It was the 24th January, brilliant sunshine, clear blue sky and just a little over 20 degrees(c) with only the slightest hint of a breeze, so there we were, sat on a sun-drenched balcony, overlooking the pool with its vast array of brown canvas covered sun beds, the sound of the gentle waves of the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea gently lapping up onto the shoreline, which was no more than fifty metres away from where we were sat. However, just being sat there, soaking up the sunshine and the ambience, we were immediately transported back to another time, well over 11 years ago now, which was the very last time that we had taken our last proper fourteen night luxury holiday, in a five star seafront RIU Hotel in Mexico. Now, whilst we may be in yet another RIU hotel, which for those that do not know, is actually a Spanish owned Hotel Chain Group, who have luxury accommodations all over the world, but we were certainly not in Mexico, we were not on a fourteen night holiday and neither had we travelled on a long haul flight to enjoy these luxurious accommodations. We were in fact still in Spain and just a two hour leisurely drive North from our own sun drenched balcony. Shazza had decided that ‘we’ should take a short four day break, which I guess you may say, coming from what is our own normal everyday seaside location home, to another seaside location just up the coastline, is probably a little like taking ‘A Busman’s Holiday’ just to exchange one sea view balcony for another.

So, you may be wondering, what were we doing here, and more importantly, why would a tight Yorkshireman even contemplate actually paying for the privilege of enjoying a hotel balcony with a sea view when we already owned our own ? To answer that I guess that I need to rewind a little first, for this had been one of those ‘Shazza’s Adventures’, totally unplanned and unscheduled and sprung upon me with no prior warning, “Yes At Last, Shazza Is Back” I thought to myself, which I guess, after having seemingly lost her ‘MoJo’ recently, is a good thing, isn’t it …………🤔

Some three weeks earlier………………..

For the both of us, there is actually a massive difference between actually being ill, as opposed to just not feeling quite right. If we were really ill and if, after perhaps suffering for a week, the symptoms did not decline, or perhaps even tended to worsen, then quite possibly we may have considered making an appointment to see a doctor, but, if we are just ‘not feeling quite right’, that would basically just entail us waiting, and continuing to suffer, until whatever it was that was making us feel ‘not quite right’, just disappeared again of it’s own accord. However, I do have to say that it is very unusual for both Shazza and I to suffer with ‘something’ at the same time and, that ‘something’ having identical symptoms, but that is exactly what had happened to us right at the start of the New Year, although nothing to do with our New Year’s Eve festivities I hasten to add, but this ‘not feeling quite right’ had started within a day or so after New Year’s Day. We had actually both been sleeping relatively well at night, getting a good 6-8 hours (Shazza probably nearer 10 🤭) yet, not long after we had woken up and started moving about, just doing normal routine sort of stuff, nothing too strenuous, we both felt extremely fatigued and just wanting to go back to sleep, with that fatigue came a constant nausea and we both had a strange discomfort in our stomachs, although that discomfort is hard to actually describe as it was not a pain, or even an ache, no ‘delly belly’ symptoms or anything like that, just an indescribable sort of discomfort in the pit of our stomachs, although, I have to say that it didn’t stop us eating normally, so we cannot have been that bad 🙄 Neither of us were suffering with any Cold or Flu like symptoms, no coughs and sneezes, watery eyes, sore throats, fever or headaches, we both just did not feel ‘quite right’ and that feeling lasted every single day, morning through night, for a little over two weeks. Of course we considered whether we had perhaps contracted this new strain of ‘Covid’ that is currently circulating, especially with the knowledge that, over the last couple of months, the infection rates for both Influenza and Covid, here in Andalusia, have gone up by 37%. We had also only recently returned from our Christmas trip to Munich, having been confined in a very small, re-circulated air, metal tube, on both the outward and return flights for a period of three hours on each journey, necessitating mixing, at very close quarters, amongst hoards of total strangers on the aircraft and in the Airports, those strangers having themselves travelled from god knows where in the wider world. Then, whilst in Munich we had travelled on numerous busy trains, and of course visited busy city centre venues and hostelries. So, we asked ourselves, could it be possible that we had both contracted this latest new strain of ‘Covid’ as we had got out of the habit of wearing face masks ? It was certainly one possible explanation that we could not confidently rule out, although we were not suffering with shortness of breath or other associated bronchial symptoms 🤷‍♂️

So of course, we did what everybody else probably does, knowing full well of course that we shouldn’t, but you do it anyway don’t you ? Yes we foolishly went on-line and checked out what ‘Dr Google’ had to say about our symptoms and, having done so, of course, and as already anticipated, we were bombarded with a vast number of potentially very serious medical conditions that we could be suffering from, each of them varying in their degree of seriousness, from potentially fatal diseases, requiring us to seek immediate urgent hospital admission, to those just necessitating us having to go to see a doctor, albeit as a matter of some urgency and, of course, each diagnosis we checked on the long list of medical contenders included ‘Covid’, just by way of ensuring that they covered all eventualities and possibilities 🙄 Now although neither of us are medically qualified, we discounted ‘all’ of their diagnosis with deep disdain, although I have to say that secretly, at some point after our on-line consultations, when we each found ourselves alone, we surreptitiously checked that the other’s life insurance policy premiums were duly paid and up to date 😂

We did however still try to continue to take our walks, although not daily, whilst ensuring we kept our distance from other’s just to be on the safe side in case we did have Covid, so not wishing to transmit it to other’s, we had also unearthed our supply of face masks again, for when close proximity with other’s could not be avoided, like when we went to do the weekly shopping. However, and very fortunately, the weather did come to our assistance with needing to restrict and restrain our normal daily outdoor movements. Between ourselves we check four different ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, on a daily basis, and on the extremely rare occasions when all four actually reflect the same daily forecast then, generally speaking, those predicted forecasts do tend to be somewhere near accurate. Although their was one rebellious ‘Works of Fiction’ forecaster who, whilst generally agreeing with the other’s, in that we were in for a full weeks worth of rain, which was to vary from the lighter more drizzly stuffy, to the much heavier and prolonged downpours with periods of thunder and lightening, which happened to give us something different to entertain us whilst we were confined. However, this particular rebel, being a lot like myself, more of an eternal optimist, actually showed some periods within that otherwise dismal weeks forecast, of there being some brighter and drier periods and, as it turned out, the rebellious one was, on this occasion, proven to be right 👍 But overall we were generally confined to barracks for the majority of that week and so didn’t need to beat ourselves up too much about being extremely lethargic and not taking our more usual daily exercise. We consoled ourselves with the fact that they were having far worse weather conditions in the Northern parts of Spain, with heavy snow, and not just in the higher mountainous areas where it was normal at this time of year, whereas we on the other hand, although experiencing some rain, the temperatures remained between 15-18 degree(c) whilst up North, in the snow, it had fallen as low as -13 degrees(c) 🥶

Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, we awoke one morning to happily discover that we actually felt ‘normal’ again, although actually defining what is ‘normal’ about us can sometimes be a little difficult to articulate, but suffice to say that we were no longer suffering from fatigue, there was no nausea and no stomach discomfort, so whatever ‘bug’ we had contracted had finally outlived its incubation period, and without the need for any medical intervention, so we finally both felt healthy again, to be perfectly honest, I have always trusted that, if left to its own devices, the bodies immune system will, generally speaking, deal with any routine bugs and infections and introducing over the counter medications to relieve symptoms can often interfere with the bodies natural immune system defences.

Now, this couple of weeks of ‘not feeling quite right’ and the subsequent confinement, was not actually the catalyst for Shazza’s sudden mini-adventure, however, as a consequence of it, and in combination with virtually a week’s poor weather conditions, we tended to watch a lot more afternoon TV, in particular a programme called ‘A Place In The Sun, What Happened Next ?’, which entailed the original presenter revisiting the people who had purchased properties in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe, to see basically how they had settled in several years later, to their new lifestyles. Many of them had done some improvements to their new homes, ranging from extensive renovations, or basic internal improvements or perhaps even just a spot of re-decorating but, they had all settled in to their new communities and had started to explore their new environments and venturing a little further afield from their immediate communities.

When we initially purchased, what had been intended as just a temporary sort of ‘Bolt Hole’, some nine year’s previously, we of course re-decorated, and purchased a few new furnishings and then, on each short ninety-day return visit we also spent some of our time exploring our local area, that had been fun and also very interesting. However, since making this our permanent home, over the last seven months, we both feel that we have begun to just slip back into a more ‘conventional’ style of living, enjoying our immediate local area but not really venturing anywhere too far from our immediate home base anymore. Now yes, we do have our ‘Bucket List’ of trips, and we do still have every good intention of doing some of them over the next few year’s, but we both agreed that recently we were beginning to allow ourselves to just get a little too comfortable in our routines and daily lives. Now perhaps we can be forgiven, for that is the ‘problem’ we have, with having everything that we need literally already on our doorstep, a nice comfortable home with nice sea and Mountain View’s, a swimming pool just a two-minute walk from our front door, the sea, several beaches, the marina, the town, beach bars, cafe’s, restaurants, shops, walks etc. etc. etc. although, I do have to just say that describing those things in our lives as a ‘problem’ has brought a rather wry smile to my face 😁 But in truth, we are in danger of losing our appetite for adventure, of not taking opportunities to see new places, many of which are also pretty much right on our doorstep. Yes we have visited quite a few places over the last few years, both along the coastline and inland, but there are still lots of places, relatively local and within only a couple of hours drive, places that we have both said we would like to visit, but it seems that recently our ‘get up and go’ had got up and gone, without us 😲 So watching these ‘Relocation’ programmes on the TV served to give us a gentle kick up the backside and so we both agreed, in principle at least, that we need to re-ignite our wanderlust and sense of adventure.

I had actually mentioned to Shazza, just prior to us not feeling quite right, about going on a ‘day trip’ to ‘Nerja’, which is a pretty tourist town just around the bay from Malaga and only around a two hour drive away, it was one of those places that we had both previously said that we would like to visit, however, on that occasion she had just screwed her nose up in a disinterested sort of way.

So you can probably imagine my surprise when suddenly, the morning after getting over our unknown illness, she announces “Should we go away for a few days ?”, I picked up first on the ‘few days’ part of her sentence and immediately thought she was going to suggest going to ‘Granada’, which to be honest, for me, at this time of year, with temperatures still on the cool side in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it wasn’t a prospect that I would cherish. I gave her one of my non-committal sort of looks, “So where do you fancy going for these few days ?” I asked, whilst at the same time subconsciously starting to think about where I had stored my thermals, but I was pleasantly surprised when she suggested going to ‘Nerja’. Of course, Shazza being Shazza, this had not really been a spur of the moment decision, as when I said that it sounded like a good idea, she instantaneously reeled off the particular Hotel that she wanted to stay at, and a list of places that we would could visit whilst we were there. “When do you want to go ?” I enquired, but then nearly choked on my coffee when she came back instantaneously with “Tommorrow” 😲 There was certainly nothing actually stopping us from going, so as soon as I had said ‘Okay, why not” that was it, she immediately went on-line and booked us in for three nights at the RIU Monica seafront hotel in ‘Nerja’.

We packed our suitcases that evening, it was the first time that we would get to use our individual and recently acquired new ‘Cabin Baggage’ sized cases and, although we had agreed that we were in no real rush to depart the following morning, as we could not Check-in to our hotel room until 3pm, that morning, as soon as we had drunk our morning coffee’s, Shazza seemed to me to be a little too eager to get on the road, but leave we did, a little after 10:00am, when we didn’t actually need to depart until nearer 1pm 🤷‍♂️ However, the reason for such a prompt departure was soon to become abundantly clear.

It has been quite some time since I have experienced the ‘Shazza Adventures’ syndrome, so I had forgotten that she would already have had some sort of hidden itinerary already organised and planned in her mind, one that she would not share with me beforehand and would only divulge when it was too late for me to protest, or to actually have an opinion about 🙄 Part of her itinerary was to visit the ‘Cueva Nerja’ which are a series of caverns stretching for almost 5 kilometres (or 3.1 miles in our previous UK distance measurements), these caverns being one of Spain’s major tourist attractions. The caves have actually existed for centuries, even used as dwellings in Prehistoric times, but they were only rediscovered in more recent times. On the 12th January 1959, five friends followed a flock of bats that had entered through a narrow sinkhole, now known as “La Mina“, which formed one of only two natural entrances to the cave system. The caverns contain the world’s largest ‘stalactite’, measuring a height of 33 metres (a little over 108 feet). However, a third entrance was created in 1960, to allow easy access for tourists. The cave is divided into two main parts, known as Nerja I and Nerja II. Nerja I includes the Show Galleries which are open to the public, Nerja II is only accessible to those doing research projects. So, Shazza’s plan was to go and visit the caves first, prior to checking-in at the hotel, it seemed to be a good plan to me and a good use of our day, with the added bonus that I like exploring caves, which she knows. So, with Shazza (Luis Hamilton) ‘electing’ to do the driving, I was more than happy to settle back and just enjoy the morning sunshine and the stunning scenery, on one side the glittering blue sea and on the other, the mountains. I of course made sure to point out to Shazza, the snow capped ‘Sierra Nevada’ mountains in the distance, just in case she had already started to formulate any other secret ‘Shazza Adventures’ in her mind 🤭

We could have parked in a large car park at the caves for just €2, however, literally outside the entrance there was an area of rough ground that was also being utilised for car parking, for a fee of only €1, well who can turn down a saving of 50% 😂 The actual cost to go into the cave was €33 (€17.50 for Shazza and for geriatrics over 65 years, like myself, €15.50) but believe me, it was well worth the cost. Now just for anyone reading this who has already visited ‘St Michael’s Cave’ on Gibraltar, then imagine that, but on a very much larger scale !! You can also download an App, completely free, onto your phone (Translations in different languages, Top Tip: select the children’s version which provides a much more interesting narrative 👍). There is no restricted headroom inside the cave, so no need to worry about claustrophobia, or having to wear a hard hat and ruining your hairstyle 🤭, the walkways are wide and well illuminated and you are permitted to take photographs, but you cannot use a ‘flash’. Once you have completed the cave tour, which took us between 45-60 minutes, but there is no time restriction and will depend of course on how fast you walk, there is also the usual ‘Tourist Tat’ shop as you exit, and an on-site cafeteria and then a nice garden area to walk around, with shaded picnic tables if you elect to bring your own food. There is also a footbridge, which will take you across to the small coastal town of ‘Maro’, so you could make a full day of it, if you so wished.

Shazza had done her ‘due diligence’ research on the on-site Cafeteria and said that the reviews were not very good in respect of the quality and price of the food or the service from the staff, however, just outside the entrance, right across from where we had parked our car, there was a ‘Taberna’ with a nice inner courtyard, now that had received a lot of very good reviews, so that is where we chose to have our lunch. There were lots of menu choices but we selected to share a plate of ‘Mixta Tapas’, and we ordered two small cold beers, it would have been rude not to 😁 We didn’t expect there to be too much, portion wise, as far as quantity of Tapas, but boy were we surprised when it was delivered to the table, there was a selection of 7 different choice Tapas and we were glad that we had not ordered one each, as there was more than enough for the both of us, the total bill was also very nice at only €15 😁

We had an enjoyable time at the caves and then, after our lunch stop, we made our way into Nerja and found our hotel, just a short 15 minute drive away from the Caves. There was car parking available at the hotel, which we could have pre-booked at €23 per day 😲 However, once again, as part of Shazza’s due diligence research, she had located a public car park just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel on the opposite side of the road, for just €1 per day, it was a no brainer.

We would not be having a big layout on food costs over the next 3-4 days either, as our hotel booking came with ‘Half Board’ included in the price, Desayuno y Cena (Breakfast and Dinner). Having stayed in numerous RIU hotels around the world over the years, we knew that we would be spoilt for choice in the Buffet Style restaurant and that the quality would be top notch, we were not to be disappointed. When we checked-in, the very friendly receptionist informed us that the hotel was fully booked and therefore the ‘Standard Double Room’ with a balcony and sea view, that we had pre-booked twenty-four hours earlier, was not available, so we had been upgraded to a ‘Double De-Luxe’, at no additional cost. As we were doing the check-in procedure another member of staff came over and presented us each with a glass of Champagne, a welcome drink, although I suspect that it was probably ‘Cava’, but it was a very appreciative welcoming touch and so we both enjoyed our additional unexpected Anti-Covid Medications 👍

When we entered our ‘upgraded’ room all the curtains were closed and so we set about opening them to let the beautiful sunshine in, but my heart sunk, for whilst the room was very large with two massive beds and a separate side table and chairs, with the usual large screen TV, mini bar, tea and coffee making facilities etc, but when I pulled back the curtains, although there was a large and wide floor to ceiling window, it only had a side view of the swimming pool and the sea, and no balcony, to say that I was disappointed would be a massive understatement 😔

Shazza went down a hallway in our room to where the large bathroom facilities were located, shortly afterwards she called for me to go and have a look. To be honest, a bathroom is a bathroom, as far as I was concerned 🤷‍♂️ so as long as it had the usual facilities I didn’t really care that much. However as I walked down the hallway towards her, she opened up another set of curtains to reveal a double patio door leading on to a very generous balcony, with a table and two chairs and …… a front facing pool and sea view !! (See Photo at top of blog page) my face was almost not wide enough to fit the smile that now appeared right across it 🤗

We spent the rest of the afternoon ‘at leisure’, which as you may imagine, entailed a great deal of time sat on the sun soaked balcony 😎 and perhaps a little bit of time in ‘Personal Contemplation’, which as you know, is always best done with one’s eyes closed 😉 Later we had a bit of an exploration outside our room to find out where the other facilities were located, which included a small, but adequate, indoor heated pool, a small but well equipped gymnasium (but do not expect a practical review of any of the equipment 😂), Buffet Restaurant with a large outside terrace, separate internal Bar area, lots of internal seating areas, an outside snack bar and seating area, and of course the outside pool and sun lounging area, with an external security gate that gave entry directly onto the seafront promenade. This particular RIU hotel had only been graded as a Four Star, probably because it did not have individual cooking stations in the buffet restaurant or a separate ‘A La Carte’ restaurant as its sister hotels have in some of the long haul destinations, but even so, in my book at least, it would have been well worth the full Five Stars as it was immaculately clean, all over the hotel and not just our room, without exception all of the staff were so very friendly, the food was absolutely superb and the multitude of culinary choices enabled everyone, irrespective of their dietary needs, to find something to suit their palate, and it was plentiful 👍

We both enjoyed a wonderful night’s sleep, each having the equivalent of a double bed to ourselves, so there was no need for me to have to pinch back any covers from you know who 😉 As is usual these days, I awoke quite early, Shazza was still in dreamland, so I made myself a mug of hot coffee and sat on the balcony watching the sun rise, whilst listening to the gentle waves lapping up on to the shoreline. There were several joggers and walkers out and about on the promenade, of course I would have joined them, but I had only just made a nice hot cuppa and I had also left my tight fitting, almost obscene, Lycra at home (Not a thought to ponder on !!), I suppose I could have always just worn my ‘budgie smugglers’, perhaps tomorrow morning eh !! Once Shazza had awoken I made her a cuppa, some morning routines never change even on a mini-break holiday 😁 We showered and then enjoyed a hearty breakfast, I succumbed and had two bacon sandwiches, well it would have been rude not to seeing as they had gone to the trouble of cooking it just as I like it 😉 Full Continental style and full English breakfasts were also available, Shazza stuck to her healthy cereal and fruit. Today was going to be spent exploring Nerja itself, which was only a short distance walk away.

We knew that Nerja was a very popular ‘All Year Round’ Tourist destination, this was confirmed by the vast amount of ‘Tourist Tat’ shops we passed in almost every alleyway that we wandered along, with of course numerous Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, and lots of Hotels and Holiday Rental properties, but it was pleasant enough and their were plenty of people out and about, which added to the holiday ambience.

After a lot of wearing out more of the rubber soles on our flip-flops we found a quiet plaza with a nice Cafe, so of course it would have been rude of us not to. Once suitably refreshed the next port of call, conveniently only a couple of minutes walk away, was the museum that showed how the Region and the town had evolved since prehistoric times. We always like to go and take a look at such places, although we never spend too much time in them, something to do with us both being ‘History Heathens’, although sometimes we do learn some little snippets of information that, at the time is quite interesting to read, or see, but we generally quite conveniently tend to forget it again very shortly afterwards 🤷‍♂️ To be absolutely truthful, the best Museum we have ever visited was the ‘Museum of Liverpool’, in the UK, an account of which appeared in one of my previous rambles, when we were staying at Southport in the van and went to the City on the train for a day trip, unlike this one which cost us €3 each entrance fee, which was in itself extremely reasonable, but in comparison, the entrance fee to the one in Liverpool was, quite remarkably, ‘Free’. The Nerja museum looked pretty new, so perhaps they are still gathering exhibition pieces and information to put on display, but it passed around thirty minutes and at least it was much cooler inside 🥵

Sightseeing completed we decided to try and find somewhere to eat lunch, I wouldn’t normally have eaten breakfast and then had a lunch, but all this walking had given me an appetite, but we were not going to be mugged in broad daylight at the ‘Tourist’ eateries, so we spent some time wandering in and out of alleyways looking for a more suitable venue. As it happened we found ourselves about half way back to the hotel at a nice pavement side Cafe/Restaurant just off the promenade, and after perusing the menu we took a seat, ordered a couple of Anti-Covid Vaccines and awaited the delivery of our healthy lunch.

That was it for our second day’s activities, we spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening ‘At Leisure’ as they say, a spot of more people watching but this time from our room balcony, which can often provide some amusement in itself, especially when looking at the swimwear styles of some folk, or should I say, the lack of it 😲 We agreed that whilst some may wish not to return home with any ‘White Bits’, us ‘prudes’ agreed that, perhaps ‘G-Strings’ should probably be adorned by the much more youthful and appropriately sized individuals, although I guess I should really take my hat off to them, if only for the purpose of providing them with something to assist in covering certain ‘full figured’ individuals body parts 🤭

Our final full day was to involve another short fifteen minute drive in the car, to the inland and slightly more elevated hillside town of ‘Frigiliana’. Now this was another one of those places that we had often seen on that programme that I have mentioned earlier in this ramble, ‘A Place In The Sun’. On the programme it had looked very pretty, as a lot of Spanish whitewashed Towns and Villages of course do, and, as it was on the doorstep so to speak, it would be an opportunity to see what it actually looked like ‘In the flesh’. The Town (or Village 🤷‍♂️) is divided into two parts, each having a selection of retail establishments to service the local community, however, the main part was the more ‘Touristy’ bit, you know, with all the usual ‘Tourist Tat’ shops, as well as the vast array of Cafe/Bars and Restaurants. Shazza had of course done her due diligence and had identified the location of the main car park, which was quite a modern looking underground multi-storey car park, at extremely economical hourly rates, we were the only vehicle in it when we arrived at 10:00am 🤔 We had not thought this trip out too well, it was a hillside Town (or Village) with very ‘narrow’ cobbled and winding streets on varying levels, perhaps flip-flops were not the best choice of footwear on this occasion, and of course, being surrounded by varying height mountainous terrains, the streets that had not yet been touched by the warming sunshine made it a little chilly, if only we had brought our warmer fleeces, this is what happens when you become accustomed to the much warmer living down at sea-level 🙄

We decided to just wander, up and down the various narrow streets, looking for somewhere to grab a warming coffee, but everywhere was shut, apart from a couple of ‘Panaderias’ (Bakery), a small mini-market and a small car garage, even the ‘Tourist Tat’ establishments were closed along with the all the Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, surely some of the locals must have occasionally gone out for a morning coffee, that’s where they usually meet with other locals to catch up with all the local gossip. We knew that some retail businesses, and hostelries, would close down at this time of year to have their vacations, and some notices on locked entrance doors indicated that this was the case, but surely not all of them at the same time. We continued to just wander, the streets were nicely decorated with colourful plants in brightly painted plant pots, their were small inner courtyards with half a dozen small houses packed in like sardines around them, it was a pretty place, just totally devoid of almost any other human presence 😲 We were glad that when we were property hunting that we had not come here in the height of Summer, when it would have been fully open for business and had that charm feeling, to then discover that for the rest of the year we would have little to do, unless we drove down to the sea, even the main facilities like Supermarkets, Banks, Post Office etc. were located down in Nerja.

Our calf muscles had had enough, as had we, mainly because we were constantly trying to stop our flip-flops from rolling away down the street without us, so we decided that whilst this charming hillside Town (or Village) would probably have been much nicer had we have chosen to visit in the Summer ‘Tourist Season’, for us, well at least when we next see it featured on ‘A Place In The Sun’ we will know the reality of living all year round here. We made our way back to the car park where we did finally discover a Cafe that was open, with chairs and tables in the sunshine, so as we had not eaten breakfast in the hotel that morning, as we had decided that we would get here first and then enjoy ‘A Brunch In The Sun’, we settled for a ‘Cafe con Leche Y Tostado’, which I have to say was very nice.

It was a little after midday by the time we returned to the hotel and, after a short coffee break on our balcony, we decided to take a final walk along the seafront promenade, but this time in the opposite direction to the Town, when we returned we stopped at the Hotel poolside snack bar, ordered a couple of small cold beers, Shazza had a bowl of ‘Parmesan’ coated ‘Patata Fritas’ (Chips) and I settled for a slice of ‘Tortilla’ (Spanish Omelette), we sat in the sunshine and both agreed that it had been a very nice few days break and that we should do this a lot more often, even taking much longer breaks and travelling much further afield, there are still a lot of wonderful places to see throughout Spain. However, in the next few weeks we had other commitments, Shazza’s Aunt and Uncle, who have made a point of regularly visiting us here in Spain over the last 9 years, albeit often at short notice, were arriving on 15th February and then two weeks after they leave, we would be having our much awaited new kitchen installed. My daughter and Son-in-Law have now booked their visit to us in July, arriving the day after her Birthday, our Son, Daughter-in-Law and three Grandchildren have asked if they can come out again this Summer, although no dates have yet been confirmed, and of course we have our trip to Austria at the beginning of August. So with our first Annual Spanish Tax Returns to be submitted in April, our first car service to be done here in Spain in May (already pre-booked) and, the commencement of our Residency renewals to start sorting out, at the beginning of April, so we have another busy start to the first half of this year. We, or should I say, Shazza, will have to pick any future ‘Adventures’ in between those known commitments, as for me, well I have the very important task of ensuring that the money is in the bank and readily available, for I may well get very little advance notice of such adventures beforehand 😂

until my next ramble………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigo’s, La Vida Es Buena 👍

It is an odd sort of feeling, one day we feel as if we have lived here for ages and settled in to normal daily life, but then there are other days when we still feel as if we have to pinch ourselves. It was a pleasant sunny Sunday morning, quite warm, we had gone out for our usual daily walk into our local town, which was relatively busy for a Sunday, with parents sat around the play park chewing the fat with other parents, whilst their charges burnt off excess energy on the various pieces of play equipment, the more elderly folk sat on benches just enjoying warming their arthritic bones in the warming rays of the sun, and the usual array of dog walkers, and joggers, and cyclists, just strutting or pedalling their stuff, all seemingly without a care in the world, it felt nice to be out and about amongst them.

Our usual Spanish Cafe was still closed for its festive break, but we had another that we also regularly use, just by way of a change and one that had taken full financial advantage by remaining open, whilst its competitors were taking their short festive break. It was a good decision by them as almost all of the outside tables were occupied, some enjoying a late breakfast, others with ‘Tapas’ and enjoying a beer or even a glass of wine, although it was still far too early for me to partake of that kind of Anti-Covid Vaccine, or was it, surely their is no bad time to take a precautionary dose of health medication 🤔 We were fortunate that one table was just being vacated as we approached and, as a bonus, it was front row with a good beach and sea-view and so we were able to sit with our sunglasses on, not just to protect our eyes from the glare but also to conceal our eyes from our people watching targets 😂 The lady owner was busy serving the hoards, but when she glanced over and saw us sit down she called across “Hola, Y Feliz Ano Nuevo, Dos Cafe con Leche ?” (Hello and Happy New year, two coffee’s ?), I responded with “Si Gracias, Y la misma para ti” (Yes thank you and the same to you), there is a nice feel good factor in knowing that you are treated as regular customer’s, although I have to say that I noted a few frowned expressions coming from some of the people on the tables that had arrived before us, and who were obviously still waiting to be served. We sat, trying to listen in to some of the conversations, there was too much of a mix though, Spanish, English, Irish, German and some with a Scandinavian sort of twang to them, although I didn’t know enough about the different languages to discern which part of Scandinavia they were from. There was just too much jibber jabbering taking place to really tune in to any one specific conversation, however, the ambience was good. Whilst we sat enjoying our coffee there were times when Shazza and I would just chatter amongst ourselves, nothing specific just small talk, as you do, and then there were periods of silence between us as we each just enjoyed the moment, people watching, as you do, it would have been rude not to when people had gone to all the effort of promenading up and down in front of us 😁 This was also another one of those ‘pinch me’ moments, how many times over the past few years had we sat here, or in a similar position on this seafront promenade, in the sunshine, looking out at the sea and the mountains and said to each other, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually lived here” and then felt sad at the thought of having to return to the UK. We both wondered how long we would continue to keep having these ‘Pinch Me Moments’, personally speaking, I hope we never stop having them, for every time that we do, it just makes us feel so contented with our lives, and that feeling is priceless.

Usually on a weekend we would eat lunch out somewhere on both days, either somewhere in town along the seafront, or in the Marina, or as we had done the previous evening, chose to eat dinner at our local Indian Restaurant. We had forfeited eating out the previous weekend after returning from our recent, and rather over indulgent, week long trip to Munich, as we were trying to get back on the straight and narrow, for we had both put on a few extra kilo’s, although it had not been as bad as it could have been, at least the bathroom scales hadn’t shouted, “Get off you fat t***s” when we got on them upon our return. But we had also decided that for a change, the following day, we would go in to Estepona, as I had discovered, on Facebook, a new 100% ‘Plant Based’ restaurant and so thought that we would give it a go. When we usually go out to eat, Shazza has to make do with what the menu’s have to offer, to suit her more disciplined ‘Plant Based’ dietary requirements, whereas I do not have the same restricted options as I am more of a ‘Flexitarian’. We both tend to eat completely Plant Based meals when we are at home, during weekdays, and so I use the eating out at weekends as a bit of a treat, if I want to satisfy my more carnivorous tastebuds, although to be completely honest, even then it is, more often than not, either Fish or Chicken, rather than what is more commonly referred to as ‘red meat’. We have been on this ‘Plant Based’ diet now for four years would you believe, and we still smile when we think back to the time when we first started, then it was more of a Shazza spontaneous decision and it was only supposed to be for one month, to participate in the annual ‘Veganuary’ event 🤷‍♂️ Strange really, but it only took about 2-3 weeks for our tastebuds to get used to the new ‘Plant Based’ regime and for our digestive systems to adapt to not eating meat, although I can certainly understand why some people never actually get to that stage, or beyond, as lots of vegetables, legumes (beans) and fruit = lots of 💨💨💨 So when people tell me that I am just full of hot air, they are actually correct 🤭

I awoke on the Monday morning and after what had been a very nice warm weekend it now felt unusually cold, I sat enjoying my morning coffee on the balcony, the sun was only just rising so it was still rather dusky with not yet quite enough daylight for the street lamps to turn themselves off. The thermometer though was registering the morning temperature as only being 5 degrees(c) 🥶 which, in itself, is unusually low for this part of the Costa del Sol. I remember thinking how nice it will be to be able to get back to the warmer mornings when I can sit enjoying my morning coffee wearing only my shorts again, instead of my PJ’s, slippers and wrapped in my thick dressing gown. However, once the sun had awoken properly, and rubbed the sleep from its eyes, the temperatures would start to rise and soon reach the more usual daily afternoon winter temperature of around 16 degrees(c), but the chill factor in the light breeze would reduce that to nearer 14 degrees(c), so for our trip into Estepona we would need to dress appropriately.

I checked the morning and weekly ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for Spain and could see that the Sierra Nevada area, around 3 hours further north from us, and the Pyrenees, a good 10 hours even further North, were both enjoying some of the usual seasonal snow, which was a good thing economically for Spain as it attracts the winter skiers ⛷️ and snow boarders 🏂 I also routinely check the temperatures in both the UK and in Munich, where we discovered that we had timed our visit to perfection as they were now experiencing very low minus temperatures during both the daytime and at nights 🥶

We parked in our usual place in Estepona, just a little outside the main town at the North end of the promenade, in a car park opposite the large ‘Carrefour’ supermarket. Unusually, for this particular parking area, their were several free parking bays, we parked near the top end as upon our return we needed to pop into the supermarket to purchase a new ironing board as Shazza had broken the old one, applying too much weight on the iron trying to get sharp creases into her knickers I suspect 😂

It was a lovely sunny morning and so clear that both Gibraltar and Africa were clearly visible from the promenade. I don’t know why, but looking out across the sea to another continent always makes me feel pretty happy and puts a bit of a spring in my step, strange but true. We were too early for lunch so we just strolled along the promenade, it was fairly busy with other’s just doing much the same as us, meandering rather than power walking, we stopped at one of the many seafront Cafes, sat outside in the sunshine with our coffee’s, listening to a busker with his guitar, me attempting to guess the tunes he was playing, it wasn’t loud banging pop music tunes, just gentle rhythmic strumming, he was very good and I could have sat there listening for much longer. Shazza and I can often be thinking the same things, without actually knowing it at the time, the other evening I was sat watching the TV when suddenly, for no apparent reason, in my mind I wondered whether we had any spare Oat milk left, as I had noticed that particular morning when I had made the coffees that the carton in the fridge was getting low, but I hadn’t bothered checking. Without me say anything about it, quite literally within seconds of me having that thought, she got up off the sofa and made her way towards the kitchen, “Where are you going” I asked, “Just to check to see if we have any more cartons of Milk” she responded 😲 Now, here we were at the Cafe in Estepona, in a moment of quiet contemplation, just enjoying the buskers tunes, I started to wonder where we would have been in the van in the UK, if we had not chosen to take up residency here, for we would by now have already departed Spain, our ninety day restricted travel period having been used up and not yet quite ready to be permitted to return. As I sat thinking about this, Shazza pipes up with “Isn’t it nice to be sat here in the sunshine, instead of parked up in the van somewhere in the cold, in the UK, waiting to catch a ferry back for our next ninety days” 😲 Cue spooky sci-fi music………👽

We finished our coffee’s and, as we left the Cafe to continue our stroll along the promenade, I went across to the busker and placed some loose change into his open guitar case, he nodded and smiled in appreciation. Right at that very moment I thought to myself, was it about time to get my own Spanish Guitar back out of its case and try to re-learn playing it, perhaps I may get to a level where I could busk enough to pay for our lunches, although in reality, if we waited for me to get to that level, we would both probably starve to death 😂 But quite literally, just a few moments later, Shazza says, “You should start to learn to play your guitar again, you could come and do some busking, earn some money, then take me to lunch” 😲 She laughed sarcastically, a cold shudder ran down my spine……………..

We walked almost the full length of the promenade before turning and re-tracing our steps, we veered off towards the town in the direction of where the ‘Plant Based’ restaurant was located. We were the only customer’s, but was that because it was still a little early ? Was it because the food was not that good ? Or was it because it was 100% Plant Based food with no other ‘more normal’ menu options available ? However, this was a delightful change for Shazza as the menu comprised of several different ‘Starters’, ‘Mains’ and ‘Desserts’ options and she was truly spoilt for choice, it wasn’t a problem for me either, I can and will eat almost anything, Plant Based or otherwise. To be completely honest, it was a little expensive for what it was, both with the establishment itself, which was more a Cafe than a restaurant, seating was only outside, but it was not in the sunshine so it was a little chilly on that particular day, although in the warmer weather it would have been very nice. We both agreed that we didn’t want a full three-course afternoon lunch, just ‘Mains’ and, although it was nothing special, as we both settled for Burger and Chips, the food was actually very tasty and so we agreed that we would be open to returning at some point to sample some of the other menu options, although Shazza has already made many of them herself at home, but in order to give her a break from cooking, and to enjoy a meal out, this certainly provided her with decent ‘Plant Based’ options, rather than the more usual Salads with Goat Cheese. We were both quite full from our lunch so we walked back to the Supermarket, purchased a new ironing board and then went home and enjoyed an afternoon at leisure sat on the balcony, the afternoon sun pouring in through the windows, it had been a nice morning and early afternoon, just being out somewhere different for our more usual walk.

Things were back to normal now that the festive season was at its official end, the steady flow of cars passed on the street below, as people returned to their normal daily habits, going to work and doing the school runs and it also provided me with something else to focus on as a break from reading the morning ‘Doom & Gloom’ in the various International media reports, which can get rather depressing, and yes those ‘Doom and Gloom’ reports do also include some of the less attractive sides to Life in Spain. As we do not live in a Major heavily populated Town or City here in Spain and, due to our fortunate position of being retired, in good health, with a ‘reasonable’ amount of financial security and no family to support, we are somewhat shielded from the majority of the more negative aspects of everyday life. However, as we now begin to spend more and more time listening to the Spanish National News channels and reading the National newspapers, it is fair to say that Spain has very similar issues to almost everywhere else in Europe, Politically, Economically, and with Religious differences, Racism, Crime, Illegal Immigration and Environmental issues, fortunately though, it does have the advantage, in certain areas of the country, of having a very nice climate, most of the year at least.

As far as the climate goes, the short cold snap we have recently experienced down here on the Costa del Sol, has also been much the same in other areas of Europe too, even though some areas in Northern Europe are generally colder at this time of year, those too have been experiencing much colder than normal patterns of weather, it would be easy to jump on the band wagon and blame it all on ‘Climate Change’, a currently very populist theme at the moment, but, reading some news articles and watching a lot of nature and environmental documentaries, it would also appear that for ‘decades’ their have always been freak periods of weather, both with hot and cold temperatures and also with lots of unnatural environmental phenomena that have occurred. I am not saying that Climate Change is not a potentially very serious issue, but my more cynical side also thinks that, and purely from my own un-professional and unacademic lay man’s perspective, the climate change debate could also perhaps be being used to conveniently suit arguments by other’s, for more ulterior motives or purposes, both Politically and Corporately 🤷‍♂️ The truth, whatever that may be, is out there somewhere (no spooky sci-fi music required this time though thank you) and perhaps we will only come to realise what that truth is, when it eventually comes and slaps us in the face, in the meantime, we all have our lives to be getting on with 😉 I will continue to live what life I have left by following my own simple code, which is to respect other’s, no matter what colour of skin they have, what language they speak or their religious belief, to keep as fit and healthy as I possibly can and finally, to not worry about things that I have no power to control or influence, if we all followed these simple, yet basic, principles then I am certain that the world in which we live would be a much better place than it is right now, here endeth my New Year sermon 🤭

One thing that has certainly been beyond my control or influence is the weather, more particularly the rain, which we have desperately needed here in Southern Spain for very many months. Believe me when I tell you that I have attempted to influence it, by singing in the Shower, very very loudly, which, to be honest, at one point I really thought had worked, when I heard what I thought were several loud bangs of thunder, but that turned out to only be the neighbours banging on the walls instructing me to shut up, in a very disrespectful manner I hasten to add 😲 Perhaps they should have suggested an alternative song they would have preferred me to sing 😁 But perhaps now they will encourage me to sing some more, as we have recently had a couple of days of Thunder, Lightning and ‘torrential downpours’ and, there is a couple of more days where the ‘Works of Fiction’ have forecasted even more, but ‘Would It Be Enough ?’, to fill the ‘Embalces’ (reservoirs) and hopefully prevent us from having to collect our drinking water from stand pipes in the street, but much more importantly, enable us to use our swimming pool again, when the weather permits that is.

I have managed to convince Shazza that we should in fact employ the services of a ‘professional’ plumber to deal with the couple of our currently awaiting DIY tasks, for they would require the mains water to be turned off and, should I not rectify the issues satisfactorily, that could entail us being without water until such time as we could then get a professional out to repair ‘my’ repair 🤭 Although I have been ‘instructed’ to watch closely, and take note, of how the repair is conducted by the professional, in case needed for the future, I already told her that there was no need as I already knew how to scratch my head, whilst at the same time sucking my teeth and wearing an expensive looking frown, as you may guess, she wasn’t impressed. But at least now my tools will remain in an ‘as new’ and ‘pristine’ condition until the next time ‘she’ suggests a DIY task needs undertaking. The plumber is coming out within the next couple of days 😉 We have now also just paid the second instalment for our soon to be new kitchen installation, this is the largest of the four instalments and with it they can now go ahead and order the necessary cupboards, drawers, work surfaces and all the necessary appliances as well as obtaining the necessary licences from our local council. These licences are just one of those many quirks with doing any works on property here in Spain that you need to be aware of, as I have probably already mentioned in a previous ramble, but at least that is another thing that is progressing. I have also already managed to pre-book my car in for its annual service, although that is not due until May, but it needs to be taken to the main KIA dealer in Malaga, which is always very busy, so leaving the pre-booking until nearer the time could have meant not getting the required date that I want, in order to fit in with our other plans, have I mentioned that Shazza believes that I suffer with OCD 😂

So yes, I know, it was less than a week ago when I stated that these rambles would probably become less frequent, what can I say, I lied 🤷‍♂️

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

So here we go, into another New Year and as I commence drafting this first ramble of 2024 I am sat in my favourite position on the balcony reflecting on the last twelve months, and looking forward to what the next few months of this new year has in store for us. Shazza is stood ironing in the living room whilst watching one of her Netflix series, she says that it helps with the boredom of conducting the task.

Since returning from our Munich trip, the weather here in this little corner of southern Spain has been quite good, nice and sunny and warm with mid-afternoon temperatures reaching 22 degrees(c) with only slight Westerly breezes, which have made it pleasant enough to go for our walks wearing short-sleeved shirts, and being able to sit outside at a cafe enjoying a coffee whilst conducting the usual pastime of people watching, it of course would have been rude not to. There is always some sort of activity to watch out on the sea, not as busy and as hectic as in the Summer just the local fishermen in their small rowing boats, checking the nets they put out earlier, close to the shoreline, their small wooden boats bobbing around whilst they skilfully haul the nets into the boats, there are still some small leisure craft that occasionally pass and small sailing yacht’s, there are of course always freighters on the horizon, slowly chugging along to destinations unknown and high in the clear blue sky are several vapour trails of the aircraft. On the beach there are the usual array of dog walkers, they are allowed to walk their animals on the beach during the Winter months, a small group of rod and line fishermen trying their luck in the calm waters and their are even a few people sunbathing, I make an assumption that they are the Winter sun tourists although to be honest they could be locals, as it is still the festive holiday season here and so the schools are still closed. It is a very calm scene that is playing out in front of us, the conversations from passers by along the promenade and the other people who are sat around us is not intrusive, it just adds to the overall ambience. It is sometimes difficult to remember that it is still Winter here, but then there are days such as this one, that serve as a reminder as to the season that we are in, for we had awoken to a rather dull morning, the sky grey and overcast, there is no warming sunshine today and we have had a little bit of drizzly rain, although that didn’t last long, but without the warming sunshine it feels chilly, not cold enough to have to put the heating on, but we both need to wear our thicker warmer fleeces. The ‘Works of Fiction’ have forecast that the sunshine will return tomorrow, it doesn’t stay grey here for very long but neither does the forecast always turn out to be correct, not that it matters for it will be a shopping day for us, so rain or shine is pretty much irrelevant as we will only be stepping in and out of a car into a supermarket then taking it home again to unpack and place it all into it’s respective storage areas.

Shazza and I have, generally speaking, celebrated the majority of our Christmas periods somewhere in the UK, although, over the last few years we have spent some of our festive periods in other Countries, on campsites or Motorhome Aires in either Portugal, Morocco and also some here in Spain, and since purchasing what had been our ‘Bolt Hole’ property we have done quite a few here, but it has been quite interesting to experience the slight variations in which Christmas is celebrated in those different countries.

Officially, Christmas kicks off on the 25th of December and carries on until the 6th of January and, it is on that day, that in the UK at least, you are meant to take your Christmas decorations down, as leaving them up any longer is supposed to be bad luck. However, many people these days do not stick to those traditions and do not leave their decorations up that long, more often than not, on January 2nd, when the bank holiday period is over, and the majority of the shops tend to re-open at their normal business hours and lots of people have to return back to work, their decorations already having been taken down and packed back into their respective storage boxes, placed back up into lofts, or down into cellars, to gather dust for another year, it is a time when living rooms and hallways start to look bleak and empty.

However, here in Spain, the Christmas celebrations do continue until the 6th January, because on that day it is the ‘Feast of the Epiphany’ or, as it is better known over here, ‘Three Kings Day’ which, religiously, and Nationally, is a celebration of the adoration of the baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men, Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar who travelled many miles overland 🎶 Whilst Shepherds washed their socks at night 🎶 🤭 to present baby Jesus with three symbolic gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. They are said to have ridden on a horse, a camel and an elephant, although to be honest, in every picture I have ever seen, all three were riding upon camels 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, I am making an educated guess that most of you probably already knew all of the above 🤔 In many Catholic countries, whilst it is National holiday, it isn’t generally associated with gift giving, despite the association with the presentation of the Three Wise Men’s gifts. But here in Spain, on the 6th January, towns and cities celebrate and put on parades to mark the occasion. There are floats with effigies of each of the Three Wise Men, or they may even be real people dressed up as the Three Kings. Either way, these are colourful parades that make their way through the main streets of the town, with handfuls of sweets being thrown out to the crowds. These are fun, light-hearted parades, in contrast to some of the more sombre parades during Holy Week, or Semana Santa. Just like children waiting for Father Christmas, Spanish children also have to go to bed early after watching the parades, they leave their best pair of shoes, sparkling clean, outside their doors to be filled with gifts. Again, just like with Father Christmas, Spanish children write letters to the Three Wise Men before the big day, and leave out snacks and drinks for the camel, horse and elephant. Naughty children might get sweet ‘coal’ in their shoes instead of gifts but in reality, none of the ‘Little Darlings’ ever do. On January 6th, Spanish families and friends gather together and cut into a sweet treat called Roscón de Reyes, a circular cake filled with cream. If you slice into it and get a figurine of a king then you are a king for the day. If however, you get a bean, you have to pay for the cake, this particular cake is, like the traditional UK ‘Christmas Cake’, a non-negotiable tradition here in Spain during the festive season and we can tell you, from personal experience, that it is absolutely delicious 😋 We have of course attended a couple of these street celebrations over the last few year’s, well you do don’t you, it would be rude not to, but a bit like going to watch the turning on of the Christmas lights and, as we no longer have the responsibility of young children, it isn’t a ‘must do’ on our particular events calendar this year.

Just whilst I am on the subject of Christmas, have you noticed that the Christmas TV Adverts seem to start earlier and earlier each year, the first one we saw last year appeared on our TV screen in September 😲 although personally, we do not consider it to be Christmas until we have seen the traditional ‘Coca-Cola’ truck advert 🎶 Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming 🎶 then we know that it really is the real thing 😂

So, ‘Out With The Old And In With The New’, and I am hoping that Shazza doesn’t take that literally, otherwise I could start this New Year as a homeless person 😁 So after conducting my period of reflection on our previous year’s events, it was interesting to look back on what had been a very exciting, nervous and often frustrating year. This time last year when we were just commencing, what would turn out to be, our very last ninety-day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ visit to our ‘Bolt Hole’ in Spain, a period that would see us decide to commence the administrative processes and procedures for obtaining our ‘Non-Lucrative Visa’s’ for obtaining our residency here in Spain. However, at that point we had certainly not foreseen that we would also decide to sell our much loved Motorhome, the ‘Little Fokker’, and bring to and end over 25 years of owning what had been five different Motorhomes, and the last 10 year’s of our full-timing lifestyle 😢 So yes, there is still a tinge of sadness and even now, there are still times when we look at different places all around Europe and say to ourselves, “If we still had the Motorhome”, but we have no actual regrets, it was a decision made out of practicality and as we have certainly discovered over the last 15 years or so, things happen for a reason, although often, at the time, you may not realise what that reason was.

As we enter 2024, we know that we already have a few coals in the fire so to speak, dates in our diary, including one that has literally only just unexpectedly been entered on to our calendar, that being an unscheduled visit by some of Shazza’s relatives, in six weeks time. Their visit will be followed, just two weeks later, by the deconstruction of our current twenty-year old kitchen, and the installation of a brand new one. In between those two events we will be finalising all of our travel arrangements for our trip to Austria in August, for the large family gathering. We will be flying in and out of Munich again and then travelling by train from their into the Austrian Alps, we have already pre-booked our overnight hotel accommodations in Munich for both the inward and outward journeys of that trip. We will pre-book our flights, hopefully by the end of January, and then, once we have confirmed those flight timings, we will once again advance pre-book our car parking at Malaga airport. Towards the end of February, we will also pre-book our return rail travel to Austria, we cannot do that before as the Summer schedules are not released until then. The hotel accommodation in Austria has already been pre-booked by my daughter, as she is organising the actual event.

Shortly after that we will have to make a start on the administrative processes and procedures to renew our Spanish residency visa’s, but at least this time they will be valid for a further two year’s and it is nowhere near as laborious, or time consuming, as the initial procedures, the bulk of the administrative procedures actually being done on our behalf by our very efficient and reliable Spanish Solicitor’s.

At some point, after the new kitchen has been installed, we will be looking at doing a complete re-decoration of the apartment, something that Shazza and I will do ourselves and, at some point in the near future, although we have not decided exactly when, we will be having our main bedroom en-suite completely replaced and a more modern one installed, potentially by the firm doing our new kitchen installation, subject of course to how good a job they make of it 🤔 This is now our permanent home not just an occasional ‘Bolt Hole’, so whilst everything in it is currently fully serviceable, it is a twenty year old property with mainly original fixtures and fittings, so it does need some updating which will then last us, hopefully, for at least another twenty-years, or better still, ‘Until Death Do Us Part’ 🤭 We also have some other minor, but time consuming, DIY tasks to do and you all know how enthusiastic I am about DIY, most people think that the three letter abbreviation stands for ‘Do It Yourself’, however in my case it actually usually means ‘Destroy It Yourself’ so, personally speaking, I would prefer to use the alternative term of PSETDI (Pay Someone Else To Do It). Shazza ‘suggests’ that now that ‘we’ have all the tools, including Power Drills, Sanders, Dremmel Tool Gadgets etc. that I should at least attempt all of these jobs myself, she rejected outright my more time and cost economical suggestion of just letting the professional tradesperson have the use of my equipment, perhaps for a small discount on the bill, thereby getting the job(s) done correctly the first time around 🤷‍♂️

So you can probably appreciate now why I have always said that Shazza and I make such a good team, what with my ‘perceived’ OCD, which enables meticulous preparation and planning, I am also pretty good with personal finances, both budgeting and the forward financial planning aspects, if not quite as meticulous with DIY. Shazza on the other hand has a much better competency with technology, for both research purposes and any on-line booking side of things. This teamwork had always worked well for us when we were full-timing in our van and so it is an already tried and tested model.

So you may be wondering about our ‘other’ travel plans 🤔 I have always said in these rambles, since taking the decision to take permanent residency here in Spain, that whilst our Motorhome adventures may have come to an end, that does not mean that our travel adventures will also come to an end, we will just have to do them in a different way. This is where we have agreed to permit ourselves to remain a little more impulsive and spontaneous, which for someone who ‘supposedly’ suffers with OCD, according to Dr Shazza, you may think will be a big ask, but to be honest, we have always managed quite well when we were living and travelling full-time in our Motorhomes, especially when having to deal with some of the unanticipated obstacles that the ‘Dark Forces’ would occasionally put in our way.

In reality, for ‘some’ people, OCD is actually a real and quite debilitating behavioural condition, in a potentially similar ‘Spectrum’ as those that suffer with Autism, although more usually without suffering the severe personal communication difficulties. But there are obvious similarities, people with expert medically ‘confirmed’ OCD, do also obsess about things, they have to do the most routine of tasks in the same way, all the time, everytime, and can spend many hours, or even days, thinking about doing these things and how they are going to do them, so it too can be quite a debilitating behavioural condition, especially when it comes to employment. Now I generally tend to laugh when Shazza says to me, and other’s, that I suffer with OCD, when actually what she really means is that she gets irritated with me because I am a consummate planner, especially if she wants an immediate decision on something, but I want to think about the in’s and out’s of it first. I tell her that her irritation is a ‘Woman Thing’, she just says that I suffer with ‘OCD’ and all she wants is a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer, but in truth, generally the answer she wants is preferably the former 😂

So with our further afield more Long Haul ‘Bucket List’ trips, they will certainly entail a much higher degree of planning and organising, so whilst I can say ‘Yes’ quite quickly, the actual ‘doing’ of them may take just a little bit longer 🤭 We want to visit Iceland, but it is just a little too active with ‘Fissures’ there at the moment, 🎣 🤔, No not those sort of Fisher’s. We also want to do a visit to Japan, but that trip too is looking a little shaky at the moment. Sometimes our trips do not happen immediately as it may just be down to being the wrong climatic conditions, so there are lots of other things, not just my planning delays, that are beyond our control and which may get in the way of conducting some of the trips on our ‘Bucket Lists’, we each have our own, so that could also prove interesting, do we toss a coin to decide which trips we do ? Do we do one trip off one list, then do another off the other list ? Somehow I cannot see it as being as simple as that, perhaps there is a reason why Shazza suggested that we recently went and purchased new separate travel bags 😲

However, we also want to do a lot more road trips within Spain, as well as further afield within Europe, and they will probably be the unplanned spur of the moment decisions, whether they be day trips, weekend breaks or extended trips and, when I say ‘Spur of the moment’, in truth they may still entail a day or two to just stop and think about the in’s and the out’s 🤭 Perhaps Shazza will also suggest that we purchase separate cars 😂 Other considerations for such trips will be the transportation methods, do we, for convenience, use our own car ? Do we take Buses, Trains or Flights, or a combination of all of them ? Of course, all of this has to be co-ordinated with other things that have to be done within our everyday normal routine life and commitments, and even things that may happen that are unanticipated, we both have elderly parents still living in the UK, so will we need to make a sudden unscheduled dash back to the UK ? Apart from Funerals, one of which may be forthcoming sooner rather than later, but thankfully there are no Weddings, Births or Christenings on the horizon.

So I suppose some of you may now be sympathising with Shazza, and have a better understanding of why, when we have our morning conference discussions and she presents her question to me of ‘What do you want to do today ?”, that she has in fact already decided exactly what it is that we are going to be doing, and why any answer that I may provide, bears absolutely no relevance to the actual outcome of her question 😂

So, unlike our Motorhome travel days, when we were continually on the move and I could write my rambles on a regular weekly basis, often even more frequently than that, but now, living this more ‘Conventional’ lifestyle, we will not be making such routine trips, or at least not in the short term, so these rambles may also now become less frequent, although most of you know me by now and if I can find something to ramble on about, I will, much like this one 😉

So as we approach the final week of the festive period here in Spain, once those Three Kings have paraded through the streets, our daily and weekly lives will become very much more routine again, unless that is of course that you, or the ‘dark forces’, know otherwise……… 😲

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

So the big day had arrived, no not Christmas Day, well not just yet anyway, no the day in question was in fact our much awaited travel day to Munich. The evening prior to that, we had checked-in for our flight, on-line, which is something you have to do these days, we were issued with an Electronic Boarding Pass, which we put into our ‘Wallet’ on our iPhones, to be perfectly honest I am still not fully conversant with all this new technology stuff when it comes to ‘Air Travel’, having not done a lot over the last 11 years or so, but you have no choice, apparently this is the way these things are done these days 🤷‍♂️ My OCD was going to be severely tested, I was nervous about the car parking at the Airport, we had pre-booked and pre-paid so the normal entry procedures, that we were very familiar with, would, on this occasion, be different, so my question was whether it would all work when we arrived, or would we be left stranded at a barrier and not make our flight 😲 We could not arrive at the car parking prior to the pre-booked time so, as the Sat Nav indicated that we were six-minutes ahead of schedule, we stopped at a service station ten-minutes away from the Airport Terminal and just waited for the minutes to tick away. Now, according to the Email instructions we received, the camera at the entry barrier to the car park ‘should’ recognise our number plate, issue us a ticket showing that we had pre-paid, then the barrier should lift and permit us entry, BUT what if it didn’t 🤷‍♂️ Then, when we went into the terminal, to drop off our hold baggage, we were each allowed 23Kg each, but we were only taking one large hold-all and we a little nervous as it felt quite heavy, neither were we sure whether we would need to show the Electronic Boarding Pass that we had saved in the ‘Wallets’ on our phones, it should be, we thought, just a similar procedure to when we had pre-booked our ferry crossings on line. All these things were running through our minds as we drove to the airport so it was not the usual relaxed journey, like it normally was when we were just going to collect or return visitor’s. Now I am one of these people that always believes that if you think about what could go wrong, before the ‘Dark Forces’ ambush you, then things generally just tend to go pretty smoothly, that theory was about to be tested.

We pulled up to the multi-storey car park entrance at 13:05pm, five minutes after our pre-booked time, we had been instructed in the Email NOT to press the button on the ticket machine, so we waited and within a matter of seconds the ticket machine made a noise and then spat out a ticket with our details printed on it and then the barrier lifted, first mission completed 👍 We made our way into the Terminal which was on the same level as the Departures and, although our boarding check-in gates were all closed, the one next to it had a ‘Lufthansa’ symbol and it had a lady sat behind it at a computer terminal. I approached her and asked at what time our check-in desk was scheduled to open, she asked what flight we were on and asked us for our Passports and then checked her computer. She said that we could check-in our hold baggage with her straight away, we asked if she needed to see our electronic boarding passes but she said she didn’t and she manually printed out two boarding cards 🤷‍♂️ The weighing scales indicated that our hold baggage was 2Kg over our allowance, she asked if we were checking in two pieces of hold luggage and I told her just the one, she placed a label on our bag, returned our passports and ‘printed’ boarding passes and that was it, all we needed to do now was to go through the Security Check Point, using the bar code on the printed boarding cards, not the electronic one’s, put our hand luggage through the x-ray machine and walk through the metal detector archway and that was it, simple, mission two completed successfully 👍 We could now relax until we were called to our boarding gate, so we found ourselves somewhere to have lunch and then just kill some time. All that nervousness beforehand had proven to have been unnecessary, as it generally does, I now felt quite relaxed and said to Shazza, “Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together, well done Shazza” for in truth it had been her that had done all of the Electronic Administration beforehand, initially booking the flights, sorting out the car parking and then checking us in on-line, but I knew that she was also a little nervous too, in case anything went wrong. I am going to ask the Government if I can keep this particular ‘carer’ of mine on a more permanent basis 😂 These days I generally just look after the physical side of things, the Passports, the physical paperwork and documents and the Money side of things. I guess we are getting to that age now, when dealing with things that are a little bit new to us, not helped by my OCD, but we never felt anything like this when we were doing our travels in our Motorhome because we were familiar with that style of travel, and I guess we felt in a lot more control, apart from delays with ferries of course, but that was all outside of our control and in a Motorhome you have the luxury of having everything on board, toilet, kitchen, lounge and bedroom so there are a lot more advantages of travelling with your home 😉 Any delays that were encountered were never really that much of an inconvenience.

Other than when we checked-in for the flight at the Lufthansa desk and handed over our hold luggage, were we asked to show our passports, we encountered no other officialdom. There was only a few minutes delay with our flight departure, and I am only talking minutes, rather than hours, so all in all the outward part of this trip had gone like clockwork so quite a pleasant experience.

However, we did get a bit of a shock when we arrived at Munich Airport, we already knew of course that it was a much larger International Airport than Malaga, but never having been there before we were not prepared for just how large. When we disembarked the aircraft we followed the signs to the baggage reclaim area, my god it was a long walk, first through the departure lounge with people sat at the departure gates waiting to board their flights, then along long corridors, up two or three escalators, along more long corridors then down another escalator on to a train platform 😲 One stop down the line we got off the train and then just kept walking, following signs towards the ‘Baggage Reclaim’. Eventually we arrived at a massive hall with rows and rows of baggage carousels, a board informed us which one to stand next to and by the time we arrived at our designated one, the cascade of assorted suitcases, hold-all, ski-bags were already circulating. We didn’t have to wait long before our bag appeared, upside down !! we could only hope and pray that the Christmas Gifts inside had remained in tact. We followed the ‘Exit’ signs into the arrivals area, there were no Customs or Immigration checks, no requirement to show our passports so, as far as our passports were concerned, there were no stamps indicating that we had ever departed Spain and arrived in Germany 🤔 We knew that it was an internal European Flight but under the rules of our Residency Visa we could only have 10 months outside of Spain in the next 5 years, so we would need to show the periods of time that we had departed and returned, so now we were wondering whether it could cause us problems when we returned to Spain if, when we did so in a weeks time, they stamped our passports on re-entry for how could we prove how long we had been out of the country, another thing for my OCD to start worrying about 😳 It was around 7pm, Stacey and Dean were waiting for us and as we walked outside to the car park the very cold, and wet, Bavarian night air hit us, but fortunately there was no snow to be seen anywhere 🥶

We had no plans for our week, we just left it up to our hosts to take us wherever they wanted, we had come for the sole purpose of spending time with them over the festive period, something we had not done with them for 11 years. We had visited Munich ourselves, many years ago, on one of our Motorhome road trips, albeit that was a brief visit, so we were completely in their hands, but for now, we just wanted to get to their house and have something to eat and drink, and the luxury and warmth of their central heating.

The weather was much better than we had anticipated it to be, there was no snow, but it was very wet, however the daytime temperatures remained between 7-9 degrees which was a bonus and, during the latter part of our time with them, the sun even made an appearance, so we were out and about on five of the six full days that we spent with them. We had never been to their local town of Gröbenzell before, it was only a short train journey from the centre of Munich (Marienplatz) but their town was quite lively, lots of shops and Cafe’s and Restaurants, Banks, Doctors, Post Office, four or five different very large Supermarkets, in fact their town was probably a little larger than our own back in Spain, but, unlike our’s, they had a rail station with frequent trains into the City, from where you could get other trains to many different destinations, which over the next several days we were to fully utilise. One thing we noticed was just how cheap the transport system is and how frequent the services are, miss one and within ten minutes there is another, you buy a day ticket from a machine on the platform and this enables you to use the S-Bahn (Trains), the U-Bahn (Underground) and all the Buses in and around the City and, unless a ticket inspector boarded whatever service you were using, you didn’t have to show your tickets once you had purchased them, this would never happen in the UK it would be totally abused, we hopped on and off local trains, the underground and buses with gay abandon 😁 Dean and Stacey have a second-hand car which they only use for when they do big shops at their local Supermarkets, generally they just use the public transport system to get around, we were very impressed.

The day after our arrival, after a leisurely start to the morning, we made our way into Munich, the plan was to have a look around the Christmas Market, have a few ‘Gluweins’, well it would have been rude not to 🤭 have lunch, do some sightseeing then later that evening they had pre-booked a table at a restaurant for Dinner. However, it was a very wet and rainy day, made worse by a very strong 45mph wind, we had been lucky to have just missed a major storm that had lasted for several days just prior to our arrival, this was the tail end of it, so we spent more time just bar hopping and eating a variety of tasty Bavarian Fayre and of course, one, or two, or perhaps even three, to be honest I lost count, of the famous German Schnapps that were forced upon us 🤭 but I actually quite enjoyed their particular flavourings of Anti-Covid Vaccines. Being confined in a metal tube for several hours with total strangers (Aircraft and Trains) and of course the crowds in the city, one has to take extra care to safeguard against all sorts of nasty bacteria’s in the air at this time of year, so I for one wasn’t taking any chances 😂

The hour’s just seemed to fly by, I wonder why 😂 In between taking shelter to keep dry we did some wandering around the Market Stalls, did some window shopping, Dean and I mainly salivating at all the different food options available, and then at 5pm we made our way to the Bavarian restaurant where Stacey had pre-booked a table. As we entered it was obvious that there was a festive party going on, a rather surly girl came rushing towards us and said rather bluntly, “This is a private function, come back in thirty minutes”, Stacey told her that we had a table booked for 5pm but she just repeated her instruction, “Come back in thirty minutes” and, as we turned around to leave, the girl, with a grin on her face, waved, and said in a rather sarcastic tone “Bye”, which to be honest, I think was perhaps induced by her partaking of a few too many Anti-Covid Vaccines herself. As you may imagine, both Dean and Stacey were livid, this was a Restaurant they had used on several previous occasions and the typically Bavarian menu they informed us was very good, including catering for Vegetarians and Vegans. Fortunately they had not left a deposit when they had booked, so they decided that we would not be returning in thirty-minutes and that we would find somewhere else in which to part with our money and where the staff were perhaps a little more polite. My daughter is very much like myself and wasn’t going to let the matter drop, so whilst we were sat on the train, making our way back to their local town, she sent a rather blunt ‘Snotogram’ to the establishment. Back in their town we found a nice traditional eatery just a few minutes walk from the station where we enjoyed a more welcoming experience and exceptionally tasty food. The following morning Stacey had a reply from one of the two lady owners of the restaurant, apologising profusely and stating that, although the private function had overrun, the staff member should have informed us of that fact in a much more polite manner. Sometimes it pays to complain, as attached to the the Email response was a €100 meal discount voucher, for use at their establishment on another occasion. So they had provided a discount of €25 each but I said to Stacey to use it after we had gone back, then they would have €50 each to spend which would probably cover the full cost, or at least the majority, of their meals.

We had a relatively easy day on both the Saturday and Sunday, just doing last minute Christmas food shopping, which included a trip out to a local farm to collect a rather large Duck for Christmas dinner, it had already been killed and prepared for the oven I hasten to add, and, on Christmas Eve day, we played card games, watched some Christmas films and TV programmes, ate a lot, had some more Schnapps taster sessions, and just had a generally enjoyable weekend doing not very much. I have to say that although they are very much ‘Carnivores’, both Stacey and Dean had gone out of their way to make a good selection of ‘Plant Based’ items, much of which they had made themselves rather than relying on shop bought savoury and sweet options. I was given the honour of slicing the Christmas Duck and Shazza, who has always said to people that she is not a 100% ‘Vegan’ and that she will eat some fish and dairy products, but she wanted to show her appreciation for the time and effort that they had made to accommodate us on the culinary side of things, so she had a slice of Duck with her dinner on Christmas Day, I can neither deny, or confirm, that I may have had more than one slice though 🤭

As we all know, Christmas morning for the domestic Goddesses (and God’s of course) is spent on preparation and cooking of the traditional abundance of Christmas Fayre and usually, afterwards, everyone is just too stuffed to do much of anything else other than snooze, watch the TV or play games, we were pretty much stuffed but, as it was the first day that the rain had stopped, and the sun had made a brief appearance, we cleared up the pots and pans, well we hid them in the dish washer and then we all got well wrapped up against the chill in the air and went for a walk around a local lake, surprisingly we were not alone.

On the Tuesday morning we caught a train and took the 45 minute journey to the lakeside town of ‘Herrsching’, the photograph at the beginning of this ramble is a view across the lake to the snow capped Bavarian mountains. The devastation, from the storm that had hit this region prior to our arrival, was clearly evident, all of the wooden landings that would normally stretch out into the lake to tie up the visitor’s tour boats, were battered and now just lots of debri, including large tree trunks, lay strewn across the footpath that encircled the lake, it looked more like a war zone. From there we took a one hour uphill forest walk to the ‘Andechs Monastry’ which is also a Church, a Pilgrimage Centre, a Brewery and it has a Beer Garden and a Restaurant. More recently we have become used to just doing our level flat walks along our seafront promenade, so this was going to get our hearts pumping and stretching our calf and thigh muscles 😖 personally I think my daughter was after getting her inheritance money a bit earlier, if only she knew that we had already spent it 🤭 perhaps something I should have mentioned before setting out that morning ? There were several well marked trails you could take in the forest, smaller circular routes, to the longer steeper one that they had decided to bring us on, this would certainly test our real fitness levels 🤔 The storm had also left its calling card here too, with fallen trees across the trail making it more of obstacle course which entailed us either having to climb over them, or deviate up wet leafy and muddy embankments around them, but our reward, should we complete the challenge, would be a nice meal in the Monastry restaurant.

Shazza and I were not exactly wearing the correct clothing for hiking, we had four layers to protect us from the cold, the outer layer being normal heavy top coats rather than lightweight, breathable, rainproof hiking jackets so we were now overheating and our thigh muscles were burning, our hearts beating so hard I thought that mine was going to jump out of my chest, we had left our hiking poles back in Spain, it is probably a good job otherwise the spike on the end of mine may well have got stuck up Dean’s arse !! But we kept going, we were not going to let these youngster’s off the hook that easy, they brought us here, we would get to the top and earn our reward, hopefully not in heaven though, all I kept thinking, quite literally, was ‘Thank you God for allowing your religious disciples to put a brewery up here’.

Once at the top the views across the valley, across the township roofs below us across to the Alps, was truly breathtakingly amazing, although the breath taking bit may not have solely been down to the views 🤔 The Monastery itself was not open to the public due to it being Christmas, but the Brewery and Restaurant were open.

We went into a big hall which was laden with three or four long tressel tables that accommodated twenty people on either side, we found a seat and Stacey stayed with our coats securing our places, whilst we went and got the food and drinks, the place was crowded, we didn’t see anywhere near this amount of people along the trail and most of them, by the way they were dressed, didn’t look as if they had walked here 🤔 First we went to the brewery part where we placed our orders and paid, we were given a ticket which we took to a large hatch and, on production of our ticket, the servers, who disappointingly were not Monks, then went to two massive barrels and poured our drinks, Dean had told us what sort of beer to order. We delivered the drinks back to the table and then went into the food service area where the choice was either a variety of different ‘Wurst’ (German Sausages), Knuckles of Pork, Potato Salad, or Cheeses with ‘Pretzels’ as big as your head, the only selection available for Shazza was the cheese and Pretzel but, for the rest of us ‘carnivores’, yes even me as an occasional part-time one, it was Pork, Pork or Pork 😁

After our hearty meal, well hearty as far as Dean and I were concerned, I would have been quite content to just roll back down the hill, I wouldn’t have felt a thing, what with the meat and large beer inside me. Dean confessed that in fact there was a tarmac road all the way down, but he said it was boring with just views of houses and there were no pavements. I gave his words a bit of thought, well about a nano-second and then decided that in fact I was more than happy with boring views. But I was outvoted, even by Shazza, who much preferred the forest trail back down, ‘It will be easier’ she says, ‘It’s all down hill’ she says, I tried to remind her that going down steep slopes with no walking poles would mean having to use your knee’s as breaking mechanisms, but when I looked around for the confirmatory agreement, the buggers were already half way out the door and I was left talking to an elderly German chap whose mouth was fully stuffed with crispy pork crackling, and with a blank expression on his face, looking totally bemused by someone jabbering away at him in a foreign language 😲

By the time we got back down to the the Lakeside and the railway station, both Shazza and I were pleased to be wearing our four layers and heavy top coats, the sun, which had had little heat in it anyway, was rapidly dropping in the sky, the chill in the air was beginning to bite at our exposed faces and I just wanted a nice hot and strong mug of tea, with perhaps a smallish tot of schnapps just to warm the cockles 😉 At least the train ride back was nice and warm and whether it was with all the days physical activity, the meal and beer, or a combination of both, but I had all on to stop my eyes from closing and I wasn’t fully convinced that my travelling companions wouldn’t just leave me on the train. When we got back and the ‘techno kids’ checked their ‘Fit Bit’ watches they informed us that we hadn’t done ‘too’ bad and had walked just a little over 8 miles, it sounded more like my old school reports that said “But could have done better”, I tried to sound enthused at the news and restrained myself from reminding them that they were 30 years our junior, that would only have made me sound old.

Now, if we thought that our final full day was going to be a much less physical one then we were very much mistaken. Another morning train ride into the City followed by a short trip on the U-Bahn and we headed for a walk along the ‘Isar River’ which runs through the centre. That actually sounded quite nice, it was another dry, bright and sunny morning, although we still needed two layers underneath our top coats, and our hats and gloves. Most of the shops were now open after the festive break and so it was very busy, our first stop after leaving the station was a small Kiosk on the side of the river bank where we purchased take-away piping hot cups of ‘Gluwiene’, which we sipped as we crossed the bridge over the river and down onto the riverside path. There were lots of people out along the path but the area was so big, with several footpaths and separate cycle tracks, some which led into a wooded area, that it didn’t feel crowded, we stuck to the path nearest to the fast flowing river. The views were pretty damn good and my clicker finger was called into action once again.

Numerous bridges spanned the wide river, the riverside path itself went on for miles but eventually we decided that it was time to go and seek out some lunch, which was music to my ear’s as I don’t eat breakfast, so we crossed the next available bridge and took a leisurely walk into the main city centre, stopping at another riverside Kiosk, this time one that sold bottled beers from around the world, Dean and Stacey like their beer, if you hadn’t already gathered that, so they selected two or three bottles and placed them in their back pack, to be consumed later back at home.

The City centre was now pretty familiar to us, having been here ourselves on a previous occasion and also once this week already. Although very busy it still retains a very pleasant charm about it, walking amongst the numerous historical buildings which blend in well with the more modern one’s, we can certainly understand the appeal for people living here, especially the younger generation, a very cheap, yet extremely efficient, transportation network, lots of green areas to walk, the riverside path and woodland where, in Summer, you are permitted to have Barbecues, a lot of the beer gardens allow you to take your own picnics, provided you purchase drinks, their are lots of eateries, fast food outlets, traditional style Inns and the more upmarket eateries, but I guess it is just very much like any major City, but Munich has, literally right on its doorstep, large Lakes and Rivers and the Bavarian Alps which offer lots of walking opportunities all year round and ski-ing in the winter, and all of this just within a very short train, or car, ride away. What it lacks for us, is the virtually all year round warm climate and the sparkling azure blue of the Mediterranean Sea just a fifteen minute walk away from our front door, we don’t do cold very well these days 😉

I had thought that after a nice long walk, another tour around the City Centre and a hearty lunch washed down with a beer, that our next stop would be the rail station and home, well Stacey and Dean still had other plans for us 😲 They announced that they were going to take us to another area of the city, just a short thirty minute walk away 😮‍💨 an area where they rented an apartment when they first moved here a couple of year’’s ago and where there was a nice boating lake with Swans and Ducks and yet another Kiosk, where we could sit whilst enjoying ‘Cafe Und Kuchen’ (Coffee and Cake). We had both decided to wear our walking boots when they had mentioned the riverside walk earlier that morning, by the time we had walked to the boating lake our legs were feeling quite heavy so we would be glad to be able to rest them for a while. However, the nice sunny day that it was, everybody else, and their kids and dogs, had decided to do the same so the place was crowded and the queue at the Kiosk stretched way back, so we decided not to wait. Fortunately, within a five minute walk, there was a bus stop which would drop us off right outside the train station we required and which would take us back to their town without the need to change trains.

We had already done the on-line flight check-in earlier that morning so that on the following morning we just had to make our way to the airport, a thirty-minute drive from their house. We left at 08:00am to get to the airport for our 12:15 departure back to Malaga. Because of restricted parking outside of Terminal 2 we told Stacey and Dean to just drop us off at the terminal entrance, they were allowed 5 minutes, so we quickly said our goodbyes, we would be seeing them again at the beginning of August for the big family event in Austria and we message each other two or three times a week, it wasn’t as if we were going to the other side of the world, some of this modern technology has its advantages 😉

Now if the procedures for checking-in at Malaga airport was a breeze, this time it was to turn out to be a bit of a nightmare, probably because I hadn’t given two thoughts about it and the ‘Dark Forces’ knew it and were ready to spring their ambush 😲 We were stood inside the entrance to the terminal looking at the flights departures board, we were too early and our flight and check in desk number was not yet displayed. A member of the airport staff came across and asked if we needed any assistance, we told him that we were looking for where we checked in our hold baggage and he told us to follow him. He took us to a row of machines, the ‘Auto Baggage Check-In’ area, and told us to use our Electronic Boarding Cards to check in our bag. That seemed to work fine at first, the machine read my QR Code and we were instructed to place our bag on the conveyor belt, it moved half way down the conveyor belt, stopped, reversed and returned our bag, I stood looking mystified 🤷‍♂️ Another member of the Airport staff came across and informed us that we were only permitted 23Kg and our bag weighed 24Kg so we would need to check it in manually, “So where do we do that ?” I asked politely, he pointed for us to go further into the terminal and around the corner to the manual check-in desks. In the front of the row of check-in desks was another machine, this time we presented our electronic boarding pass and the machine spewed out a self-adhesive baggage label which we duly attached to our hold-all. Their were long queues of people stood at several check-in desks, but nobody was at the desks so we were not going anywhere fast and although we had plenty of time, I could feel myself beginning to get tense. Eventually, after what seemed to be an eternity, but was actually only around twenty-minutes, we got to the front of the queue, we presented our electronic boarding cards to the woman behind the counter and she told us to put the bag on the conveyor belt. You are 1Kg overweight she announced, I told her that we were allowed to bring two 23kg bags but only had the one, she said that we had to go to another check-in desk and explain it to them, she pointed us to the desk in question. So yet again we got into another queue and waited to get to the front where I explained again what had happened, this lady did not say very much, she asked for our electronic boarding cards and then she checked the computer, asked us to put our case onto the conveyor belt, which again showed that we were 1Kg overweight, she said nothing, the machine at her side printed out yet another baggage label which she put onto our hold-all and she took the other one, that we had applied, off. “Enjoy your flight” she announced with a friendly smile on her face. We made our way towards the hand baggage Security Check Area, stood in the queue and was surprised to discover that here, unlike other airports we have used, we didn’t need to remove electronic items from our rucksacks, their 3D scanner on their x-ray machine was up to the job, so we passed through their body scanner machine and collected our bags at the other side. Our relief was clearly visible, we just looked at each other and let out an almighty gasp, that had been quite a tortuous experience for us, but now we were ready for breakfast and a strong coffee, I was tempted to just go to one of their bars and get a couple of stiff Anti-Covid Vaccines but hunger took priority over that option.

We checked the flight departure board and saw that our flight would depart from Gate ‘J’ and we already knew that to get to the actual departure gates we would have to get the shuttle train, so after a very enjoyable and leisurely breakfast we followed the signage and walked along the corridors, travelled down several escalator’s, got on the train, just the one stop and then followed the signs to ‘Gate J’, our Gate number was 5 and was right at the bottom of that part of the terminal, we found a seat and waited to be called to board. Our flight was delayed by fifteen minutes and we arrived, at 15:30pm, to a very much warmer Malaga airport, collected our bag from the carousel and exited the airport, at no point had we had our passports stamped, so it was as if we had never left the country, so that is a week of our ten month visa allowance used, but not, if you know what I mean 😉 The last bit of this ordeal was now to come, would the camera recognise our car registration number and lift the barrier so that we could exit the airport car park, it did and we headed home.

We both know that as far as air travel is concerned, we are now once again novices, with me not having travelled by air for holiday purposes for 11 years now, and Shazza only twice in that time. In our previous lives we had travelled by air to numerous long and short haul destinations, on a pretty regular basis, but those were the days before AI (Artificial Intelligence) took over the world. As our future travels are going to certainly involve much more air travel, at least now we know a little more about how it works and what to expect, with my OCD for detail and planning, and Shazza’s much better competency with technology, we are fast learners and we do actually work very well together as a team, so bring it on, where next my love ✈️

We have now been back at home for two days, the bags have been unpacked, the laundry done, food cupboards re-stocked and we have even had our usual walk along the seafront, and of course, with a stop to partake of our usual ‘Cafe con Leche y Tostado’ 😁 To bring this festive period to an end, and yet another year, we will be attending a New Year’s Eve event down at the Marina on Sunday evening.

So, until the first ramble of 2024, Shazza and I wish you all a very safe and HAPPY NEW YEAR 🎉🥳🍾🥂

Hasta Luego mi Amigos “La Vida Es Buena”

Now you probably will not believe that I had any real intention of going for nearly a month without publishing another ramble, but quite honestly, I genuinely had not expected to have anything to actually ramble about until the New Year, after we had returned from Germany. However, I had forgotten to allow for the ‘Shazza Min-Adventures’ which can be just as spontaneous as her other much bigger versions !! Additionally, and for me at least, they can sometimes be just as bad as the surprise ambushes from the ‘Dark Forces’, and yes, to be honest, there are times when I never really know which is the worst of the two. But yes, I know, you don’t really have to say what it is that you are already thinking, ‘Surely Eric you should know her by now’ 🙄 So, where to start 🤷‍♂️

In the first week of December there had been another two ‘Public Holidays’ one on the Wednesday and the other on the Friday, although these were not marked by any ‘Fiesta’, although one was a Religious Holiday so there was the usual Mass held in the churches. During this week the Spanish Office and School workers also take the Thursday off in between the two official holiday days, so that they can enjoy a five day break from work, unless of course they are unlucky enough to have chosen employment in the Retail, Tourism, Hospitality and Catering sectors, as the normal retail stores, Cafe/Bars and Restaurants all remain open as normal. Shazza had read on one of the local forums that on the Thursday the local dignitaries, Mayor and general hangers on, would be turning on the Christmas Lights within our Municipality, at 6pm at the Castle in the former fishing village, then at 7pm in Sabinillas and finally at 8pm up in Manilva. We had of course seen the Christmas lights on previous Winter periods when we had been here on our brief visits but we had never actually bothered going to see them ‘officially’ switched on. “Perhaps it would be nice to go and watch the Mayor switch on the lights tonight” she says, “Why ?” I responded in a bit of a ‘not really bothered’ sort of tone, “Oh it might be nice now that we are part of the local community” she says, in a cheery voice, in an attempt to muster some enthusiasm within me. ‘Do you think anyone will actually recognise us and say, Oh look it’s Shazza and Eric, those two Brits who have just taken up permanent residency here“, I could sense that her cheery demeanour was rapidly turning into an irritated one. “So, which lights do you want to go and see being switched on ?” I ask in a more conciliatory tone, although that, I was quick to discover, was a mistake as I had now shown the slightest acceptance at her suggestion, the floodgates had been opened much like a dam that had shown a slight weakness before succumbing to the almighty force that would soon breach its defence 😲 “Well, I thought that we could first go and watch the lights being turned on at the Castle, then we could walk along the promenade through the Marina and into town and watch those lights being switched on, then it would be around 8:30pm so we could find somewhere to go and have dinner, how does that sound ?” She said with a big victorious smile on her face, for she knew that we would not normally go out and eat dinner mid-week, and that I would certainly be tempted at the prospect of some additional doses of Anti-Covid Vaccines, she knows me so well and knew that she would have exploited my weakness. “So does that mean that we will not be going out this morning for our usual walk, as it will be the same route and distance, so you won’t want to do it twice in one day, will you ?” I ask. She looked over her glasses at me with her school teacher gaze, “No, we will still do our normal daily walk, it won’t kill us”, I kept looking down at my iPad screen and muttered quietly “Speak for yourself”, she asked me what I had just said as she hadn’t heard me, “I said best we better get ourselves ready then” 🤭

It was a nice bright and sunny morning, the temperature was already a balmy 19 degrees, which is above the normal for this time of year and with the previous couple of days being much cooler with grey leden skies, with intermittent periods of light drizzle throughout the day and night, so this was actually a much welcomed opportunity to get out and go for our usual walk, you never know, I thought to myself, the drizzle may start again later and prevent us from going to watch the Christmas lights being turned on, now that really would be disappointing, well at least for one of us 🤭

Now normally we would just walk from the village, through the Marina and on into the town, stop and have our usual Cafe and Tostado and then return, but it was such a nice warm day, from the 19 degrees(c), and just a very gentle breeze when we first set out, to a much warmer 22 degrees(c) by the time we had walked into town. The sea was like a mill pond, so calm and flat and sparkling blue, rather than the wintery grey colour with large white-capped swells that we had looked out upon over the last couple of days. So we decided that we did not want to rush straight back and so, after having enjoyed our coffee’s and Tostado’s, we just decided to have a wander into the main part of town, to look at the streets, all dressed up in their festive garb, and just to while away some time really, but also to take the opportunity to relieve the ATM outside our bank of some Euros, ready for our Christmas trip to Munich. But before returning home we retraced our steps back to our usual Spanish Cafe, and to coin the old nautical phrase, with the ‘Sun being over the yardarm’ we sat and enjoyed a couple of nicely chilled Anti-Covid Vaccines whilst sitting and enjoying the warmth of the sun, and somewhat unexpectedly finding ourselves watching a yacht regatta, around eighteen small sailing yachts, taking place right in front of us, and of course enjoying our more usual pastime of conducting a spot of both people watching and listening, well it would have been rude not to 🤭 The young daughter, probably around 6-7 years old, of one of the two ladies who own and run the Cafe/Bar, was sat on the small sea wall on the promenade with a small toy guitar, she was strumming away and singing to herself. I went and sat next to her and asked if she knew the Christmas song, “Feliz Navidad”, which she did, so we sat and sung a couple of sentences together, after which I clapped my hands and said “Bravo” and gave her some money, well you have to encourage these young performers from an early age don’t you, although in the UK we would call them ‘Buskers’ 😂 She excitedly ran in to the Cafe shouting ‘Mama, Mama’ and holding the Euro coin outstretched in the palm of her hand. It was only afterwards when I thought to myself, my god, if I had done that in the UK I would probably have been ‘Arrested, charged with grooming a minor and labelled a peadophile’ 😲

Later that same evening, around 5:45pm, the sun was setting and it would not be long before the darkness would fall and with it, a 10 degree(c) drop in the temperature, so we got wrapped up in more appropriate clothing for our second venture out of the day. The lights at the castle had been scheduled to be switched on at 6pm, at 6:30pm we were still stood around waiting, there was a modest group of people and several were checking their watches, the Mayor was already there so the delay wasn’t due to him. Finally a coach arrived and off got a small group of children, dressed in all the same colour uniform and holding tambourines with blue and yellow coloured ribbons, they assembled, a whistle sounded and the children sang a song, in Spanish, and we couldn’t understand a word but it was a rousing sort of tune and we all applauded when they finished. Then their was a countdown, we could join in with that, “Cuatro, Tres, Dos, Una” the switch was pressed and the Christmas tree lit up, as did the brightly coloured overhead street festive themed lights, and that was it. By this time we were feeling quite chilled so we were quite pleased to get moving again and so we headed along the promenade towards the Marina. We realised of course that because of the delay with turning on the lights at the Castle, then there would be a knock on effect for the turning on of the lights in our local town, we had been told, whilst we were stood waiting, that the Mayor would be driven to the town, the children would get on the bus and be taken to the next gathering point where it would then be exactly the same format. We both agreed that we didn’t really need to go and stand around again just to see exactly the same thing, and we were both hungry, so we got as far as the Marina and decided to stop there, where we enjoyed a Pizza, and Anti-Covid Vaccine of course 😂 Oh well, Shazza had got to see the Christmas Lights turned on and, to be completely honest, it was she that suggested that we stop and eat rather than walk any further, if it is a contest between eating, or standing around aimlessly waiting for something to happen, then eating will always take precedence, especially with Sharon and, at the end of the day, it was a win-win situation, Shazza got to do her bit and show her support within the local community, I got to enjoy another dose of Anti-Covid Vaccine 👍

Now you may think that that would be the end of it, the last of the ‘Shazza Mini-Adventures’, as perhaps I too had hoped, thinking that now I may be able to just enjoy a relaxed period, doing a lot of nothing, until the time arrived to get ourselves to Malaga and onto our flight to Munich. Well both you and I would be again proved wrong, for Shazza already had something else up her sleeve 🤔 It appeared that on the same social media forum that she had read about the Christmas Lights turning on ceremony, she had also read about a Food & Produce festival taken place the following weekend in the small hillside town of Manilva, just a 10-15 minute drive away, although she had omitted to tell me about it during our discussion on attending the Christmas Lights event.

However, I was quite happy to go and take a look at this Manilva event as it is a nice small town, just the size of a village really, but our Town Hall is located there so everybody refers to it as a ‘town’ 🤷‍♂️ It is in a wine growing and agricultural region, even having it’s own wine named after it ‘Nilva’, so I was looking forward to perhaps enjoying a bit of wine tasting, with perhaps some different meat and cheese products, well it would be very rude not to. The event started at 11:30am on the Saturday so we still enjoyed a leisurely morning before getting ourselves ready. Once again the weather was kind for us, although to be honest, after the couple of grey and drizzly days that we had had, thereafter everyday was back to being sunny and warm again, with the afternoon temperatures even getting as high as 25 degrees(c). It is just one of the many things that we like about this part of Spain, although now, with it being Winter, we do get more grey overcast days and the daily temperatures can vary from anything between 16-25 degrees(c), sometimes with heavier downpours of the wet stuff, although that has not happened so far this year, but even when we do, it isn’t often that we get more than two, or perhaps three, days without sunshine. I talk about it getting chilly, but that in reality for us means having to put a jumper, or fleece top, on over our shirts and at the time of drafting this ramble it is 11th December, and we have only had to put our two-bar halogen heater on in the living room on three evenings, between 6pm and 9pm, just to take the evening chill off when the sun has set.

Anyway, I digress, we drove to Manilva and parked up on the rough ground which acts as the main car parking area, but as usual we were early and rarely do events here in Spain actually start at the advertised time. It wasn’t going to be a big event, no food stalls lining the narrow streets or any of that, no this event would be held under the white canvas of a very large Marquee type structure and it was erected on the large central Plaza at the bottom end of the town.

We decided to visit our favourite Cafe here, and to of course partake of our now customary morning Cafe and Tostado. Normally we would sit outside at a table at the front of the establishment, because they were in the sunshine, but inside the Cafe, right at the bottom end their are tables right next to a large window, with lovely views over the rooftops, the land and the mountains, we had never managed to get a seat here before, but on this particular morning we struck lucky.

Now Manilva is really lovely and it has many small shops and services to meet the daily basic requirements, although no large supermarkets, or banks, so to access those, residents have to make the short journey down to the town of Sabinillas. After finishing our breakfast we wandered back up the small main street towards the town Plaza and enjoyed the fantastic views.

As we were entered the large tent one of the Organisers approached us and told us that there was ‘Free’ food tasting taking place and we could put our names down inside if we wanted to have a place at the tables. We started off by just wandering along the variety of produce stalls, although many did not have any ‘taster’ plates to try before you buy, which was a bit disappointing, although you could purchase a plate of Salmi or Cheese for €5, I did however get a free small taster glass of one of the local wines and, although their was no pressure whatsoever to purchase, we just thought, support your local supplier and all that, but at €10 for a bottle we agreed that we would be sticking to our usual Supermarket Anti-Covid Vaccines at €3 a bottle 😂

After wandering around every single stall we were getting ready to leave when a lady asked us if we wanted to partake of the local produce sampling, thinking that this would be my only opportunity to get a free taste of various cheeses and meat products, I eagerly put our names down. There were six rows of tressel tables and every seat was occupied and not one other English voice did we hear. First we had to sit and listen to a man talk endlessly about all the produce that is grown within a 10km radius, each vegetable product on standby at a table within his arms reach, ready to be hoisted in the air and talked about for several minutes. Then a video which basically just said exactly what he had said, but accompanied by pictures. Then after the video finished, he started talking again, now this was all done in Spanish of course, and although we could pick up some key words and get the general just of what he was saying, a lot just went over our heads. As I looked around at some of the faces there were obviously a lot of us who were having the same train of thought, “Where is the bloody food !!” 😂 Eventually, he must have seen everyone beginning to wilt, just like the lettuce leaves on the table beside him under the hot spotlights, so the small, and I mean small, plates of produce came out one by one, first it was a Chinese Lettuce Leaf, chopped up and drizzled with a vinegar dressing, next was some other sort of green leaf, three small pieces, drizzled with an olive dressing, then what turned out to be the best plate of the whole thing, no not meat, or cheese, but a slice of Avocado with finely chopped tomato and white onion, next up two slices of tomato, then what looked like a small piece of Orange, but it certainly didn’t taste of orange and then finally a splodge of very bland tasting sweet potato. I said to the chap who was sat across the table from me, “No se crien Pollos, Cerdos, Vacas u Ovejas en Manilva ?” (Do they not farm Chicken, Pigs, Cows or Sheep in Manilva ?), he laughed and then told the person next to him what I had said and he laughed as well. Even Shazza, who is very much more into this ‘Plant Based’ produce than myself, was disappointed too, not particularly on the products themselves, but at how they had presented them, I have to say, I much prefer the way Shazza presents our Plant Based menu options and, if we had come to an event like this almost 5 years ago, when we first started our new dietary regime, then right now I would still be very much 90% Carnivore, as it is, and with all credit to Shazza for the time she puts in to researching tasty ways of preparing and cooking our ‘Plant Based’ menu’s, I am probably around 75% Plant Based, 20% Fish and Chicken and 5% Red Meat. Now just to put the icing on the cake, so to speak, as we left the large tent to return home, right on one corner of the outside of the tent they had Sausages, Ribs and Chicken cooking on a large Barbecue Grill, it smelt absolutely fantastic, perhaps we should have arrived a little later and put our names down for the second food tasting session 🤔

Just by way of finishing off, what really was an unanticipated ramble, which I guess you could consider as being a surprise ‘Christmas Stocking Filler’ 😂 I remember during the Covid outbreak here in Spain, in 2021, that some British Expats were saying that they had difficulty in getting the Covid vaccinations from their local Spanish Health Centre, even though they were officially registered. It did make me wonder whether we, even as ‘Official Residents’ now, would be at the end of the queue when it came to preventative treatments for one thing or another. Well I can certainly dispel any myths about that, as within only a week of being ‘officially’ registered, back in July, we both got letters from the Andalusia Health Authority, inviting us to go and be routinely tested for any early indications of ‘Bowel Cancer’ and, just this morning (11th December), we have both received separate Emails and Text messages inviting us to go and get the latest Covid Booster Vaccination. So for us, down here in the region of Andalusia, and our Province of Malaga, it does not appear that we are being treated any differently to the local Spanish residents 👍

Until my next ramble (whenever that may be 😂)………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, “La Vida Es Buena”

It has been an odd couple of weeks since I last published my last ramble, but it is hard to quite explain why, it is more a feeling rather than a physical sort of thing 🤔 Perhaps it is simply because we are now beginning to feel really settled in, to what on some days still feel like our new lifestyle here in Spain, although on other’s it feels as though we have been here for year’s 🤷‍♂️ I guess the big difference for us now is that we do not have to keep relocating every few months, not that I am complaining, as I did enjoy living in our Motorhome visiting and seeing many different locations, but having a bit more stability also has it’s advantages, so now each day, and week, is just normal life I suppose with normal routines, which is something that we have not experienced for quite some time.

Although we are trying to ween ourselves off following the daily news in the UK, some habits are hard to break and so of course we are reading and hearing about how the Winter weather is now having its usual impact over there, what with the arrival of the colder temperatures and of course the frosts and snow, both of which arrive every year, but people it seems are still never really prepared for it. Although we never get such extreme weather conditions over here in this part of Spain, Winter proper has now arrived, the temperatures have certainly dropped and, having now fully acclimatised, we too can feel the chill and have to dress appropriately. We still have not had the much needed rainfall, well not in sufficient quantities to make any difference to the water levels in the ‘Embalces’ (Reservoirs) although we have the odd day when we get some light drizzle. The major difference is that we are beginning to get more frequent grey days than bright warm and sunny ones, which just means that we spend much more time wearing jeans and jumpers, both when we are in and out of the apartment, and of course wearing shoes and socks, or our slippers, as the tiled floors which are cooling in the Summer are very cold during the winter months, perhaps we need to invest in a few rugs 🤔 but so far we have not yet had to resort to turning on the heating, although we are probably not far away from having to do so, more so in the evenings. On the days when the sun does make an appearance, although no longer warm enough to resort back to our Summer attire, we go out for our weekend lunches and we still try to get out most days just to stretch our legs, it is also much easier now for us to do the ‘Tourist Spotting’, as they are the ones with the pale skin and wearing shorts and tee shirts as, whilst the five degree drop in the daily temperature from 23 degrees(c) to the now more frequent 16-18 degrees(c), may feel chilly to us, it is like a Northern European Sumer to them and, as I have mentioned before, varying climate conditions are all relative really, but I am thankful that I now no longer have to scrape ice or snow off the vehicle windscreen, or pre-warm the car, before driving it somewhere.

But enough of my blathering, what have we been up to since I published that last ramble 🤷‍♂️ On the Sunday evening, two weeks ago now, Shazza and I had been sat on the balcony just having our usual chitter chatter, about something and nothing as usual. But then our thoughts turned to where we could possibly go for another day trip, prior to our upcoming Christmas trip to Munich. We agreed that our much awaited and anticipated trip to Granada would now be best done in the Spring, as the weather was now beginning to get a little chilly up there in the ‘Sierra Nevada’ mountains. Even up in our own local mountains the daily temperatures were beginning to fall, albeit only slightly, but the main change being in the much lower cloud levels, which would mean reduced visibility so that the truly awesome sights would be somewhat shrouded from view and it would feel a bit damper, so we decided that for the remainder of this year we would just explore a little more of the Provinces within our own Region of Andalusia, and to be completely truthful, part of that personal motivation had been due to watching the travel programme (Michael Portillo’s Andalusia’) currently being shown on the UK TV but which we can still tune into over here. We were not particularly looking to go anywhere that was necessarily ‘Touristy’, just exploring some of the more anonymous whitewashed Towns and Villages that we had not explored before, either on our previous year’s of travelling in our Motorhomes, or even visits we had undertaken in Shazza’s little car when we had come to what was then our ‘Bolt Hole’ without the van.

Now although we live in the Province of ‘Malaga’, we are actually located right at the southern tip of our Province, within perhaps only five kilometres of the border with our neighbouring Province of ‘Cadiz’, which actually stretches East to West along this Southern tip of Spain, so it has actually got Coastlines along both the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. For us to travel across to the other side, and by that, just to prevent any confusion, I mean the Atlantic Coast, as opposed to that other ‘Other Side’ 💀 if you know what I mean 😉 It takes us just a little over one hour, so some trips can be done very easily in just one day and, additionally, there are so many places to explore in between these two coastlines, some of which we have already done and some that we keep promising ourselves that we will do, but have never got around to yet, but now at least, we have no reason to have to rush, as they are certainly not going anywhere and we have no time restrictions in which to visit them, as we had when we were on the ninety-day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ clock.

Now I do have to be honest with you, it is generally Shazza that spends the time researching places of interest for our discussions at our “What Do You Want To Do Today ?” morning conferences, although as you already know, I use that term ‘Discussion’ in a very tongue in cheek sort of fashion 😉 If you are reading this and do not understand that comment then you have certainly not read enough of my previous blogs on going on ‘Shazza Adventures’ 😂 Anyway, I digress, so on this particular Sunday evening, after finishing singing along with some of the Hymns on ‘Songs of Praise’ 🤭 she mentions the name of this particular town and suggests that we go to have a look at it and the neighbouring area. “What is there of interest ?” I ask, a reasonable sort of question I thought, she gives me a sort of frustrated look, the one that says “Why are you asking me irrelevant questions, it isn’t as if I am giving you any choice on wether you actually want to go there or not !”, but she does try to pacify me at times, so I think she thought better of actually vocalising what she was actually thinking, she responded with, “I think there may be a Castle or something”, as she knows how much I like ‘Castles’ and I can on occasions get really excited by those ‘Somethings’ 😂 but the use of her words ‘I think’ and ‘or something’ casts a reasonable doubt in my mind on the accuracy, or even honesty, of the information she has just provided to me. But in truth, I am not really unduly worried because in her comment she had omitted any reference to Walking Boots, Backpacks or Picnic Lunches, which to me interprets as No Hiking !! and so this trip would certainly entail us having to make essential refreshment stop(s) for my our mandatory Anti-Covid Vaccine(s) and Tapas or Menu del Dia 🤗 Now don’t get me wrong, I actually thoroughly enjoy walking along coastal footpaths or through forest paths, but my knees are a little more selective these days when it comes to steeper gradients.

But it was now time for me to ask that sixty-million dollar question, “So when would you like to go on this day trip ?”, which was naturally followed thereafter by more discussions, well actually that is not factually correct, as I took no part in the conversation that ensued. Shazza spent several minutes speaking out loudly, but it was one of those debates that she was having with herself, going through a list in her mind, deciding when she wanted to go and do the weekly shopping, could she leave it for a few more days, did she have enough in the cupboards, fridge and freezer for a few more evening meals ? Did she need to do any laundry or ironing ? and then, ultimately, what did the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast would be the best weather day for the trip ? Which to me, I have to say, is a pointless exercise in the first place as they never get it right anyway ? Such things seem of little importance to me, because did it really matter when she did the laundry or ironing, or the shopping, there were two Supermarkets just a couple of minutes away at the bottom of our hill, a large Mercadona supermarket in town and another, our usual, just a fifteen minute drive away and we were spoilt for choice with a whole host of eateries on our door step, so for me, well I really couldn’t see a problem around what day we went on the trip 🤷‍♂️ After her deliberations she looks at me, and so I ready myself for the big reveal, “What about Wednesday, is that okay with you ?”, it was quite exciting, she was actually giving me a choice, although I wasn’t fooling myself, if she had decided on Wednesday then Wednesday it would be, irrespective of what I may say but at least for a couple of minutes it felt as though I was a participant on that TV game show ‘Deal or No Deal’ 😂 Now I could have delayed by suggesting that I would need to just check my diary schedule to see what other pressing appointments I had to deal with that week, but that would have been ‘pointless’ (mmm, isn’t that the name of another TV game show ?) as she, and I, both knew that my diary was completely empty, “Wednesday is good for me” I cheerfully and enthusiastically responded. Now at this point I still didn’t really know where we were actually going to 🤷‍♂️ or even what was really there or why she had chosen that particular place, but at the end of the day it wasn’t really that important, because I just like going out and exploring these new places and even more so if they were not high up in the mountains, because then there was the added bonus of me being actually permitted to drive the car 🤗

Now you may think, as did I, that we had finally seen off those infernal ‘Dark Forces’, that there was nothing now going on in our lives of any importance that they could interfere or mess with, so now it would be the turn of some other poor sole who would become the object of their unwanted attentions. It was late on the Tuesday evening when I first felt a nagging ache in my gum, right at the back of my lower jaw on the left hand side, but it wasn’t the normal sort of tell tale ache that you get with a toothache, in fact, at that point I didn’t even feel the need to take any painkillers, it really wasn’t that bad, just irritating and a little uncomfortable. But I was awoken in the early hours, which is unusual as usually, once I am asleep, that is it until around 07:00am, but the ache had gotten much worse and I needed to get up to take some painkillers, the painkillers were not that effective and so a very restless night followed. We had not bothered registering with a Dentist here, it just hadn’t been a priority, but the ‘free’ State medical cover here does not cover Dental Treatment, so at some point we would have had to find a ‘Private’ practice anyway, but they are actually ten-a-penny here in Spain, even in our local town there are at least four large dental clinics. I did the usual dual diligence of course, using ‘Mr Google’, I read all the ‘Independent’ reviews and then made my selection. I sent an Email at 09:00am, requesting an Emergency Appointment, they didn’t open to patients until 09:30am, but within ten minutes of sending that Email I had received a response telling me to go in that same morning and they would fit me in. Now I knew that a day or so earlier, on the Monday evening, that I had eaten a small amount of Hazelnuts and Almonds, so I suspected that perhaps a small sharp piece had probably got stuck under a tooth, pierced my gum and caused an abscess to form, so to me, having had this happen on previous occasions, all I needed was to have the offending object removed and for the Dentist to prescribe a simple course of Antibiotics to clear up the infection.

After filling in the initial patient registration forms, I took a seat in the waiting room and I was seen within half an hour of my arrival at the clinic. The young female Dentist only spoke a little bit of English, but her Spanish assistant spoke perfect English and, although I could now use plenty of conversational words and sentences in Spanish, “Cafe con Leche y Tostado con Mermelede” didn’t seem quite appropriate in these circumstances 🤔 unfortunately, I had not yet got to the lessons, on my Spanish Duo Lingo course, that dealt with such medical or dental matters, although I could say ‘Mucho Dolor’ (A lot of pain) and point to the appropriate area. Now I also have to say that the last time I visited a Dentist was back in October 2020, when we were in the UK at Ilfracombe in Devon, but what with the impact of Covid, and our further nomadic travels, well neither of us had had the need to find another one. However, whether it is just here in Spain or the fact that technology has improved massively in the last three year’s, but my goodness, everything here is just so efficient compared to how it was when I last needed dental treatment. No longer do they take X-Rays with you lying in a chair, holding a plastic stick in place in your mouth whilst they point a sort of archaic large ray gun sort of affair to the side of your head, then they run out the room and hide somewhere, out of the way of the harmful rays of the radiation machinery, having left me with just a heavy lead lined blanket over my vitals 😲 No, here you go into a room and stand upright at a machine, something then whizzes around your head for a couple of minutes, whilst it makes a 3D image of your mouth, then you go back into the surgery, sit back in the treatment chair, where the image taken by the machine is already visible on a screen above your head.

Now I had correctly diagnosed the issue myself, yes I did have an Abscess, which had formed under the tooth, and yes I would need to take a weeks course of Antibiotics. However, what came as a bit of a surprise, and shock, was that I had not anticipated that they would need to extract ‘two’ teeth there and then, both lower rear molars 😲😖 I have to be honest, I had not expected to come out with one less tooth, let alone two, after all, I didn’t actually have a toothache, but they are the professionals and they told me that they needed to come out, who was I to argue, so out they came. Now again, I was actually quite impressed, I don’t know what was done differently to the other times, but even injecting the anaesthetic into my gums didn’t hurt and, I wasn’t left with half of my face and nose feeling numb for hour’s afterwards, in fact the only numbed area was where the teeth had been extracted. However, when the anaesthetic did wear off, which only took a couple of hours, my lower back jaw was extremely sore and painful and, on top of the strong Antibiotics, I also needed to take painkillers several times a day, but much worse than any of that, I was instructed that I could not partake of any Anti-Covid medications until I had completed the week’s course of medication 😲 The lower left part of my jaw bone was also quite visibly swollen, as if someone had punched me hard in the side of my face, so Shazza and I both agreed, although somewhat reluctantly I do have to say, it would be better to not go on our planned day trip the following day as the discomfort, and inability to eat properly on my left-hand side, would have spoilt the enjoyment of the day ☹️

It actually took nearly two weeks before I could stop taking the painkillers and for the swelling to reduce substantially, I had been informed by the Dentist that it could take up to three months for the gum, where the two teeth were extracted, to harden enough to have implants, if I then chose to have them. Even now, a fortnight later, although I no longer require to take anymore painkillers and am able to eat and drink normally, chewing my food has still to be done on the opposite side of my mouth. For those of you that are interested in the cost of such dental treatments here in Spain, which are the same whether you are a resident here or not, the total cost was €139 (£120) which was €50 for each tooth extraction, €30 for the X-Ray and €9 for the Antibiotics. I certainly will not be eating anymore nuts for quite a while as they can work out to be quite an unnecessary and expensive luxury and whatever has happened to the tooth fairy leaving me some money, the global economy must be in a worse state than I had imagined 😂

So it goes without saying that we didn’t venture too far from home over these last couple of weeks, with the first couple of days after having the teeth out being spent confined at home, feeling rather sorry for myself, I didn’t feel up to doing very much and found myself lacking any sort of motivation or concentration to start ‘drafting’ this ramble, never mind not having much really to ramble about, although that has never stopped me before 😂 I couldn’t even be bothered spending time doing any Spanish or German lessons, yes we are both learning a few key words for when we visit Munich, although having lived in Germany many years ago, before Shazza and I had met, a lot of words and sentences are coming back to me quite easily. However, boredom finally won the lethargy contest and so we re-commenced going back out on our daily walks, although ‘Tostados’, for me at least, were still off the agenda, but we still stopped for our usual coffee’s, well it would have been rude not to 😉

Now on the Friday, two days after having my teeth extracted, I received an Email from our Solicitor’s office, the office in Malaga, stating that they had now collected our Spanish Driving Licences from the DGT Offices and that they would be available to collect from our local office the following week. We had both forgotten about these, as we hadn’t actually needed to produce them, so the ‘Temporary’ paper licences we had both been issued with, ten weeks earlier, had remained folded in my wallet, and Shazza’s in her purse. Much like the UK, Driving Licences over here are normally valid for ten year periods, until you reach the age of 70 years and then they are only issued, if you pass the appropriate medical tests, for periods of 3 years thereafter. So as I only had three years to go until I reached my 70th birthday, I had anticipated seeing the expiry date on my licence as October 2026, so it was a nice surprise when we collected our licences to discover that they had actually given me 5 years validity from the date of issue, so I was good now until September 2028. So without doubt it really had been a bit of a topsy-turvy week for me, the downside being the unanticipated dental treatment and the upside being that we have now very nearly received all of our official Spanish residency documentation. The final piece we are still missing is our official ‘plastic’ health cards, but they are so far behind in the issue of these that we have been informed that we may not get them prior to us applying for our Residency permit renewals in April next year 🤷‍♂️ Not that they are really that important as they tend to ask for our residency cards anyway, as everything is traceable via our unique personal individual NIE Numbers, but we do also have temporary health entitlement paperwork, which we produce if we need to go to a hospital for treatment.

Over the last couple of days my daughter in Germany had sent me a message, with a photo attachment of a scene taken from the front window of their house and showing their first falls of snow. The first one showed just a small smattering, nothing really extraordinary, we had camped in Scotland in the Motorhome in worse than that only a year ago, but then, she sent another one just twenty-four hours later, this time with our Son-in-Law Dean, standing in their back garden with his Ski’s at the ready. Okay, so yes, perhaps it was beginning to get a little more interesting.

Having looked at the current photographs she had sent me of our upcoming Christmas destination, it prompted me to take a look at the advance weather forecast for their area and on doing so, I have to say that it wasn’t the snow that concerned me, more the actual minus temperatures we would have to experience 🥶 However, trying to turn a negative into a positive, as I often attempt to do, I noted that actually the daytime temperatures appeared to be getting warmer as the days of our arrival neared, so if they kept rising by that one degree each day, by the time we arrive on the 21st December, perhaps it would still be worth packing our shorts, tee-shirts and flip-flops 😂 At night when the temperatures dropped we were certainly hoping that their home central heating system was efficient, I have also suggested that they make sure that the huskies are well fed and that they have serviced and lubricated the dog sleds 😲

It did seem a little bizarre that on the Saturday afternoon, whilst we were enjoying an afternoon in Estepona, my daughter sent me yet another message, and yet another photograph, of them cosied up inside their house, sat around the fire and next to the lovely tall Christmas Tree, looking out of their window onto their snowy, but picturesque, wintery scene, I have to say though that they do seem to be enjoying it. However, I know that it was perhaps churlish of me, but I couldn’t help myself, and so I sent her a message back with a few photographs of my own, with us sat, that particular day, in a sunny floral plaza enjoying a Tapas lunch whilst being serenaded by a man with a Spanish guitar 😎 and with a question to her, “What possessed you to choose to live there !!” 🤭

We finished this current weekend off by having Sunday lunch at our favourite ‘Tapas’ Cafe/Bar/Restaurant (La bodega) in our local Marina, although a ‘Tapas’ bar, it is actually all Moroccan spiced food, the whole menu is delicious, good quality and well cooked, generous portions, the staff are so friendly and welcoming and it is one of the few establishments in the Marina that offer very good value for money, and you know how much Shazza and I like our value for money options. So a Spanish Tapas establishment, serving Moroccan spiced food, owned and managed by two Moroccan brothers who were both born and lived originally in London, truly international eh ? 😂 Now last week when we went there we asked one of the brother’s if they were doing anything special for New Year’s Eve, he confirmed that they were but then told us that they had been fully booked for the event since before September, how on earth had we missed the advertisement for that I do not know 😲 However, this week, when I mentioned that we were disappointed at not being able to book a table for their New Year event, he said that he had did have a table as someone had, within the last couple of days, cancelled their booking. So now we can have a nice celebratory Christmas in Munich 🤗🥳🍾🥂and then, we come back and can celebrate seeing in our first New Year in our new home in Spain 🤗🥳🍾🥂 So I have to say that, after our first 6 months now living permanently here in Spain, all things considered, including the initial frustrations we had to contend with, everything appears to be working out just fine 😉

Until my next ramble, stay safe and keep warm my friends and, as I am unlikely to publish again until after the festive season, Shazza and I would just like to take this opportunity to say to all of you, wherever you may be in the world………………

🎄 FELIZ NAVIDAD Y UN FELIZ ANO NUEVO 🥳

(Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year)

Hasta Luego mi Amigos………. La Vida es Buena

Although we do keep ourselves relatively mobile with our regular walks, which often than not is on a daily basis, they are generally pretty much flat walks, so we were pleased when we awoke the morning after our day trip into the mountain, to discover that we had no aches and pains after the numerous steep climbs that we had done, using and stretching leg muscles, and working them very much harder than we would normally have done. So, at our routine ‘What Do You Want To Do Today ?’ morning conference, sat on the balcony and leisurely looking at the world go by, even though it was yet another warm and sunny day, Shazza and I agreed unanimously that we would conduct a less physically active sort of a day, which actually interprets as not venturing out of the front door, opting to spend our day doing very little of any importance, apart from one essential outstanding task that had been on our ‘To Do’ list for several weeks, but apart from that, our day would be given towards our continuing transition into becoming a little more Spanish, yes this day would be about developing our own ‘Mañana’ culture 😂

As for myself, well I made a start on reviewing the mass of photographs that I had taken on that road trip, after which I then had to try and select one’s that I wanted to include in the respective ‘Rambles’, and with so many to sort through this was never going to be an easy task. Eventually, the time then came for me to commence tapping away on the keyboard, making an initial start on drafting what would then become ‘Part 1’ of my next ramble. Shazza, on the other hand, who can never sit still for very long periods of time anyway, combined her daily activity between perusing her social media accounts, reading a couple of chapters on some book she was reading on her Kindle, a routine telephone call to her mum, starting the process of making a fresh loaf of ‘sour dough’ bread and whilst doing so, making more home-made soup for some of our lunches, catching up with some ironing, whilst watching one of her ‘Girlie’ Netflix box series, then watching some different ‘You Tube’ Plant Based cooking and baking videos, I was knackered just sat in my balcony chair watching her 😂

We now only had six weeks before we would depart on our Christmas trip to Munich, which we were now beginning to get quite excited about, we had already pre-booked and pre-paid for our return flights well over a month ago, but we were still considering the best way to get ourselves to and from Malaga Airport, journeys that generally we are not accustomed to doing with our own luggage. My personal preference had been to drive there ourselves, and use our normal parking, but the multi-storey car park opposite the terminal building, the one we would normally use, when we are either collecting, or delivering, our visitor’s, would we believed, be astronomically expensive if we were to pay the usual hourly rate, and to be honest we also believed that this was only short-term parking anyway. So, that meant that we would have to consider leaving the car at one of the several long-stay storage areas that are located on the fringe of the airport, some of which provided a courtesy bus to and from the air terminal, although not all of them. Shazza had done the due diligence research around this, the proximity to the airport and of course costs, but she became concerned after reading a lot of the ‘Independent’ On-Line reviews, many of which related accounts of cars being left on public roads outside the facilities, rather than in a secure storage area, other’s having sustained damage, and more worrying, some reporting excessive amounts of additional mileage on them 😲 The last thing that we wanted was to have our Christmas spoilt, worrying about the car whilst we were away, so we also considered alternative options, a taxi, or using buses, however, cost, or timings and convenience, did not really make them attractive options.

Shazza can sometimes be like a dog gnawing at a bone, relentless, but more often than not I do have to say that her tenacity does actually pay off. She managed to find an email address to contact the firm who manage the Airport short stay multi-storey car park, so she enquired about the possibility of longer term parking arrangements at their location and she discovered that, if we were to book and pay in advance, then we could actually leave the car in that multi-storey car park, which would be very handy for us with it being directly opposite the air terminal building especially as our return flight was not until the evening. So, for a period of seven days under-cover parking it would cost us €96, which worked out at less than €14 a day, which we thought wasn’t that bad really, although it was not as economic as the other longer stay parking facilities that she had looked at, but it was certainly much cheaper than a return, door-to-door, taxi transfer service (€200). The cheapest option would of course have been public transport, as in buses, we could get a bus from the bottom of our hill to Estepona bus station, from their we could get a bus that went via Marbella directly to the bus station at the Airport, but that would give us an issue with timings, to meet both the bus and flight schedules, on both the outward and the return legs of the journey, and of course the inconvenience of perhaps spending a lot of time waiting around for connections, not to mention lugging baggage up and down the hill. So in the end it was a no brainer, we both agreed that for peace of mind and much easier convenience, and for the sake of only a difference of around €50, the Multi-storey parking at the airport was the most viable. Shazza went ahead and pre-booked the parking and within seconds of doing so, she received a confirmation Email with the procedure to follow when we arrived at the parking entrance barrier, it was a little different to the normal entry procedure because of the pre-payment. So that was our one and only essential task for the day completed, now our Christmas travel arrangements are all sorted, apart from the final On-Line checking-in procedures a week or so before we actually travel.

The following morning we had our pre-arranged appointments at our Solicitor’s local office in town with one of their Tax Consultants, they had already been dealing with our ‘Non-residents’ tax affairs for the last eight year’s, so we were confident that we would receive the correct advice and information and as a bonus, this consultation came at no charge. I had already conducted a lot of research into the Spanish Taxation requirements and procedures, well before we had even considered seriously thinking about applying for the Residency Visa itself and, whilst I am certainly no Economics or Taxation Expert, I have always been pretty astute when it comes to matters that concern our own personal finances. With my own, and Shazza’s, incomes all coming from UK ‘Government’ Pensions, I had gone to the trouble of finding, downloading and reading, the rather laborious ‘No Double Taxation Agreement’ Document, that had been signed off between the UK and Spanish Governments, and so I believed that I already had a good understanding of the requirements, and how the taxation procedures worked. However, it was only after we had obtained our initial Residency Permits that I had contacted the UK HMRC office, which is a mandatory requirement, to inform them of our change of residency circumstances, they in turn sent me a Form, which instructed me to complete and return to them, on the telephone they had made it sound simple and straightforward, but now they needed additional ‘official’ paperwork, not from us but from the Spanish Tax Agency, and then also required ‘us’ to tell ‘them’ how much ‘refund of tax’ we were claiming back from them 🤔 Now this had certainly created some confusion as, my understanding had been that, under that Agreement, and because our incomes were solely from ‘UK Government Pensions’, we would remain being taxed ‘at source’ on those pensions, meaning paying our income tax in the UK and not in Spain, so the question in my head was ‘Why on earth would I require to apply for a refund of tax payment’ 🤷‍♂️ and, now lets just say that I had totally misunderstood the ‘Agreement’ procedures, surely ‘they’, UK HMRC, would already have our tax records, so ‘they’ should already know themselves how much tax ‘they’ had already deducted from us ? Something just didn’t sound right with this, although I could certainly have understood it if our incomes had been from ‘Privately’ sourced pensions, as these would have been different procedures.

I had expected the meeting to last for at least an hour, if not longer, and then, at the end of it, to probably come away more confused and frustrated by it all, the way that Government’s generally like you to be, and leaving me asking the question ‘When is a No Double Taxation Agreement, NOT a No Double Taxation Agreement ?’ However, and as it turned out, our meeting lasted no more than ten minutes, five of those engaged in pleasantries and just general chit chat about how we were settling in to our recently acquired new residency status. They already were fully familiar with us, as I have previously stated, they had been our Solicitors, and dealt with everything on our behalf, for well over eight year’s now, from the initial purchase of what was then our ‘Bolt Hole’ property back in April 2015, setting up a ‘Power of Attorney’ so that they could act on our behalf in obtaining our NIE certificates, registering our ownership of the property with the local council, opening our On-Line Bank Account, setting up our Utilities and Direct Debit payments, arranging our Spanish Wills, preparing and submitting our annual non-residents tax returns and now, much more recently, assisting us with obtaining our residency permit here in Spain.

Our Tax Specialist confirmed, and re-assured us, that they were very conversant with the ‘No Double Taxation Agreement’, how it related to us, as British Citizens living permanently here in Spain and in receipt of UK sourced ‘Government’ Pension incomes. The bottom line was that our Pension Incomes ‘would’ actually remain being taxed in the UK, as I had originally understood that they would, and they, our Tax Consultants, would, on our behalf, prepare and submit our Annual Spanish Tax Returns, and apply for the necessary ‘Exemption Certificates’ for the both of us, from paying Spanish Tax on these pension incomes. They also confirmed that we would no longer pay the annual ‘Non-residents’ property tax. So, in the end I think that it would be reasonable to conclude that, I knew, and fully understood how the ‘No Double Tax Agreement’ works, our Tax Consultant, and the Spanish Tax Authority, know and fully understand how the ‘No Double Taxation Agreement’ works, leaving the only people that do not have a bloody clue as to how it works being the UK Tax Authority themselves. It really is no wonder that the UK is in such a mess, both economically and otherwise, it appears that whilst ‘Boris Le Clune’ may have already left the building, the rest of the dysfunctional and shambolic circus remain. Now we do not need to do anything else until April next year, when our Tax Specialist will contact us again just to collate some information in order for them to prepare and submit our Tax Forms on our behalf for the 2023 Tax period.

As we are now on our Winter lifestyle schedule, meaning that we now ‘occasionally’ go out to enjoy afternoon Lunches’, rather than going out in the evening for ‘Dinners’ and, with it now being relatively quiet during weekdays, we much prefer to go out for those lunches at weekends when there are more people out and about, the ambience is so much better, as are the ‘people watching’ opportunities 😁 We do however still go on our regular walks through the week, but at weekends, when we are eating out, we do not stop for our more usual ‘Cafe con Leche and Tostado’ at our little Spanish Cafe.

Now I know that it can perhaps become a little tiresome for you to keep having to read about the weather that we enjoy over here in the Winter months, but I do feel the need to have to mention it yet again, certainly not to gloat, but because, as with most parts of the world, this Climate Change business is seriously messing around with the more usual seasonal temperatures and weather conditions, and that is very evident this year in this part of Spain. Whilst it is generally always very much warmer down this part of the world, than in the more Northerly European countries, the daytime temperatures here are currently remaining consistently higher than would be normal, we should, generally speaking, now be experiencing very variable weather conditions, with daytime temperatures alternating between perhaps 14 degrees(c) one day, then perhaps 22 degrees(c) on another, warm sunshine one day and grey overcast ones the next, with periods of drizzle and rain becoming ever more frequent as the Winter months move on. However, we are still enjoying day after day of brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies and the daily temperatures are ‘constantly’ in the mid-twenties. However, another major weather discrepancy for us this year, is in the strength of the wind, now we have always experienced quite windy conditions along this part of the Costa del Sol coastline, more so during the Autumn and Winter months, something to do with being located close to the Gibraltar Strait, the narrow channel of water where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean collide, so we are used to it generally being a little blustery along this coastline, but again, currently we are experiencing wind strengths that are only between 2-5mph, which are nothing more than a light breeze, and not the more usual 15-20mph with gusts of 30-40mph, so this unusual weather is making for rather more consistently pleasant warm days, which you would think we should be very happy about.

As a temporary seasonal tourist here, this certainly is something to be enjoyed, but actually for permanent residents here, a category in which we now fall under, it is becoming rather worrying, as the severe lack of rainfall, starting from as far back as last Winter, right through the Spring and Summer and into this Winter, has created major water shortage issues, although personally speaking, we have been pretty fortunate up to now, with no shortages or restrictions to our domestic water supply as their has been in other Provinces and Regions of Spain, only our communal facilities, such as use of the swimming pool, have been affected. However, over recent weeks, reading our local Spanish media reports, and speaking with several of our Spanish neighbours, the water levels in the reservoirs all around the country have not been this low for a great number of years and, there is a real fear that if this unseasonably very warm weather and lack of rain does not change very soon, it will be ‘Stand Pipes’ in the streets, or bottled water (whilst supplies last), being the only access to drinking water, something that has previously been experienced here. However, if things do get to that state, then it is not just the domestic supplies that get effected, there will also be a much wider impact, obviously within all aspects relating to the Agricultural and Food industries, but also the Tourism industry, just imagine if hotels, holiday rental accommodations, campsites and motor home Aires, cannot provide access to water for paying visitor’s, that would have a major impact financially, as people return home early, or even cancel advance bookings. So yes, whilst I do regularly tell you that the weather here is very nice, especially for this time of year, there will almost certainly be a severe price to pay for it, if things do not change, and soon 😲 So perhaps suffering the cold and wet Autumns and Winters when we were in the UK, may be something that we often used to moan about, but there are always differing Pro’s and Con’s in this life 🤔 However, sticking with my usual philosophy of not wasting time, or energy, on things that I have personally no power to influence or change, so lack of rain or not, our new retirement lifestyle philosophy is to just continue to enjoy each and every day whilst we still can, we will deal with what tomorrow brings, tomorrow 😉

I look back on it now, and I have to say that it does seem a little strange that, during the height of this past Summer, we actually only went down and spent a few hours on the beach once, that was when the grandchildren were out on holiday, but here we are now, in the Winter, a time when sitting on the beach would normally be a rare opportunity, rather than a daily occurrence, but here we are, spending lots of our days just enjoying picnic lunches, and hour’s on our favourite beach. Anyone would think that we had paid to be on a Winter Sun holiday 🤷‍♂️

Shazza, as usual, when we come down to the beach, will generally get stuck into reading a book on her Kindle device and do some solar basting, yes it is still that warm, whereas I, as usual, just enjoy sitting, under the shade of my beach umbrella, listening to the tranquil ripples of the gentle waves lapping slowly, and rhythmically, onto the shoreline, now it wasn’t quite as flat as a proverbial mill pond, but very nearly, with the crystal clear water sparkling in the sunshine, everything being just so peaceful. There were none of the more usual intrusive beach noises, no hoards of people sandwiched very close together, only half a dozen, at most, just doing much the very same as us, there were no children splashing around noisily in the water, or making excited screaming noises, it was I have to say, complete and utter bliss. The only loud sudden sound that did startle me at one point, was the noise of someone suddenly letting out a very loud snore, however, it was a good job that there were not the usual hoards on the beach, as I discovered that that loud snoring noise had actually emanated from myself 😲 I cannot even remember closing my eyes to have that particular period of ‘Personal Contemplation’. Shazza looked across at me and laughed, “Wake yourself up did you ?”

A lot of times, if you are patient enough to just sit and watch, things will sometimes just materialise in front of you, things that not only visually attract your attention but can sometimes also lead to a bit of curiosity. I had seen the bow end of one of the small fishing boats, from our Marina, suddenly appear from the seaward side of the outer harbour wall, nothing unusual in that you may say, but it appeared to be drifting rather than motoring, and it was exceptionally close to the large boulders that project into the sea to protect the harbour wall, the small boat was rolling gently from side to side in tune with the motion of the very slight sea swell. From where I was sat, it was just a little too far away to see, in any great detail, what was going on but my eyes remained fixed on it. Gradually the full length of the small boat became visible, I could make out two people on the front deck looking over the bow, they didn’t appear to be in any sort of panic but they were in discussion about something, I had brought my pocket camera out with me and so used the zoom lens to take a closer look.

I really had no clue as to what was going on, so sat watching with no information to go on, there was no alternative, from the visual evidence before me, I had to make up my own version of events, which went something like this………they had been out checking, or laying out, their fishing nets when something had become entangled on or underneath the hull of their boat, I knew that the stretches of beaches nearby, and the harbour wall, was a very popular location for the Line Fisherman to stand and fish, we see them on a regular basis, so perhaps one of their lines had snapped when they were reeling in a fish, or perhaps there was some other sort of debris that had been floating in the water that was causing them concern. Anyway, as the boat turned I got a good view of the Stern and could see the three of them engaged in some sort of activity, perhaps they could see the fishing line, or other debris, and were then able to release it from where it had become attached to their boat. It certainly cannot have been anything too serious as not long afterwards they chugged off out of sight, oh well it had passed a good fifteen minutes of my day 😁

Now if I thought that that was enough intrigue and entertainment for one afternoon, I was to be proved wrong. Shazza, who lets be honest here, does not normally take very much interest in what is going on out on the water, unless I spot a pod of dolphins, and especially if any sort of activity is out of her normal vision range, on the horizon, but it was she that had noticed a weird looking long, but also tall, looking shape way out on the horizon, which I have to say, looked nothing like the normal freighters that we see, and we are quite used to seeing all vessel shapes and sizes. What added to the mystery was that this shape was blurred in the heat haze, it was certainly moving away from us and not towards us. I called my small pocket camera into action once again, however, I was not convinced that my zoom lens would extend to that distance, but I gave it a go anyway.

When we returned home shortly afterwards, I looked out from the balcony to see wether the strange looking vessel was still visible, if it had been, then I may have been able to see it better with my binoculars, however, it had completely disappeared from sight, so it must have been travelling East, down towards the channel that divides the Southern Italian coastline and the Northern African coastline, and not passing through the Gibraltar Strait into the Atlantic, where I would still have had a very good view of it and at a bit closer quarters, so it will have to just remain one of those mysteries that I will never uncover, I will try though not to lose any sleep over it 😁

We took advantage of being able to spend more warm days, both walking and being down at the beach and, as you will already know by now, when you put Shazza near a large body of water, she just has to get into it and have a swim, she soon regretted that this time though 😂

”The Water Is Lovely, Come On In” she shouted to me, now I am not saying that I mistrust my beloved, or that I do not believe what she tells me without question, but I do know that at times she can have a wicked sense of humour, so I have learnt, over the years and through past experience, that it is best to sometimes not be too trusting of her 🤔

A little later, once she had returned from her ice bath and I was satisfied that she had defrosted without going into hypothermic shock, I, somewhat rather stupidly now that I come to think about it, became a little too curious as to just how cold the sea temperature really was, so I dared to venture in myself, now it took about twenty-minutes for me to only get in as far as waist height, there were other’s on the beach watching, so I couldn’t race straight out again screaming like a small child, I had a ‘Hasselhoff Bay Watch’ macho man image to protect, but when I realised that I could not feel any of my submerged bodily organs or limbs I came running out, screaming like a small child 🥶 Thereafter, I was more than content to just sit in my beach chair, enjoying my picnic lunches, passing my time engaging in my favourite pastimes of people and boat watching, although it wasn’t really particularly busy with either, but as previously said, just be patient, give it time and you will always see something.

On another day, as a bit of a change from the beach and our more usual promenade walk, we chose to go through and along the ‘Reserva Ecologica’. We started off in the usual sunshine and cloudless blue sky, however, when we got down to the beach we couldn’t see a thing out to sea, as there was a thick ‘Sea Fret’, it was already rolling in landwards, it reminded us of some of the Autumnal walks we used to take in the UK, the difference being that here it was currently 23 degrees(c) and, along with the Sea Fret, came a sticky humidity.

This Chiringuito is open all year and is on one of our other favourite stretches of beach, although it was a lot busier than we have ever seen it before, with lots of people enjoying lunch, lots of cyclists also stop here and their bicycles, which were of all shapes and sizes, and from what we could see, probably matched the riders 😁 their bicycles all lined up against the wooden decked rails. We had already eaten our lunch before we left home, but the aroma of the ‘Chicken’ and ‘Ribs’ was still very tempting 😋 however, I managed to not succumb. Now normally we would sit here and look out at all the water activities going on, it is a popular place for both snorkelling, scuba diving, kayakers and Paddle boarders but not today, due to the thick mist, however, if you are patient and sit and wait and watch………………………..

Later that afternoon, more early evening really, I was sat on the balcony, whilst Shazza was in the kitchen preparing a ‘Paella’ for our evening meal, I had been engaged in a lengthy text conversation with my daughter in Germany, who was quite excited about us going over to spend Christmas with them, when I looked up out of the French windows to discover that the Sea Fret had now crept silently up our hill. I stared out upon a thick greyness, which had totally blocked out the sunshine, I could physically feel a sudden drop in the temperature, whereas earlier, on our walk, the rise in the humidity level had been the result of the grey mist, but now it had brought a damp chill with it. It was time to get changed out of my shorts and short-sleeved shirt and to put on something a little warmer, and my slippers as my feet were getting chilled too 😲 However, I was not getting too excited about this sudden change in the weather, it didn’t mean that the normal Winter conditions were finally on their way, as we regularly get these ‘Sea Frets’ during the height of the Summer as well.

So yes, we have had a relatively easy and relaxed week, but we do have to keep reminding ourselves that this is the new normal for us now, we are not on an annual holiday, or on a ninety-day travel time restriction, where we used to feel the need to get as much done as we could within a certain timeframe. We do, truly, both feel very fortunate that we now find ourselves actually living permanently in a place where other’s choose to come to, in both the summer and winter months, for their annual holiday, so we do have to occasionally remind ourselves that we need to just enjoy being ‘here’, and not feel the need to always be somewhere else.

One of my regular blog subscribers recently told me about a new ‘Michael Portillo’ programme, currently being broadcast on TV in the UK, where he was travelling around Andalusia, of course we know of Michael Portillo, and his other travel adventures, but we had not realised that he was himself half Spanish or, that he had family who had lived in this region for year’s, and has many that still do. We have now watched the first couple of episodes and that programme just reminded us that we now live in a fantastic, and very historical and culturally rich area of Spain, with some fantastic Cities, Granada (that we yet still have to visit) Malaga, Seville, Cordoba and Cadiz (all of which we have already visited), let alone the numerous other coastal, and inland, towns and villages, which as you probably now know, we are beginning to visit and explore more of them ourselves now. So whilst there are other Countries in the world that we certainly do still want to visit, there is just so much more of Spain, and not just Andalusia, that, as yet, for us, still lay undiscovered, and so we aim to put that right. One of our initial retirement ambitions back in 2013, was to travel throughout Europe, some of which we did manage to do, but certainly nowhere near as much as we had hoped to do, and although now we will no longer be able to continue to do that in a motor home, it still remains one of our ambitions on our future travel itinerary. We do still get quite excited when we sit and talk to each other about the things we still want to do, the places we still want to visit, but our priorities, and our attentions, have more recently been directed towards getting settled here into our new home and country, and lets face it, we have after all only been here for five months, but the dust from those processes and procedures are now finally beginning to settle, so we are very much looking forward to now putting that excitement and travel desires into action, and I hope that you will also continue to enjoy those journey’s with us, as and when we go on them.

Wherever you may be reading this latest ramble, take good care of yourselves, and each other, and until my next ramble………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida es Buena 😉

From where we had parked the car, half way up a hill on the outskirts of ‘Setinel de las Bodegas’, it was difficult to turn around to simply follow the route out, back in the direction in which we had arrived, so we thought that there would be a place to either turn around further up, in the direction of where the official car park was signposted, or there would, at some point, be a road junction directing us back towards ‘Ronda’, but as it turned out we never did come across the official car park 🤷‍♂️ As we departed the outskirts of the town, just following the main road, we saw, in the distance, and a little further up the mountain, two other villages, or towns, it is at times hard to distinguish between what are villages or towns when you are some distance away, however, the one at the top of the hill certainly had two rather imposing buildings, one of which certainly bore the resemblance of being a Castle. I checked ‘Google Maps’ on my phone and identified the location of the one with the Castle as being the town of ‘Olvera’, so we made the split second decision to head there, we were not in a rush and who knows how long it would be before we came this way again, if ever 🤷‍♂️

Sometimes, when you are travelling on these mountain roads, you rarely see many other vehicles, or pass through any other villages, there is just miles and miles of road passing through rural land with Olive Groves or Fruit trees, the animals we see are mainly Goats, Sheep or Horses and along the hillsides the occasional clumps of Forest, the winding, well surfaced roads, cut through the mountains granite and limestone jagged peaks which all makes for interesting landscapes, occasionally we meet a herd of grazing goats along the roadside, they seem less interested in us as we do of them and they just continue to graze away. Suddenly, without any advance announcement, we came across a rather decorative ‘Glorietta’ (Roundabout) on the outskirts of a small hamlet. The town of Olvera was signposted off it, so at least we did not have to rely on guesswork as to which direction to take.

The small white-washed hamlet of ‘Torre Alháquime’

It looked like just another stereo-typical whitewashed village, looking at the stone monument that decorated the roundabout, it really did look to have the emptiness of a one-donkey hamlet, but it was well tended, the streets were immaculately clean, the houses all looked fairly modern structures, but the streets were deserted, we didn’t see any shops of any description, or the more usual Cafe/Bars, which I have to say, is actually very unusual, there are normally always a multitude of Cafe/Bars, even in the smallest Spanish village 🤔 But as quickly as we had entered the village we then found ourselves exiting the other side, we had passed no other vehicles and saw absolutely no sign of any life, animal or human, they were probably all sat around tables in a back street Cafe/Bar somewhere, warming themselves around a log fire and drinking copious amounts of Anti-Covid Vaccines, I was rather envious of them.

I had given my camera clicker finger a well deserved rest, there are only so many Olive groves you can photgraph and, after a while, even the rocky peaks begin to look much of a muchness. The large Religious type building, that suddenly appeared as we rounded a bend, caught me a bit off guard as it looked magnificent against the mountain background but I had missed the photo opportunity. In a cloud of dust, a screech of rubber on loose gravel, which was being thrown up from the tyres, Shazza brought our chariot to an emergency stop outside a Cafe/Bar located on the opposite side of the road to the religious looking building. Okay, I confess, I may have exaggerated that last bit a little bit, Shazza actually pulled in to the gravel car park in a more careful and refined manner, no bystanders, had their have been any, would have been sprayed with shards of gravel, however, it was actually a bit of a last minute sort of manoeuvre. We got out of the car and crossed the road on to a nice well surfaced open courtyard sort of area, signage on the door indicated that this was the ‘Sanctuary of Nuestra Senora de Los Remedios’ 🤷‍♂️ The front door was open and there was no admission charge although a sign instructed us that we must maintain silence, once inside the sanctuary, our curiosity was raised sufficiently so we ventured inside to take a peek, it was as quiet as the proverbial church mouse, if their were any occupants, perhaps an order of Nuns committed to a vow of silence, we didn’t see any and, for obvious reasons, neither did we hear anyone. On the lower floor area there was a central patio, full of well tended plants and flowers, with rooms leading off, a prayer room with an Altar, and a side room that contained orange flamed candles that were flickering away on a large table, but like a lot of religious places these days, these candles were not the real wax ones with real yellow flames but artificial, battery operated. We found a set of stairs that led to an upper level, we went up only to discover the doors, that gave access to the internal balcony, were closed, there were some pictures on the wall but to be honest there wasn’t really much else to see so we didn’t spend too long inside before returning to the car to continue our journey.

The quite ornate internal courtyard affair

As we neared the outskirts of the town we got a much better view of the Castle, perched right on top of the town and next to it, an equally impressive large structure, there were no obvious signs of what it was, a Church or Cathedral perhaps ? What we did know is that unless we found somewhere to park close to Castle, we would be having another steep walk 😲 Our ‘Google Maps’, which is usually quite good at identifying car parks, didn’t reflect any close to the castle, although there were several in the main town at the foot of the steep hill. Fortunately, once again, as we kept the view of the Castle in our sights, which wasn’t exactly difficult to do, we drove towards it and we found some more roadside parking bays, the majority were occupied but someone must have known that we were coming and had left us a space. There were a few more cars about on the town roads, and we saw several people walking along the pavements, not what you would consider crowds of people, not by a long shot, but at least it didn’t now feel as though we were the last surviving humans on the planet.

I had checked on ‘Google’ to confirm that the Castle was actually open to the public, I didn’t want to climb all the way up to it to then discover we couldn’t have a look around. The big structure we had seen next to it was the ‘Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación’ (Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation) and both the Castle and the Church stood almost side by side, separated only by a large open courtyard and Mirador, which provided a fantastic rooftop view over the city and the surrounding countryside.

We had walked from the car towards the town but, from ground level it wasn’t immediately obvious which direction we should head in to get to the Castle, so I stopped a couple of ladies who were passing, and in my bestest Spanish I asked “Cual es el Camino al Castillo ?”, (Which way to walk to the Castle ?) it was a good job that I had stopped them to ask as it turned out that we had been heading in the wrong direction. It was not so much a long walk, but my goodness it was bloody steep and we had to stop on a couple of occasions to admire the wonderful views, which was fortunate, as it also gave Shazza an opportunity to catch her breath, and being the loving and considerate husband that I am, I of course could not leave her standing alone in a strange town 😂

In addition to the Castle and the Church, there was also a Museum in a separate more modern building, this also housed the Tourist Information Office with of course the mandatory ‘Tourist Tat’ shop, this is where we would pay the Admission Fee to cover a visit to all three attractions and all for the princely sum of €2 each. Apart from the Coffee and Toast, and a couple of small beers, in ‘Sentinel’ (€9), this was turning out to be quite an economic day trip so far 😁

We started our tour in the Castle, through a small but pretty archway and then came the steps, and more steps, and even more steps, and the one’s that took us right up to the top ‘turret’ were via a very narrow spiral staircase, and we needed to take care when we were coming down them, our calf muscles were feeling the strain again so we took plenty of opportunities to stop and admire the views along the way 🤭

Now I have to be honest and say that this is not the best Castle that I have ever visited, in fact, and you don’t hear me say too many good things about the UK these days, but at least they do have some wonderful Castles and Stately Homes, in some of them they even reproduce what the rooms would have looked like in their day with lots of furnishings, Portraits of all the owner’s through the ages, Heraldic flags, pieces of Armour and Weaponry on display, but that of course usually comes at quite a cost with the Admission prices in the UK, and of course they charge for car parking, so my advice would be to invest in Annual subscriptions to organisations such as the ‘National Trust’ or ‘English Heritage’, you will generally recoup the annual subscription after just your first visit to one of the attractions 👍 However, this one I have to say rated ‘pretty good’ on my scale of enjoyment, as it was not just a heap of rubble, like some can be, and it did have different rooms to wander in and out of, with several viewing turrets, so the effort to actually come here was worthwhile.

After the Castle we went across to the Museum and ‘Tourist Tat’ shop, but only because that was where the ‘Public Conveniences’ were located 🙄 We were all ‘Churched’ out for one day, so we gave that a miss and decided it was time to go back down the hill. “Do you want to go and have a wander around the town now ?” I asked Shazza, “Not really” she replied. Neither of us are actually much in the way of shoppers, unless of course we specifically want to buy something, or the town is noted for having a certain sort of must see charm, Olvera didn’t, it was just really a normal working town, although it would have probably have had some nice ‘Plaza’s’ with Cafe’s and Eateries. “Are you hungry yet ?”, Shazza asked me, “Not really, I am still full after that humongous Tostado this morning” I replied, “Me too” she said. Which was surprising because we had done a fair bit of walking, and up and down a lot of steps and hills so we must have been burning a lot of calories. Now whilst I can go most of the day without food, I always know when Shazza needs sustenance, she goes quiet and moody and then tells me in no uncertain way that she needs to eat. I remember the signs very well from our Motor-homing days, especially when we were on long drives. We were actually all walked out now, it was well into Siesta time here so most of the shops would have been closed anyway, although the Cafe/Bars would have been open, so we agreed that we would make our way back down to the car and down the mountain and, if we did start to feel any hunger pangs, we could always stop somewhere on our way home.

We would take the same route back, via the small hamlet of ‘Torre Alháquime’, and the towns of ‘Setenil de las Bodegas’ and ‘Ronda’ and, although the landscapes would be the same, but because we were doing the drive in the opposite direction, with the sun now in a different position to when we drove up, the views would be slightly different, so my clicker finger was primed once again.

The road back towards ‘Setenil’ was as quiet as it had been when we were driving in the opposite direction, other people must travel along these roads we said to each other, other tourists like us, out exploring the area, even the locals who live here in the small villages or driving between the towns, the folk who live in the ‘Fincas’, even van or truck delivery driver’s, did they use a different route that our Sat Nav didn’t know about ? In the UK, roads like these would be at least busy with tractors and trailers, but nothing, absolutely nothing, it was quite tranquil but I have to say that it did feel a little strange too.

We drove down the main road and through ‘Sentinel’, at least here there was evidence of plenty of traffic and civilisation. You know when sometimes you are told that some things in life are all about ‘timing’, well the perfect example of our good timing was as we passed back through the main town area, two tourist coaches had quite literally just dropped off their cargo of ‘turistas’, there must have been close to a hundred people and they were all making their way into the narrow ‘Tourist Tat’ street, in the direction of the under cliff retail units. Now of course the retailer’s would be very appreciative of this sudden influx of trade, we however were glad that we had made our visit much earlier that morning. It wasn’t long and we were back on the main switchback roads that would take us around Ronda, down the mountain and back towards home.

We had both finally started to feel hungry as we neared the final part of our journey, so our discussions naturally turned to what we fancied to eat. We would be back in our own town area by 4:30pm, so we could have driven to our usual village car park and walked the short distance into the Marina, there would be plenty of choice of eateries in there. As it was, great minds think alike, now there is not much that we miss about the UK but we both really fancied Fish & Chips, Curry Sauce and a slice of bread and butter, to make a ‘chip butty’ of course, as you do. We knew that there was a very good English managed Fish & Chip restaurant at the bottom of our hill, near our favourite Indian restaurant, but we hadn’t used it now for well over a year, but when we had, it had always been very good. So that was it we had decided on what, and where, we would eat. That was until I checked the opening times and discovered that it didn’t actually open until 5:30pm, did we really want to have to go home first and then have to go back out again 🤔 You know what it is like after being out all day, you come back tired and just want to take off your shoes, sit down and relax with a nice hot cuppa, and once settled we knew that getting motivated to go back out again would be a real struggle. So we considered our options, however, our taste buds had already been stimulated, and salivating at the prospect of the taste of hot freshly cooked Battered Cod, with proper Chips, lashings of Salt ‘n’ Vinegar and a chip butty, we could even already visualise it on a plate in front of us.

Well I can tell you, it was a struggle, but that is exactly what we did, we went home, took of our trainers, sat on the balcony with our piping hot mugs of tea and waited for the hour to pass, then we went down the hill to the Fish & Chip restaurant, sat down, ordered and enjoyed every mouthful, it tasted so damn good, the perfect ending to what had been a very enjoyable day trip up in our local mountains.

We both agreed that, if these sort of days were an example of the sort of ‘The Up’s And Down’s Of Living In Spain’ that we will have to put up with over the next few year’s, then I think that we just might be able to cope with this lifestyle 😉 The only question though, “Where should we go next ?’

Until my next ramble,

Hasta Luego mi Amigos

The last time we ventured into the mountains that surround our location was in March last year, I remember it well, as we had taken some family visitor’s staying with us, up to the beautiful hilltop town of Ronda which is located 739 metres up, in the Serrania de Ronda mountain range. Upon our return, that same evening, I started to suffer difficulties with the sight in my right eye and, by the following morning, I had lost my sight completely in my right eye. Shazza rushed me to the Costa del Hospital, some forty minutes drive away, where it was discovered that I had actually suffered a detached retina. Now obviously the visit to Ronda and my detached retina were possibly just coincidental, although we later discovered, from the eye Consultant, that actually high altitudes can be associated to such eye conditions. However, it is worth pointing out that I have, since that incident, flown in an aircraft at a much higher altitude and without any issues, hence my belief that it was a purely coincidental occurrence.

I only mention that because our next ‘Shazza Adventure’ would take us up the same mountain range although, on this occasion, a little further up beyond Ronda and so it did bring memories back of that unfortunate incident, I guess it was something that had been in the back of both our minds but neither of us mentioned it out aloud. We had decided to visit the small town of ‘Setinel de las Bodegas’ across the border into our neighboring Province of Cadiz. The town has a population of around 3,000 people, although that number substantially increases with the hoards of visiting tourists during the Summer months.

Now for those, unlike me, that are actually interested in the ‘History’ of places such as this, then the Internet of course provides a wealth of information and, although Shazza and myself are self-confessed ‘History Heathens’, occasionally I do enlist some help, to add ‘stuff’ to my ramble content, more usually acquired from my two friends ‘Mr Google’ and ‘Mr Wikapedia’, however, on this occasion I discovered a very informative ‘Plaque’ in the town itself that gave a very brief resume, in much fewer words than I ever could, so I am sure you my reader’s will be applauding that.

Shazza had discovered this place several weeks ago whilst perusing one of her many Spanish sightseeing and walking books, but it wasn’t for the hiking that she wanted to visit. We have often driven past other towns and villages that have ‘Cave Houses’, but they have been merely fleeting glimpses as we sped by en route to somewhere else. But this particular small Whitewashed village was a little unique in that, as well as cave houses it also had shops built directly under overhanging cliff tops and, from the photographs it looked like it would make a decent day trip out. The only unknown factor with these sort of high altitude locations is the weather, during the Summer months the temperatures in these mountain villages and towns can be a lot hotter than those at sea level, but in the Autumn/Winter months, well they are certainly a lot cooler but, if it is a grey and cloudy day, visibility can be down to just a few feet. Fortunately the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasted a bright and sunny day, but, would they get it right, that was the question in our minds as we know only too well the inaccuracy of their weather predictions.

We had a choice of three routes, all would provide excellent scenic views as we drove up the mountain, and we had driven all three on previous road trips but this time we elected to take the shortest, as it was only 60 miles and would take us 90 minutes to get there, the much easier route, driving wise, would have taken us on a much better dual carriageway road for a large bulk of the journey, but it would entail driving an additional 30 miles, and add on an extra thirty-minutes driving time. Now I was more than happy to do all the driving and was actually quite looking forward to both the outward and return route driving, up and down all the steep twisty switchback roads, however, Shazza can sometimes feel car sick on such mountainous routes when she is a passenger, so I suggested that we share the driving and that she could do either the outward or return part of the journey. However, this is where you my reader’s will see the relevance of the first part of the storyline in this ramble, because Shazza had other ideas, only then did she reveal to me that she was concerned about last years eye incident and ‘suggested’ that she would prefer to do all the driving, with the proviso that if I felt any kind of discomfort, or blurred vision, during the ascent, that I should tell her immediately and we would not then continue with the mountain trip. Now I of course argued my case by reminding her that we had actually flown at over 9,000 metres in an aircraft since then, but you know what these women can be like, once they get a bee in their bonnet about something then that is it, so, although I really enjoy doing the driving, it really was no ‘biggy’ for me, I had no problems with being chauffeur driven all day, and you lucky people, my readers, have also got the advantage of now having a passenger who has a very enthusiastic ‘Clicker Finger’ 🤗

We departed at 09:15am, it was 16 degrees(c), so even slightly cooler for us than we have been used to at this time of the morning, but we also knew that it would be a lot cooler up in the mountains, so we dressed appropriately, no tee-shirts, shorts or flip-flops today, it was jeans, long sleeved shirts and trainers, and we both had thicker woollen zipped tops to put on once we arrived, however, as we looked up at the mountains as we got into the car, all the surrounding mountains peaks were totally clear of any low lingering cloud and their was a nice clean looking blue sheet of sky above them. There would be no need for a picnic lunch either, as we had not intended to do any hiking, so a ‘Tapas’ lunch, or even a ‘Menu del Dia’, would be the order of the day, in one of the numerous local hostelries and, as I had now been ‘officially’ relegated to being ‘a passenger’, well sometimes their is a silver lining in every cloud, I would be able to partake of an Anti-Covid Vaccine, or perhaps two. Hmmmm, I might just get used to this being chauffeured around M’larky, a thought that I obviously did not share with my driver 😁

I had forgotten at just how stunningly beautiful the differing mountain landscapes were at much closer quarters than we normally view them, with totally awesome and stunning views for miles around, first we wound our way up through the lower foothills, through larger populated villages with some very expensive looking residences, some with their own individual private gated entrances, how the other half live we commented but then smiled as we realised that we too have a private gated security entrance, just one we have to share with a lot more people. The surrounding landscape was primarily lush green pine forested slopes, with the odd broad leaf tree’s set amongst them showing off their own Autumnal attire of Golden Brown leaves, glowing in the sunshine and just adding to the magnificent portrait scenery. These sort of drives were definitely not all about just getting to the destination, it was the visual feast for the eyes during the whole of the journey, it really did make me appreciate having sight in both of my eyes so that I can continue to enjoy such views, I really do owe the Spanish eye surgeon, and the other medical staffs at the Costa del Sol hospital, both pre and post-op, a massive debt of gratitude for their prompt intervention which enabled me to keep my eyesight, any delay in having the surgery could have meant losing my sight permanently.

The traffic on the well surfaced and maintained mountain roads was fairly light, but as we drove further up the mountain, a group of around eight motorcyclists came racing past us, on the wrong side of the road and on very tight sharp right hand bends, which they most certainly could not have seen around, so just took the risk of their being nothing else coming in the opposite direction 😲 Being in a right-hand drive car and, driving on the right hand side of the road, even Lewis Hamilton (aka Shazza) was happy to just stick to the speed limit, or below, on this occasion, but having a car that had Automatic Transmission certainly proved beneficial on these roads, it was really hard work doing such drives previously, when we had ‘Wuxly’ (Shazza’s little car) with it’s manual gears and underpowered little engine, although it had always got us to where we were going, even if at times we could have walked faster up the hills 😂

As we drove ever upwards, one minute we would be in full sunshine, the next in the shade, as we went from being on the sunny side of the mountain one minute and then the ‘dark side’ the next. We watched as the temperature gauge dropped to 8 degrees(c), we turned on the car heater as we could most certainly feel the drop in the temperature. As we climbed higher we left the more densely forested area and out into the more rural areas, where the views became even better, at one point we could see right out to sea with Gibraltar and Africa so clear, but the ever twisting roads prevented me from getting a decent photo, hopefully I would be better prepared and get one on the downward ascent.

It was 10:45am when we reached the outskirts of the town of ‘Sentenil de las Bodegas’, and quite fortunately, as we both needed somewhere to go and powder our noses, and have a coffee, we came across a Cafe come Restaurant with a large car park, so we pulled in. My goodness, did we feel the chill as we opened the car doors and so we quickly put on our warmer woollen tops. The heat from the open log fire greeted us as we entered, several tables were already occupied and the people sat around them stopped talking as we entered, they said ‘Buena’s Dias’, as is normal here in Spain, and then they just continued with their conversations. We sat at a table and then a young woman came across and I ordered ‘Dos Cafe Con Leche’, as she left, Shazza looked at me and asked inquisitively “No Tostada ?” 🤷‍♂️ So I went up to the bar counter, where the girl was preparing our coffee’s, she turned around, “Lo Siento, tambien Una Tostada con Tomate y Una Tostada con Mermelede por favor” I said, “Vale, no hay problema” she responded. Now we are more normally used to Tostado’s being small baguette type rolls, cut in half and toasted, or sometimes they are large round bread rolls, but here, and you are going to think that I am exaggerating this, but I am not, what came out was a massive slice of bread, as if it had been cut from the centre of an almighty giant loaf, it was ‘at least’ an inch thick, what in some areas of the UK are referred to as ‘Dorrsteps’, and it was well toasted, just how we like it. Then came a large round plate which contained a ‘tub’ of margarine, the sort you would have in your fridge at home, with small individual tubs of different processed meats of some description, a tub of liquidised tomato, bottle of olive oil, individual packets of Salt and of course individual tubs of strawberry jam, we only wanted the tomato and jam 🤷‍♂️ So of course, the question in my mind was wether we would be charged for ‘all’ of this plateful of different foodstuffs ? We finished our coffee and toast and I went to the bar counter and asked for “La Cuenta” (The Bill) and the young girl said, “Seis” (Six), she had no way of knowing what we had or hadn’t eaten off the plate, but it was exactly the same price as we we pay at our local Spanish Cafe, although down there we do not get a selection of all the extra’s that we did here. I thanked her and said “Adios” and we made our way back out, as we did so the other people in the Cafe, who were the same people that were in when we had arrived, looked up and said “Luego”, (see you again), so we responded accordingly. We were total stranger’s in this place but felt so welcome by people we did not know, and would probably never see again.

We drove into the town and through it’s twisting roads looking for a suitable parking spot, we followed the ‘P’ signs up a hill that climbed away from the main part of the town, but fortunately, half way up we saw several marked parking bays at the side of the road and were lucky enough to find an empty one. It was a beautifully sunny and virtually cloudless day, the odd cotton wool ball one floating by, but there was certainly a chill in the air and certainly needed our zip up woollen tops.

Now I have to confess that at this stage of our visit, whilst it was nice to see the geology of the place and how they had turned, what used to be old historical residential dwellings, which in the day were most commonly used to house both humans ‘and’ their animals under the same roof, into what is now more modern residences and retail outlets, but to be completely honest this part of the town was predominantly targeted at prizing money from tourists wallets and purses, it certainly was not somewhere that the locals would come to do their daily or weekly shopping, they would use the small supermarket which we saw signposted in the back streets of the ‘normal’ residential habitations or, alternatively, and very much more likely, the more permanent residents would drive, or catch the local bus, the half an hour or so journey to the much larger town of Ronda where all the main everyday essential facilities were located.

So it was just another one of those places that sold the same old type of ‘Tourist Tat’, at the same inflated prices, that you could purchase anywhere, but with this towns name and pictures, printed on to the fridge magnets, tee-shirts, spanish fans, tablecloths and tea-towels, ceramic mugs and plates, well you get the idea by now. We were also quite pleased that we had eaten earlier and were still quite full from our ‘doorstep’ proportioned Tostado, rather than having to pay the extortionate prices they were asking at most of the tourist Bar/Cafes and Restaurants in this part of the town. But yes, scenically it was very nice, but the question is, was it worth the drive here, ninety-minutes up the mountain ? Well you may be surprised but actually, yes it was, but only due to what we were about to discover…………………

So, after doing the touristy bit and, as is our way, we decided to just wander aimlessly and explore in and out the numerous narrow alleyways just following our noses, now sometimes that can lead us to nothing of any real interest and be a bit of a waste of shoe leather, or in today’s case, rubber soled trainers, but sometimes our fortitude is rewarded, as proved to be very much the case as we discovered some lovely paths and walkways, and as a consequence we were able to see the ‘real’, more interesting side, of this unique town. As to be expected though in these mountain towns and villages, there were lots of steps to climb and descend, but it was all well worth the effort.

We couldn’t actually gain access to any of the cave houses, many were inhabited, or in the process of being renovated, and quite a few had ‘En Aquilar’ (To Rent) signs attached to them. I guess they would have made nice quirky accommodations for Summer holiday escapes, especially if you enjoy hiking in the mountains more than lazing on crowded beaches.

It was beginning to be one of those places where you just could not afford to miss out exploring every nook and cranny, to wander down alleyways and through arches, to climb or descend different steps, there was always something that made the effort so worthwhile. At the top of the florally decorated steps was a narrow cobbled road which led to yet another square and Mirador, with more amazing views and some more of the Olive Groves in the surrounding countryside. However, also within this were two separate Churches.

Shazza is not much into Castles, but I am, but she will always come in and explore them with me, conversely, I feel the same about Churches, so will always go inside with her to have a look around. I generally find that Churches, throughout the ages, were overly self-indulgent, adorned with ‘Gold’ antiquities when, the vast majority of their congregations were living in poverty. However, I was to be very pleasantly contradicted on entering this particular religious interior.

We found ourselves back into the nice upper level square, the one with the nice Cafe/Bar’s and other eateries and we stopped for a much deserved cold beer. Our original plan, when we had first set out that morning, was to do our sightseeing and then stop for lunch in the town prior to returning back down the mountain. We had certainly not anticipated the size of the Tostado that we had devoured for our late breakfast upon our arrival, so we both agreed that as we did not feel hungry we decided that we would probably just make our way back home and, if we happened to see somewhere on our way back down the mountain, then we could always stop, we were in no rush.

However, when we got back to the car, instead of making our way back ‘down’ the mountain we elected, for reasons that will become clear, to drive further up it 🤷‍♂️ I guess that you could say that these are the sort of adventures that we consider as being just ‘The Up’s And Down’s Of Living In Spain’ 😂

To be continued………………………….

Hasta Pronto mi Amigos 😉