orange Blossom Coast) in the Province of Castellón, positioned some 90 miles North of Valencia, and 180 miles South of Barcelona. At the end of this particular leg of the journey we would park the car and we certainly had no intention of using it again for the next five days.

One of Shazza’s earlier options, when considering our holiday choice, was an ‘All Inclusive’ 5* Beach Hotel holiday, however, she had been thinking more on the lines of a Caribbean Resort Beach but, as she didn’t want the hassle of Airports and 8-10 hour flights, this was the best we could get here in Spain at such short notice 🤷‍♂️ It was however a 4* Hotel, and we had booked on a ‘Full Board’ Basis, (Breakfast, with both Lunch and Dinner including wine so, Anti-Covid Vaccines provided too, now there’s a bonus 😁) We had a Double Room with two separate large double beds and our allocated room on the 4th floor had a Large Balcony with a lovely uninterrupted Seaview. Their was a Large Hotel Pool and literally just across the Promenade, at the front of the hotel, a golden sand beach with the most amazing coloured green turquoise looking sea, so it still looked very tropical, even if we weren’t in the Caribbean. The hotel itself though, was located on the North side of the resort town, which was quite a decent walk away, ‘Google Maps’ indicated some 45 minutes, with the ‘Old Town’, located on a bit of a peninsular, with quite an impressive Castle sat atop it, perhaps a further fifteen minutes walk beyond that, and of course, it was on a hill, where else would you put a Castle, unless it was like the one where we lived which was virtually on the beach 🤷‍♂️ At some point during our stay we would do the walk into the main resort, and also visit the castle, well we must keep the exercise regime up if we are to attain that ‘Blue Zone’ age group 😉

Now to me, in all honesty, this resort did sound rather like us going on ‘A Bit Of A Busman’s Holiday’ 🤔 I mean come on, we already owned our own very nice accommodation, in a holiday location, indeed it was more on par with a luxury suite in comparison with even this very nice en-suite hotel room, and our home had a large balcony, bigger than this one, and we had a sea-view too, a swimming pool and okay, I will admit that our golden sandy beach is a five minute drive away but, even we had a castle in our small seafront village so, what was the difference between home, and here ? Other than here, we were actually paying for the privilege of having these amenities and views 🤷‍♂️ Although okay, yes, stop shouting at me, as I do concede that this was probably more the part of the road trip holiday for Shazza, she could take a break from grocery shopping, no preparing of meals, or cooking them and no clearing up afterwards, no domestic cleaning or making the bed, so yes I could fully appreciate why it would feel more of a holiday from her perspective than mine, although to be honest, I also do my fair share at home, apart perhaps from the majority of the cooking of evening meals, the ‘placing’ of the laundry into the washing machine and of course the ironing 🤔

As for the weather, we’ll all I can say is that it is as hot here, both day and night, as it was back at home, not one day so far has been less than 32 degrees(c), or the night’s less than 25 degrees(c) and it is already nearly the middle of September, should it really still be this hot at this time of year 🥵🥵

Our first day at our seaside resort was a very relaxed one, although the journey, and the heat, had begun to take it’s toll on us, so we were grateful to just be able to sit on the balcony of our room with a nice hot cuppa (Yes, a hot cup of tea in the afternoon, come rain or shine, it’s a British thing 😂). We were happy to relax and just sit watching the people in and around the pool, sunbathing on the sun beds and also at those across the promenade on the beach and swimming in the sea, this was going to be a great ‘People Watching’ and ‘Boat Watching’ observation point 😉 We went down to the ‘Buffet Dinner’ in the evening, our first meal in the hotel, we expected to be served only a glass of wine, then perhaps topped up if required, but no, we sat down and a waiter immediately brought us an ice-cold bottle of water before asking whether we preferred ‘Blanco’, ‘Rose’ or ‘Tinto’ vino, we selected ‘Tinto’ and were delivered, not a glass, but a full bottle of our selected flavoured ‘Anti-Covid Vaccine’ 😁 This was to be the pattern at all of the ‘Lunches’ and ‘Dinners’, however, we declined the lunch time bottle of vino, otherwise we would have just slept the ‘whole’ of every afternoon away 😵‍💫😵‍💫 Just worth clarifying though, in case you were wondering, we could not take any unfinished bottles, water or vino, away from the restaurant and back to our room to perhaps enjoy on our balcony later 🤷‍♂️

The following morning we went to the restaurant for the buffet breakfast, although it was wasted on us really as I don’t generally eat breakfast and Shazza only toast or croissant, but there was plenty available, even the ‘Spanish version’ of a ‘Full English’ if that was your thing 🤷‍♂️ However, we learnt very quickly that if you want a poolside Sun Lounger you needed to get there by 10:00am, at the latest 😲 and there was no trying to reserve one in advance by placing towels, magazines or other objects on them before disappearing off to breakfast, the pool attendant would remove them, but to be honest we did not witness any of that kind of behaviour anyway 👍 However, when the ‘boom, boom, boom’ of what they described as music started at 10:00am on the dot, which lasted until 1:00pm, only stopping for the Siesta period before re-commencing and going on until midnight, when thankfully it came to an abrupt end, leaving us thinking that we had suddenly gone stone deaf 😲 On top of that, the pool was taken over at 11:30am, every single day, for the ‘thirty minute’ Aqua Aerobics’ sessions 😳 This may have been a 4* Hotel, but Shazza and I both agreed that this was no ‘RIU’ Hotel, the standard of which we had become accustomed to, “Do you think we are turning into right snobs ?” Shazza commented, “What do you mean ‘turning into’ snobs ?” I replied, followed by a loud laugh, then I qualified the statement with, “There is nothing wrong with enjoying a little more luxury and refinement in our more senior year’s , we have both earned it” I said. This time she laughed, “What do you mean in our more senior years, you have always been a snob from the first day I met you” 😲

We agreed that the pool, as nice as it looked, was not for us, so we elected to walk the 20-30 metres to the much more tranquil beach, the loudest noise there, coming from the waves as they broke on to the shoreline, perfect. The cost of a day’s hire for two Sun loungers, underneath a wooden poled sun shade, which of course came with the tropical looking woven straw umbrella hat, was a mere €13, although in a more tropical resort location the hotel would have probably provided them free of charge, however, we had saved on the cost of the flights so it was worth every penny (or cent 🤔) Just to top that off for near perfection, the sea was warm, not cold or even slightly chilly, neither was it boiling hot or uncomfortable, let’s just say that you didn’t have to wait for the more usual initial Arctic shock, to numb your ‘nether regions’, when that first wave hit you 😂 Another thing that we both observed about this long stretch of golden beach was the absence of any beach traders, the ‘Looky, Looky’ variety and additionally, on our stretch of beach, there was not one Chiringuito, although the numerous Cafe/Bars were not that far away, spread out along the very long Promenade. I for one certainly needed the protection of the sun brolly, otherwise I would have fried to a crisp in a matter of minutes, so needless to say we both spent a lot of time dashing to and from the shade into the warm, but very refreshing, salty water, now this was more like it, it looked like we could have been in the Caribbean, but without all the physical inconvenience of actually getting there, or back again 😁

That evening, after having dinner in the hotel buffet restaurant, where we still couldn’t manage to polish off the whole bottle of ‘Anti-Covid Vaccine’ between us, although we did somehow still manage to drink a cheeky couple of iced cocktails on the outside terrace of the hotel bar, whilst listening to the racket they advertised as music by the ‘Entertainment Team’, it was enough to turn us to drink I can tell you ! We didn’t wait until the end of the ‘show’, which is what ‘they’ called it and not us, as we had a bit of an early start the next morning, well that was our excuse anyway 😂

It was far too early for me to even think about eating anything, but I went to the restaurant in the morning with Shazza, where with my glass of orange juice, I sat and watched her eat her ‘Tostado con Mermelede’ (Toast with Jam). We had decided that we would attempt the walk into the town and then on to the Castle, there was never going to be a good day to do this, every day was a scorcher, but we hoped that by leaving early we would miss the worst of the heat. Yes, of course we could have caught a bus, but neither of us wanted to succumb to that, stupid perhaps, and if we had ended up in the local hospital with heatstroke we probably would have called ourselves that, but for some inexplicable reason, we still ‘enjoy’ (I use that terminology very loosely), these walking challenges and it is amazing at just how good, personally speaking, we both feel after the event once we have made it back in one piece. We both agreed that the heat had made it tough going, although it wasn’t so much the heat that got to us, more the high humidity, we also had no idea what gauge ‘Google’ was using to measure the time it would take, they had estimated that it would take 45 minutes, we did it in 30, and to be honest, we were not actually walking that fast, well not by our own usual standard anyway, perhaps we are just fitter than we give ourselves credit for. Once we had reached the far end of the town, at the base of the hill that led up into the ‘Old Town’, we stopped at a small Cafe/Bar for a much needed refreshment break, in the shade, and to try and let our clothing dry out a little before the hill climbs to the ‘Old Town’, and then up to the ‘Castle’ we knew that that was going to be a whole different challenge 😲

To say that we were disappointed with the ‘Old Town’ would be a grave understatement, they had simply used this area as a complete tourist trap, over inflated prices everywhere, even in the small Cafe/Bars and Eateries, yes there were very nice sea views, but you were expected to pay for them. We were not optimistic about what we would get to see on finally reaching the Castle, with signage pointing to the ‘Ticket Office’. However, we were to be completely taken by surprise, the normal entry fee was quite cheap, but even better when we discovered that even Shazza met the reduced ‘Seniors’ admission price of only €3.50, which included the entry to the Lower Gardens (Former Battlements Area). It was quite apparent that a lot of renovation work had been completed, but this meant that several rooms, nooks, crannies and stone stairways had been made accessible, and there were lots of different rooms to explore, along with several turrets to climb, well worth it for the 360 degree views. So just for those of you that may be interested in some of the history of this castle, here is a taster and it actually turns out to be something of an unexpected coincidence for myself 🤔

‘Peniscola’ had been under the control of the Arab Nation since the year 718, but under the period of the Christian uprising it was eventually handed over to King James I. Between 1294-1307, the ‘Templar’s’ (You may remember my mention of them during our road trip last year) it appears built this castle and what was also a monastery, their last great fortress before ‘disappearing’ from the historical map and becoming nothing more than just a legend 🤔 In 1411, Pope Benedict XIII (Papa Luna) made the castle his political seat until his death in 1423.

I am still quite interested in the ‘Knights Templar’ but there is little ‘authenticated’ evidence of whether, and what form, they may now exist in the shadows of today’s modern world 🤔 There are modern day groups who claim to be descendants from the ‘Knight’s Templar’ but their origins often conflict with known historical facts and, the fact that these numerous global groups advertise themselves publicly, on Social Media, contradicts the original ethos of the origin and purpose of this secretive order. I personally find it interesting that there are certain ‘historical symbols’ that are still present today on ancient buildings, primarily throughout all corners of Europe, Western and Eastern, not all buildings necessarily being of any religious significance, as these ‘Knights’ derived from all backgrounds, from Religious Orders, Military Soldiers, Carpenters, Blacksmiths etc. but these symbols, which you may see, but not know what they are, only bear any actual relevance to those privileged enough to be ‘In the know’ 😉 There is some ‘unfounded’ speculation that today’s group known as the ‘Masons’ may have some association with the historical ‘Knight’s Templar’, but with no actual evidence to support this assumption, but then, you wouldn’t expect there to be would you 🤔 Anyway, back to our visit of the ‘Peniscola’ Castle and grounds…………….

Needless to say, I was in my element exploring every room, stairway and turret in this very impressive Castle, certainly worth a visit in my humble opinion, and to my surprise, Shazza explored everywhere with me, which was superb considering she is not really into these sort of historical structures. Now the little matter of getting down again, which can sometimes be as hard on the knee’s as going up 😲

Once back down at sea level, and in the more modern area of the resort, we sought shade in the back streets and discovered a maze of Cafe/Bars, Restaurant’s and vast array of shops. Yup, this was the more modern tourist side of Peniscola, and it was very busy with ‘Menu Del Dia’ signage everywhere, and not unreasonably priced either, between €14-€18 for three-courses including a drink, however, we were only interested in finding some much needed shade in a hostelry that could provide us with an ice cold Cervesa, we had plenty of choices 😁 By the time we were ready to head back to the hotel, the temperature had already risen enormously, to around 28 degrees(c) and still not at its peak, it was certainly much hotter now, although less humid, since we had set out earlier that morning and we already knew that it was going to be a primarily unshaded walk back 😲🥵 Did we consider getting a taxi, or a bus, back to the hotel, of course we didn’t, did it take us longer to get back, of course it did, we were already both knackered before we even started the walk back !! When we did get back, just before collapsing on the bed, Shazza informed me that we had walked a distance of some 6.2 miles and very nearly 20,000 steps, which to be completely honest, was not really that much further than our normal daily walks when we were back at home, however, it did feel longer, probably because at home, we wouldn’t even have considered venturing out further than our swimming pool in such temperatures, strange the things you are willing to put yourself through when you are on holiday 🙄 She also informed me that on our day out in Lorca, a few days earlier, we had walked a little over 5 miles, I just haven’t quite decided whether she is trying to get hold of her inheritance early, or trying to ensure that we both stay healthy and fit enough to reach those all important ‘Blue Zone’ age groups 🤔

After dinner that evening, where once again we didn’t manage to finish the whole bottle of Anti-Covid Vaccine (Lightweights, I know 🤷‍♂️) we decided to just go back to the room, however, an early night would not be an option, as they had a show on around the pool which would go on until midnight, and it just happened to be right below our balcony. However, we both watched it and actually, quite surprisingly, we found it quite entertaining, although we blamed that enjoyment on us both suffering from diminished mental capacity due to heatstroke from our day’s walk 🤭 The hotel ‘Entertainment Team’ performed dances associated to different countries from around the globe, traditional and modern and, somewhat reluctantly, I have to admit that they did quite a good job, we felt a bit like those two old geezers on the ‘Muppet Show’, ‘Terrible ! Get Off ! Hoorah ! Brilliant ! Enchore !’ 😂

Our last couple of days, between Lunch and Dinner, were spent on the beach. The sea was still the gorgeous turquoise-green colour, however, the swells were very much larger than they had been on our second day here, whilst this made them great to play in, it made it much more difficult trying to get in and out as the strength and height of these swells, as they crashed on to the shoreline could easily knock you off your feet. On one such attempt to get in, Shazza got knocked down by a large breaking wave and, as she attempted to get up she was knocked down again by a second, and then a third, leaving her with a cut to her knee and a bruised nose, but she didn’t give up and kept going back in and out for even more punishment, but she wore her battle scars with pride 😁 I do have to confess that after the first day, when I had enjoyed the much more gentler swells, and apart from the odd paddle thereafter, I remained fixed firmly on my sun-bed under my sun umbrella, you may call me a ‘Wuss’ but I’m not the one with a sore knee and sporting a purple nose 😉 She wasn’t the only daredevil though, their were plenty of other women, and men, taking on the challenge with the sea, and certainly none of them were spring-chickens, but I take my hat off to them all, for they all provided me, and other’s who were watching from the comfort of their sun loungers, with hour’s of entertainment and laughter, watching them all get bowled over in the surf and scrambling to get back to their feet before the next wave came, some more successfully than other’s, not many came out of the water unscathed, they all bore their ‘Gravel Rash’ scars on various parts of their bodies but like Shazza, they did not let it deter them 😂😂 I do have to compliment Shazza though, she learnt the knack very quickly, of timing both her entry and exit, even being complimented by many of her fellow daredevils when she exited gracefully from the surf, well as gracefully as you can looking like a drowned rat 😂

Before going for our last Dinner we visited the small bar outside, but next to, the hotel complex, we had discovered the evening before that they served proper Spanish ‘Vermut’, not the Tourist stuff from Italy (Martini Rossi) that costs twice the price for half the measure 😉 then, after our pre-dinner aperitif, at Dinner, we finally succeeded in consuming our whole bottle of Anti-COVID Vaccine, the previous four night’s where we hadn’t were obviously just training sessions for this final event 😂 Then, as it was our last night, we went to the terrace bar and had another couple of cheeky cocktails, well we were on holiday after all. It had been a good decision to pack our suitcases prior to going for Dinner, as we were in no fit state to do it once we had got from having our cocktails, oh yes, and the wine and the Vermut’s 😲 Needless to say that we both slept well and somewhat surprisingly I still awoke at 7:00am feeling totally refreshed, perhaps all this sea air is good for me 😉 I let Shazza have another hour before shoving a hot coffee under her nose, and yes, it was still purple 🤭

So, a new day and time to hit the road once again, but to where ?

Until the next ramble……………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

So, in my last ramblings we were waiting to take the car for its bi-annual ITV Test, the result of which would dictate when, or even if, we could get away on our holiday. The whole inspection process, although very thorough, like a well oiled factory production line process, had only actually taken a little over fifteen minutes and I cannot describe the sense of relief that I felt when the technician handed me back my vehicle registration document, accompanied with the all important vehicle windscreen sticker that reflected that my car was ‘officially’ roadworthy until September 2027, when the next inspection would be due. Of course, I waited until I had cleared the test centre before punching the air in celebration and shouting ‘Yes, get in there !!’ 😂 So, once again we had managed to evade the mischief of those ‘Dark Forces’ by being prepared for their potential ambush so, by way of a quick word of warning to you my reader’s, beware, for they may now be on the lookout for revenge and look elsewhere for ‘other’ less suspecting victims 😲

So that was one very urgent matter sorted, now it was time to address yet another important one, yes I of course mean the holiday, but to where, if indeed anywhere 🤷‍♂️ So, Shazza my beloved, the spotlight is now firmly shining on you, it is decision time ‘Where, if indeed anywhere, do you want to go ?’ She looked at me, knowing how much time and effort that we, that being me and my OCD Buddy, had put into sorting the three potential options, “I don’t really fancy all the hassle with airports and flights” she said, a bit cautiously, followed swiftly by a question of her own, “Do you ?”. I looked at her and just smiled, “So our original Plan A it is then, a road trip” I said, and to be totally honest, I was pleased with that decision. I like road trips and so had been looking forward to conducting yet another one of our exploration’s around some other part’s of Spain, areas that we had not visited before, and for me, using our own car was so much more preferable and convenient although, as I was very quickly to discover, it was not going to be quite as simple as sticking to my original ‘Plan A’ route 🙄 Shazza informed me that she did not now want to go all the way, which, considering our ages and lack of motivation towards such things, I told her that that did not come as a big surprise to me, she let out a cheeky little giggle 🤭 “I meant, all the way to the North Coast of Spain” she said, “I know exactly what you meant” I replied, then gave her a cheeky little wink. But even that piece of news didn’t really matter that much to me, Spain is a big country, with simply loads of places that we have still yet to discover, and let’s face it, their is no hurry to do any of them, so that area of the Northern Spanish Coast can go on the back burner for another future trip 😉 We sat down together with the road atlas of Spain, and yes, I do still use the paper versions, as well as ‘Google Maps’, and in conjunction with some useful travel guide books that we have and which we will take with us, we planned an initial route. We agreed to plan only the first two stages of the trip, to cover our first seven day period, but how long we actually spent on the road after that initial period would then be completely up to ourselves, just as long as we were back home no later than the 30th September, as Shazza’s mum was arriving on the 3rd October, and before her arrival we would have some domestic stuff to do. We didn’t want to hang about and agreed to depart on the Monday morning (8th September), allowing us a period of twenty-two days, if in fact we chose to utilise all of them. Although I will admit that at times like this we do begin to miss our ‘Little Fokker’, the freedom that it gave us to stop virtually anywhere we wanted, without having to rely on making accommodation bookings for the night’s we required, or finding somewhere convenient to stop and eat lunch, or dinner But, at the end of the day you cannot always have ‘everything’ that you would like, and so compromises sometimes have to be made, their are advantages and disadvantages to lots of things in this life 🤷‍♂️

Sunday, the day after our vehicle inspection, was a bit hectic, cleaning the apartment before we departed, it is a habit we have gotten into and it would save us a job when we eventually returned home. We also had to get our individual cases and rucksacks packed, once we decided what clothes we needed to take, we would travel ‘relatively light’, using our aircraft cabin sized suitcases, rather than the much larger hold-all that we would normally take. We agreed that if we needed to use a launderette whilst on our travels, they were readily available in many of the local towns that we would stop at, or pass through, so we could always stop and have a cheeky Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 and perhaps even a Tapas lunch, whilst we waited for the laundry to be done 😉

We departed, on our ‘Adventure Into The Unknown’, on an unusually cloudy overcast Monday morning, although it was warm and already extremely humid, the clouds were actually a light brown in colour from the ‘Sahara Sand’ (Calima) suspended within them, the visibility over the mountains and sea were hazy and it must have rained during the early hours, as the car had the tell tale signs of the brown sand ridden rain spotted marks, so much for washing and waxing the car a day or so earlier 🙄 We had agreed that on this particular road trip we would explore the more North Eastern side of the Mediterranean Coast, between Valencia and Barcelona, and perhaps even venture to some of the more inland areas too, but we didn’t have any specific locations in mind to visit, other than our first two locations, we would just decide once we got nearer the end of that first week on which direction we would head towards next 🤷‍♂️ We had previously visited the cities of Valencia and Barcelona, although those were many year’s ago, back in our Motor homing days, but we had never actually done any of the coastline between those two locations, so that would be the area we would initially concentrate on.

We set ourselves an initial target of just getting out of our own Region of Andalusia and, being located almost at the South East corner of the Costa del Sol, that journey itself would take ‘at least’ four hours, dependent on how many stops we made en-route. So we planned for our first stop to be in the town of ‘Lorca’, located just a few kilometres over the Andalusia Northern boundary in the Region of ‘Murcia’. Although we had passed Lorca numerous times on previous journeys, it was a place that we had never actually stopped at and explored so, we decided on a two night stopover, it would be late afternoon by the time we arrived at our pre-booked hotel on our first travel day, so this would allow us the evening to just rest up and relax and then allow us the following full day to just do some sightseeing.

I elected to do the first part of the driving, it was a very familiar route to us so the landmarks we passed just served to make the journey appear a little longer, although I still found the landscapes to be pretty awesome. After getting away from the busy coastal traffic, after the first hour or so, once we had cleared the northern outskirts of Malaga, the land seemed to just expand its lungs, taking in the much cleaner and clearer mountain air and, it seemed to sigh with relief at the freedom to be able to stretch itself out and it opened up with grand views for miles around, mountains of green forested pines, hectares upon hectares of Olive groves, whitewashed mountain villages that made the perfect picture postcard views and near empty roads that stretched out in front of us like a gigantic elongated snake, the only thing missing from this near perfect view was the usual Spanish sunshine, although the outside temperature still registered 30 degrees(c) so we were certainly thankful for the efficiency of the car air-con system 🥵

The journey to Lorca actually ended up taking us five hour’s, although that was because we had four stops, only two were actually scheduled, the initial re-fuel of the car, as we departed home, then a lunch stop, after which Shazza took control of the steering wheel, however we also ended up having an unscheduled coffee break stop, just because we could, but then an additional comfort break stop, probably due to the extra unscheduled coffee stop 😂 But hey, we were on holiday now, so we were in no particular hurry, we had already pre-booked our hotel accommodation so we could just take our time 🤷‍♂️

Our hotel was located on a hilltop, within the grounds of ‘Lorca Castle’ and overlooking the large town below. The views from our room window, and elsewhere around the hotel, were absolutely stunning and we ate dinner that evening on the outer terrace of the Restaurant, it was so warm with just a slight breeze blowing and it was so quiet, no road noise, no dogs barking, no excitable or tired children, just the moonlight and the lights of the town below, it was as near perfect as it could get and the ideal way to commence our road trip.

The only minor issue was that unless you were a keen hill walker, or mountain goat, access to the town below was either by taxi (€10) or using our own car, I was happy to get reception to call for a taxi but Shazza said that she was happy to drive down the following morning. So that had been the plan, except that once we got back to our room and checked the weather forecast for that following day it appeared that the ‘Works of Fiction’ had other ideas 🙄 Heavy rain and thunder was forecast to commence from 07:00am, right through until the early evening so we agreed on a wet weather plan ! We decided that we would have a lazy start to the morning, then breakfast around 9:30am, followed by a session in the internally heated Spa swimming pool, which was ‘free’ to use, only the Spa treatments, if we chose to have any, would come at an additional charge, however, we both agreed that we had far too many wrinkles for one Spa treatment to resolve or have any noticeable impact, so we would perhaps give them a miss 🤭🤭 Then we would go and have a light lunch, followed by the mandatory Siesta, it would of course be rude not to, then in the evening, a nice Dinner and, just to round off our re-arranged day, we would watch the Serbia v England World Cup Qualifier match on our iPad, it was pointless getting frustrated at the weather, just another one of those many things in life that we had absolutely no control over 🤷‍♂️

Perhaps it was the ‘Dark Forces’ seeking their revenge on us, but because we had made yet another plan in readiness, it seemed that we were to thwart them once again. I awoke early and looked out of the large window, expecting to see dark storm clouds and even rain on the windows, so I got a pleasant surprise when my view was one of white clouds, with some patches of early morning blue sky. The hastily arranged wet weather programme was shelved and the original sightseeing plan re-instated.

We found a parking area right opposite the towns magnificent looking ‘Visitor Centre’, although it would only accept a single €1 coin which only gave us 90 minutes. Rather than do battle with the traffic in the very busy town to try and locate another car park that would offer longer stay parking, as it was only a ten minute walk into the centre we decided to do a preliminary reconnaissance and then, if it was worth staying longer we would return and feed the parking meter with another €1, which is exactly what we did, however, on our return visit to the pay machine, I observed that we could actually put €1.45 into the machine, the maximum permitted, and when the new ticket came out it gave us 4 hours 🤷‍♂️ strange, very strange, as it hadn’t shown the different rate earlier that day. However, we were not complaining as we had used up the first thirty-minutes of our original ticket having ‘Coffee and Tostado’s’ in the Plaza de Espana, so now we could just wander at our leisure.

Our usual habit is to obtain a street plan from the Tourist Information centre and use that as sort of guide to find our way around large towns, but more often than not we just do not refer to it and wander aimlessly discovering places for ourselves, and that is exactly what we did this time. As you my reader’s already know by now, neither of us are ‘History Buffs’ or ‘Shoppers’ we much prefer to wander down narrow streets, getting lost as we do so, but always managing to find our way back to where we had parked the car. Sometimes that may mean missing some significant or even unique tourist attractions in that particular town or city, but we can live with that, although often we find some interesting places too, and get to see the mix between the historical areas and the more modern parts, which in truth are often intermingled with each other anyway, and that was the case here in Lorca.

It was inevitable that eventually at some point in our wanderings, through the back streets and alleyways, that we would find ourselves in the more modern town centre, with all of the more usual high street stores, the crowds of people and the busy and very noisy traffic, our worst nightmare 😲 There were lots of historical buildings, churches and museums, most of which we didn’t bother entering but, if you were that way inclined, I would guess that you could spend two ‘full’ days here visiting them all, or if you were a ‘Shopper’, at least several hours wandering in and out of all the shops and of course, the usual array of ‘Tourist Tat’ retailers, but what surprised us here in Lorca were the high volume of street beggars, going around the Public Parks and Cafe’s with their palms open wide, not just the odd one or two but absolutely dozens of them, you could spend a fortune just giving everyone of them even just a handful of change, but which one’s do you give handout’s to and which do you choose not to 🤷‍♂️ We took the option to decline, politely of course, to not give anything to any of them, it seemed the only fair way. We found a nice side street cafe to have a snack lunch, of course with the obligatory beggar, who cannot have been that hungry as we did offer to buy him a coffee and sandwich, but he wanted ‘Dinero’ (Money), which we declined to provide him with. After resting our rapidly weary legs we commenced heading back towards where we had parked the car. Just as an aside, it seems worthy of a mention, the sky remained a bright blue, hardly a cloud in the sky all the time we were out and, the temperature at one point registered 32 degrees(c) 🥵 So much for the accuracy, once again, by the ‘Works of Fiction’, which still proves that the ‘Forrest Gump’ method is by far the best option. Our day finished on a high, another dinner taken on the lovely open terrace of the hotel and to wrap up our brief stay in Lorca, we sat and watched England, somewhat surprisingly, beat Serbia 5-0, the perfect end to a perfect day.

I do not know why we bother, but ahead of another long drive the following day, we still checked the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast for our drive North, up along the coastline, and yet again it didn’t bode well 😳

I guess we will just have to wait and see what our ‘Forrest Gump’ forecast reflects in the morning 🤷‍♂️

Our journey continues ‘Onwards and Upwards’ so, until the next time……………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena