Day 5 – Vigo

”What time is it ?” came a muffled voice from under the covers, “It is exactly 7:30am” I replied, “Oh ! can I have a bit more sleep this morning, I feel really tired, I don’t want coffee yet” she said in a sleepy voice. “You can sleep for as long as you like this morning, we won’t be going anywhere” I told her, “What do you mean ?” she asked, a little more awake now, “Can’t you hear that sound on the window ?” I asked her. She raised her head off the pillow, “Is that rain ?” she exclaimed, “Yup, started at around 3.00am” I told her. She put her head back on the pillow and pulled the cover back over her head, I put the kettle on, made myself a cup of coffee and read the News headlines on my iPad.

To be fair, the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast the possibility of light drizzle throughout periods of the day, anything from a 10-40% chance, which told me that they didn’t really know and were hedging their bets, but what was currently falling out of the sky was a lot more than just ‘light drizzle’, this was heavy rain 🤷‍♂️ In truth, it hadn’t come as a complete surprise to me, the sky had been threatening it since yesterday afternoon when we were returning from our walk, it was just a little late in arriving and, since we had to change our plans from heading into the ‘Picos de Europa’ mountains, due to the arrival of the wet stuff, I also knew that we were going to get some sketchy weather over this side of the coast throughout the coming days, and it looked much of the same as we progressed North, so for now, we would just keep taking one day at a time.

Shazza slept for a further two hours and the rain, although looking as if it was easing a little, continued to fall. I suggested to Shazza that perhaps we should bite the bullet and go down to the hotel restaurant and have breakfast, we were out of snacks and would need to eat something. However, Shazza declined, not about eating breakfast but about going to the hotel restaurant to eat it. It wasn’t about the cost as such, more the principle, we may both be thrifty by nature, but we were not on any sort of budget constraint or having to account for every cent. We could afford to eat all our meals in the hotel, breakfast’s and dinners, if we chose to. It was more about the charge for these hotel breakfast’s, against what we knew we would actually eat, we could purchase a decent filling breakfast, for the both of us, for just €6-8 in a local Cafe, here they would charge us €26, even if we only ate toast and jam, and had a coffee 🤷‍♂️ We could understand it if we each enjoyed a full cooked breakfast, followed by the fruit, or sticky buns, and drank orange juice and gallons of coffee, then €13 each was probably quite reasonable, but we don’t. However, and in all honesty, I would have paid it and wouldn’t have let principle get in the way of my hunger.

We agreed to wait a little longer and thankfully it did pay off, as there was a break in the weather at around 11:00am, although the clouds looked as if they could still discharge even more of their watery cargo at any time, but we took the gamble. It was also good to get out of the confines of the room for a while and get some fresh air. On Google maps I had identified a couple of Cafe’s in one of the back streets just a couple of levels above us, about a twenty minute walk away, although it took us slightly longer, as we didn’t exactly race up the steep steps 😮‍💨 unfortunately, in this particular direction, we didn’t have the luxury of mechanical devices to aid our ascent 😢 As we sat outside the Cafe, under the shelter of the large awning style canopy, we had quite a nice view over the Port area below us, and a view of the sea as it flowed into the river channel, we enjoyed our usual coffee’s and Tostado’s, which were generous large baguette sized portions. Their were several other’s sat at tables around us, from their conversations we knew that they were all Spanish, but wether they were locals, or visitor’s, we of course had no idea 🤷‍♂️ We observed Council workmen with one of those trucks with a telescopic lift on the back, they were doing something to overhead cables that stretched between the lamp posts, other people were just going about their normal daily business, all wearing raincoats of some description, and many were carrying umbrella’s, some had bags, so presumably out doing their daily shopping, many walking, totally oblivious to anything else going on around them whilst they were talking on their mobile phones, cars and buses passed up and down, their tyres spraying water up onto the pavement from the puddles in the road, fortunately we were sat far enough back from the road so as not to be splashed, soggy looking pigeons looking sorry for themselves argued with each other for the best position under the tables, waiting eagerly for any scraps to be dropped. For a time, Shazza and I sat silent, just taking in what was going on around us, we love this people watching stuff, normal daily life going on around us, similar I presumed to what was going on in many other towns and cities all around the world, but, who may have been watching us I wondered 🤔

“So, had it not have been raining, what would we have been doing today my love ?” I asked Shazza, “You will now have to wait until tomorrow to find out” she replied, I seized my opportunity, I baited the hook and cast my line, “What do you mean wait until tomorrow, today is your activity day, tomorrow is mine again” I said, with a straight face. “No way !!, that isn’t fair” she announced, “It’s raining today so we cannot go anywhere” she exclaimed, “Well that isn’t my fault” I responded, “No, I’m not having that, no way” she said quite adamantly. I burst out laughing, “Got you, hook, line and sinker” I said. “Right, just for that, tomorrow I am going to find at least four of the most boring Stately Homes and Gardens, and spend the whole day dragging you around each and everyone one of them” she said, and then smirked knowing that she had been caught off guard. Of course, neither of us knew at that point what the ‘Works of Fiction’ actually had in store for us for the following day, a drive to a Stately House may actually be the only option 🤷‍♂️

As we sat, with nothing better to do, other than just let time pass us by whilst enjoying some open space, we heard the faint rumblings of thunder and decided that we had better make our way back to the hotel, at least it would be all downhill on the way back. We paid the bill, a mere €8, we agreed that it was probably best to make a contingency for dinner too, as we may not want to go out if the rain continued, so, on the way back we called in at the Supermarket and purchased some pre-packed food, Salad bowls with Pasta, Shazza chose Salmon whilst I went for a combo Prawn and Octopus, we also threw a few extra snacks and fruit into our basket, well it could be a very long afternoon. We were not in a hurry to get back to our prison cell, albeit a luxury one, so we wandered up and down the aisles, with no intention of buying anything else, but it killed a little bit more time 🙄 Then we sensed eyes watching us, possibly store security, dressed to look like a shopper and thinking we were perhaps shop lifters 😲 We made our way to the checkout a bit sharpish and by doing so, probably looked even more suspicious.

The remainder of the day continued to be mixed between periods of heavy rain and drizzle, so we both ended up taking a lot of ‘mini siestas’, combined with doing stuff on our iPads, drinking tea, or coffee etc. Shazza started to finalise her plan for the following day’s activity, or that’s what I assumed as she kept shielding her iPad from my view whenever I looked across, although for all I know, perhaps she was watching a Porn channel 😲 I did offer a suggestion, no, not for what Porn channels to watch, I wouldn’t divulge that kind of personal information 😂 My input, not that she asked for it, was to perhaps go on a culinary experience, which I thought may appeal to her, a tour of Vigo’s Tapas Bars perhaps 🤷‍♂️ she just gave me one of her school teacher looks over the top of her glasses and then said, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone I must say, “Well, we could go the whole nine yards and combine it with a tour of some vineyards perhaps ?”, I laughed and then responded, “Great idea, but actually, the Tapas tour and Wine Tasting are one and the same thing my love” then I gave her a wink 😉

I think that in truth, we both actually needed this rainy day, it provided us with the perfect opportunity to take our foot off the gas and actually relax, to take a much needed rest day, we have been pushing ourselves to do something every single day, either with the long drives with a bit of sightseeing thrown in, or like yesterday, because the weather was good, we felt that we had to be out and about, doing something. The reality is, we are not on a time schedule, in fact, we are not on any sort of schedule, other than having to be back by the beginning of October when Shazza’s mum is coming out to stay with us, so perhaps, upon reflection, we are on a sort of time schedule 😂 But we don’t actually have to go, or be, anywhere specific, and we certainly do not have an ultimate final destination, we will end up wherever we end up 🤷‍♂️ Our only real consideration actually being the weather as we do, at this time of year, expect at least a few days of rain, but we can certainly handle that, but, if it does look at any point as if the periods of bad weather will be protracted, then we could just head South again, there are lots of Regions we still have to explore all over Spain, or we could just go straight back home, the choice is actually our’s to make. However, at the end of the day, and putting it into some sort of perspective, this has actually been the only really bad weather day that we have encountered, so far, on this road trip.

The rain continued to switch between heavy downfalls, with a few rumbles of thunder, to just horrible drizzle, and at one point, during the early evening, we put our coats on and went out to the front of the hotel, thinking that we may make it to the eateries just a fifteen minute stroll away without getting too wet, but we agreed that we would probably end up looking like drowned rats and would feel uncomfortable sat in wet clothes in a restaurant, we returned to our room and ate our Salads, which were actually extremely flavoursome and filling, we both said that we would have them again without hesitation, if needed. We each put our earphones in and whilst I caught up with some Motorhome, Cycling and Sailing ‘Vlogs’ on ‘You Tube’ on my iPad, Shazza watched whatever it was that she was following on her’s. It had been a long day, but a restful one, fortunately, the ‘Works of Fiction, were forecasting a much better weather day for tomorrow.

To be continued………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

We hadn’t done any advance research on the Port City of ‘Vigo’, primarily because we didn’t know that we were going to come here 🤷‍♂️ The only research we had done, once we knew that we were, was to look for accommodations and then, once here, to look for somewhere to eat dinner that first night. But, now that we are here, and me being a bit of a night owl, after returning to our hotel after our ‘Mexican Style’ fusion dinner 🤭 I started to gather bit’s and pieces of information about the things that we could possibly see and do, in and around the city. It was only when I started doing this research that I came to the realisation that, if we had arrived just a couple of weeks earlier, when the weather had been a lot better, and the main tourist season activities would not have been starting to close down, as they now appeared to be doing, that even two weeks here probably would not have been enough to do it justice. Of course their would be nothing actually stopping us from extending our stay here, but the changing cooler, and high possibility of wetter weather, would prevent us from doing a lot of what would normally have been possible in warmer conditions and when there were more gentler sea states. One example of what we were to miss out on was as a boat trip to the ‘Cies Islands’, or visit some of the 119 beaches along this coastline, many of them being of fine white sand, other’s were smaller sandy coves, whilst some were rugged rocky trajectories that, at low tides, revealed hundreds of rock pools. Additionally, their were lots of coastal footpaths and hill walking trails, visits to several other Coastal villages and towns and a couple of sightseeing opportunities right here in Vigo itself. I remember thinking to myself, no wonder many Motor Homers from the UK, who travel to Spain for their 90 day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ period, never actually get beyond Galicia before their limited time runs out. So, and for the second time already on this road trip, I found myself thinking about the possibilities we were missing, ‘If only we had chosen to import the ‘Little Fokker’, now we would, as residents of Spain, not have been under such time restrictions and limitations to visit such places 🤔 Sometimes, this damn ‘Hindsight’ stuff can get to be a right pain in the proverbial, I thought to myself 🙄 So, albeit we would not get an opportunity to do the ‘Cies Islands’, at least not on this visit, they themselves would be worthy of a return trip at some point in the future. I also thought that if anyone reading this was planning on coming to Vigo during the Summer months, that I would take the liberty of perhaps pointing you in the direction of one of the ‘must do’ things to put on your itinerary:

Cies Islands

The Cies Islands are an archipelago off the coast of both Vigo and Pontevedra, in the mouth of the ‘Ria de Vigo’ and were declared a Nature Reserve in 1980. They consist of three separate Islands, ‘Monteagudo, ‘‘do Faro’’ and ‘San Martin’. The underwater area surrounding the ‘Cies’ forms one of the richest ecosystems on the Galician Coast, the perimeter of the islands have different types of environments, the cliffs which are exposed to the waves are populated by barnacles and mussels, in its very rocky underwater areas there are crabs, spider crabs, lobsters and octopus, numerous molluscs, turbot, plaice, sole and sea urchins, all of which play a role in Galicia’s gastronomy, but fishing in the waters that surround these Islands is not permitted. On the Islands themselves are forests, so the area is a haven for birds, Seagulls, Iberian Guillemots, Birds of Prey, Pigeons, Petrels, Doves, Woodpeckers amongst other much smaller species. These abundant waters are rich in biodiversity and attract Whales, Dolphins, Blue Sharks, Basking Sharks and Turtles. In the Summer months, boats from nearby Ports, including Vigo, take visitor’s from the mainland to the ‘Monteagudo’ Island where there are nine separate beaches and lots of walking opportunities, although you do need a licence to visit which some day boat trip booking agencies will organise for you, or you can obtain one yourself from the Port at Vigo. Tent camping is also permitted in a camping area, a licence is required for that too and has to be reserved ‘in advance’, again from Vigo Port. There is a Supermarket, Visitor Centre and Restaurant on the island for visitor’s but there are no litter bins, so this has to be taken back by visitors and disposed of on the mainland.

As it was, we had currently only allowed ourselves four full sightseeing days in Vigo, this ‘all day’ Island trip would have been high on both of our ‘To Do’ lists, however, this is where a bit of advance planning, and not ‘Going With The Flow’ would certainly have proven to have been a distinct advantage, as now, on checking the boat trip websites, all the dates were fully booked for the coming week 😢 After that, the Islands would be closed to tourists, as it was the official end of their Summer Season 🤷‍♂️ But in our defence, we didn’t know that we were coming here, so there was no point in me being disappointed, after all, there was still plenty of other stuff to do, although selecting what, could be our biggest headache, as their were still so many possibilities available to us, as long as we took some precautionary rainwear in our rucksacks, as the ‘Works of Fiction’ were beginning to be as reliable as a chocolate fireguard, messing around with the forecasts that they were issuing, on a daily basis 🤷‍♂️ Ideally, we wanted to use our legs, rather than a motorised means of transportation to get ourselves around, although we wouldn’t rule out using the car if necessary. Anyway, I came up with a sort of a plan, which I would of course share with Shazza, when she awoke the following morning, but she would already have been anticipating that I would 🤭

Day 4 – Vigo

As is usual I was awake first, or at least I was the one that got up first and made the coffee’s. I think Shazza just pretends to be asleep, until I get up and make the coffee and then put her cup on her bedside locker when, conveniently, her eyes suddenly open 😉 We then held our morning conference, although it did seem a little bit unusual not conducting this on our own balcony, but as we currently didn’t have one 🤷‍♂️ I have to admit, it was rather a pleasant change laying in bed with my coffee having our discussions, “Don’t get too used to it though” Shazza had said, with a mischievous smile on her face. I ran through my burning the midnight oil research results from the previous night with her. I had been correct with thinking that she would be just as disappointed as I was about the boat trip, but we maintained our philosophy of ‘not worrying about things that we can neither control or influence’. She actually liked my idea about our next four days here, I suggested that perhaps we both select things that we each want to do, and then conduct our personally selected choices on alternate days, as quick as a flash she says, “Okay, you go first, we will do what you want to do today”, but I of course realised that that was because she hadn’t yet had a chance to look at things that she may want to do, which I guess was fair enough, but, as she would have already guessed anyway, I had already made ‘a plan’ for my first activity choice. I wouldn’t make my second choice until I had seen what it was that she had in store for me the following day, I was already hoping that it may have been an Anti-Covid Vaccine Pub Crawl, although I knew that in reality that that was just wishful thinking on my part 😂

Now, just in case, like us, you have never visited Vigo before. When you look at any road map, electronic or otherwise, everywhere just looks flat, and so sometimes it can come as a bit of a surprise when you think, because you are going to a coastal location with a large Port, and your brain naturally tells you that it is of course going to be at sea level, but then, when you actually see it with your own eyes, and realise that actually it isn’t quite as level as you believed it was going to be, well………. Bienvenidos a Vigo ! (Welcome to Vigo)

Now I am not stupid, irrespective of what other people may tell you about me, so of course I realised that going to visit my first choice activity, which was to the ‘Fortaleza O Castro’ (Castle), or at least the remnants of one (two actually, Eric !) was going to be a bit of an uphill walk, but what I hadn’t realised was the amount of uphill effort that would be required 😲

But first, now that I am getting into the inclusion of some of this ‘History’ M’larky in these current rambles, although please don’t expect this to become a habit after this trip, so, without further ado, take it away Mr Google, …………….or was it Mr Wickapedia this time 🤔

The O Castro mountain is the point of origin of the city of Vigo, the place where the first settlers settled. Here we can find remains of military buildings dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. Today, some 45 stone constructions are still preserved on the right side of the mountain. In the Middle Ages, the O Castro Castle was built, which was erected at the same time as the San Sebastián Castle and the fortress that linked the two. The O Castro fortress was made up of three walled enclosures. Today, only the first enclosure and part of the second remain; the third, which was the city wall, has completely disappeared. The first enclosure is the fortress that crowns the summit of O Castro, now converted into a viewing point. The second enclosure is the fortress of San Sebastián, currently occupied by the Plaza del Rey and the town hall. Passages and tunnels have been found that connected the castles to each other and to the city. On the O Castro mountain we can also find the monument dedicated to Curros Enríquez, the greatest representative of Galician literature of the 19th century; a monument dedicated to Martín Códax (medieval troubadour); the Galleons of Rande – a monument dedicated to the Battle of Rande in 1702; the Cross of the Fallen (a monument in honour of those who fell during the Spanish Civil War). O Castro is also a magnificent botanical park, with a great variety of native and foreign species.

So, as you may just have gathered by now, Vigo is actually built on a hill, a really big hill as it happens, although I am not sure that I would call it a mountain as ‘they’ describe it. Now, from the Port, which is of course at sea level, and where our accommodation is located, each upper level is formed by differen streets, running parallel with each other and many of these streets are their own quite unique smaller suburbs of Vigo city, with their own rows of retail outlets, Cafe’s and Restaurants and, if like us, you happen to have chosen to be on foot and walking, to coin the title of an 80’s UK pop hit, ‘The Only Way Is Up’ and to do so means traversing long and steep steps to get up to each level, their are ‘at least’ ten different street levels 😲 to be honest we lost count when we quickly started to re-prioritise our focus on breathing, rather than counting streets 😮‍💨😮‍💨 However, their is not a straight line of steps up each level to get to the top, so you have to zig zag your way up, sometimes walking fifty or so metres along a street to locate the next set of steep steps up to the next level 😲 But there are opportunities, if you are so inclined (excuse the pun), to stop at some levels and look back and admire the views over the rooftops to the rest of the city and down towards the sea. You may not be surprised to hear that we stopped to admire the views, quite frequently as it happens 😂

After completing our third lot of steps we crossed the road and you know, when people talk about nearly dying of thirst in the desert, then they see an Oasis which saved their lives, well we unexpectedly came across our own version of such an oasis, it came in the form of a glass elevator, one, that on closer investigation revealed that it would, free of any charge, raise us effortlessly up a further ‘two’ street levels. As we exited the elevator, almost directly across the street, on a corner, we saw a Cafe and agreed that it would be a good time to stop for a spot of breakfast, we stuck with our usual traditional Spanish Fayre, but if I am completely honest, if they had have served a ‘Full English’ I would have most certainly have gone for it at that stage, and very much the ‘Muchas Grande’ version without any doubt 😂 Unfortunately though, they didn’t, so Tostado it was 😕 But such stops provide the opportunity to relax, people watch and take a look around at the immediate environment, sometimes you just happen to see things to your advantage ?

They say, and exactly who ‘they’ are, I have absolutely no idea, but anyway, ‘they’ say that timing is everything, and there is some truth in that, for had we have not stopped on this particular level, at that particular time, and at that particular cafe, and outside on a pavement table as opposed to inside, then we would have failed to observe, whilst we were eating our breakfast’s, that set back from the road, very discreetly, was a ‘Funicular Rail’ type mechanism, one that once again, completely free of charge, would take us effortlessly up another street level, although only one this time, but it meant one less set of steep steps to climb, so perhaps ‘fate’ was also lending us a hand too, for had we not have seen the ‘Elevator’, or the ‘Funicular’ mechanism we would have had to continue climbing up long steep steps to the top, or decide to give it up as a bad idea and go and spend the day on an Anti-Covid Vaccine pub crawl, you know that ‘hindsight’ thing I often keep mentioning………. 🤔 Even with mechanical assistance, we were still not at the top, once we had alighted the funicular mechanism, we still had to ascend another four street levels and then, unfortunately, once at the top street level, thinking we had reached the summit, we discovered that we still needed to walk ‘up’ a long winding pedestrian pathway in a park to get to the actual ‘Fortaleza’, but, eventually we made it 🥳🥳 It was only once we got up to the top that we discovered a large ‘free’ car park, or that we could have purchased tickets for a city bus tour that stopped here for thirty-minutes to allow people to get off and have a look around, I think from the look on her face, if Shazza had been presented with an opportunity to push me over one of the castle walls she may just have been tempted 😲 “But think of the calories we have just burnt off and the exercise we have just had” I said, albeit I ensured that I spoke those words from a very safe distance, and with several witnesses close by 😂 God help what she may now decide to have in store for me tomorrow 😳😲

I found the Forteleza quite interesting and, thankfully, after Shazza had got her breath back from the walk, and climb, she did too, so I live to visit more castles another day, although our method of transport up to them may require a little more consultation with my beloved in the future 🤭 We actually spent quite a bit of time wandering around, Shazza and I going off in different directions to each other, she just lookin at the views from different vantage points, whilst I explored every nook and cranny. After a short break for a refreshment stop, just bottles of water to re-hydrate, although we could have purchased a Sandwich for lunch, Shazza said that she wasn’t feeling hungry at that point, which was a bit unusual I have to admit, but I didn’t think anymore about it as she would be sure to let me know when she was. “So, is that it, is that all you wanted to do today ?” She asked inquisitively, “Well, actually yes and no” I responded, she looked confused, “I do have another part to my day’s plan, but actually part two is actually more for you than me” I told her. I then went on to explain that there was a Museum, located inside an old ‘Stately House’, one that you could walk around, this house was located in a massive public park, which I imagine would have originally been the grounds belonging to the Estate once upon a time, but there were also large private gardens at the back of the house that you could walk around too and, the entrance to the house and gardens was actually ‘free’ of charge. “I know that you like looking around old houses and all that sort of stuff, so I just thought we could kill two birds with one stone, Castle in the morning, Stately Home in the afternoon, what do you think ?” She thought it was a great idea, “Where is it ?” had been her obvious next question, and the one I was now a bit concerned about 😳 I got out the street map, with having just walked to the Fontaleza, I was now better able to judge the distances a bit more accurately, it was only then that I realised that it didn’t look as close as I had initially thought 🫣 On Google it indicates a forty-minute walk to the other side of the city”, I said hesitantly, but I don’t know if that is uphill or downhill 🤷‍♂️ “That’s okay, it isn’t really that far, and I don’t think that it is likely to be any higher than this is” she responded fairly cheerfully, “We could always grab a taxi if you want” I suggested, “No, lets walk, we have been sat in a car for the last three days, so the exercise will do us good” she said. Remember a comment I made earlier about ‘Hindsight’, and in an earlier ramble about ‘Google’ maps, in relation to its ineptitude when it comes to walking directions ? Well, on this occasion, perhaps we should have gone with the taxi suggestion 😳

But Shazza was right, and to be fair, occasionally, she is 🤭 But other than for exercise purposes, sometimes it is also good to walk because then you get to see a lot more that’s around you, just keep telling yourself that Eric 🙄 But thankfully, the walking route took us in a downward direction, although not back down as far as sea level, but down through part of what we discovered was the central area of the city, along, and across, wide and busy traffic filled roads and of course we passed lots of typical globally recognisable branded high street stores, this area was modern Vigo, but it could have been a high street in any number of other Spanish, or European, cities as far as we were concerned, for they all tend to look, and sound, much the same, noisy and crowded. The suburb that we are staying in is considered as the waterfront area, the more touristy area, and where the cruise ships moor up and ditch unload their passengers, so not the ‘real’ Vigo.

Google directions then took us down several side streets and back roads, it was like going back in time, from the very modern noisy traffic congested roads to very narrow roads with some beautiful old stone rows of terraced houses, with small, but very pretty, flower adorned postage stamp sized front gardens with low stone-walled entrances and wrought iron gates, then there were the very much larger residences, partially hidden behind their tall thick stone walls and thick tall and solid, wooden entry gates. So we had gone from the sounds of the modern world with its noisy traffic, and all the hustle and bustle of city life, to now being transported into a world of peace and tranquility, one that was filled with colour, tree’s and birdsong, we soon began to forget the burning sensation on the soles of our feet, and the slight tightness that we were beginning to feel in our calf muscles, for we had already walked a fair distance already since leaving the hotel earlier that morning.

It was only when we came to a junction in the road, and crossed a hump backed bridge that crossed a small river, that we could see the forested park on one side of us, but it was bordered with a waist high dry-stone wall and we needed to find an entrance. It was by pure chance that for some reason I had looked behind me as we crossed over the bridge and I saw a path, on the opposite side of the road, that switched back and down, under the bridge, and which gave pedestrian access into a corner of this massive public park. Once into the park itself there were wide dirt paths leading off in all directions, their were joggers, walkers and dog walkers and cyclists, fortunately we came across a large board with a park layout map, I say fortunately because Google maps was having a bit of a nervous breakdown at this point, the blue direction arrow just going around in circles and jumping from side to side 🤷‍♂️ so, from the park map we were able to get our bearings and head towards our ultimate destination, the ‘Pazo Quinones de Leon’

We didn’t know what to expect, I mean in the UK, ‘Stately Homes’ these days are usually managed by the ‘National Trust’ or ‘English Heritage’ Organisations and, generally speaking, they have long tree lined avenues leading up to them, and the houses themselves were generally pretty big and very impressive from the outside. There would be a car park somewhere along the entrance road, where you would ‘Pay At The Meter’ the parking fee, before proceeding to the main entrance, where you would then pay the appropriate entry fee, to visit the house, unless of course you had joined and paid the annual subscription fee to whichever Organisation that managed it, although to just visit the gardens and grounds were usually free. So, before I add my own personal photographs, and for those that are interested in this sort of stuff, I hand you back over to Mr. Google to provide you with some history of the place……………

I was quite impressed that entry to something like this was provided to the general public ‘free of charge’, and not even a cheeky little ‘Donations’ box at the exit. As this is something that interests Shazza, I would have been more than happy to have paid an entrance fee or given a donation, although of course, I wasn’t complaining that I didn’t have to 🤭

I hadn’t expected very much before we entered, but even I was very pleasantly surprised, the house was on four levels, although the basement, where presumably the kitchen areas on the lower ground floor were located, and the fourth floor, were not accessible to the Public 🤷‍♂️ But the Ground and first floors were accessible, and you could wander at your own leisure, there was artwork and furnishings from the period on display in most rooms which made it feel still lived in, although areas were roped off to prevent people from sitting on the furniture or touching ornaments and such like. I left Shazza to just wander around at her own pace, like she had done with me at the Forteleza. She was probably imagining living in such a place during the period, as I do with Castles and old Lighthouses, although she did say that she was a little disappointed at not being able to view ‘below stairs’, mainly the Kitchen and Scullery areas. Once she had seen everything in the main house we wandered into a separate ‘museum area’ that contained archaeological pieces that were discovered probably during the renovations of the house and grounds, again, not really of interest to either of us ‘History Heathens’ 🙄 But we were now both looking forward to getting into the gardens, we like parks and gardens, although I couldn’t tell you the names of most of the plants and shrubs, but private gardens like this, from earlier times, can usually be very interesting. Unfortunately, much like we had already come across on this road trip elsewhere, and probably due to both the drought conditions and the time of year, this garden wasn’t quite as impressive as we had hoped or expected that it would be, it could all have done with a lot more TLC 🤷‍♂️ Nevertheless, we wandered around anyway and, at one point, Shazza froze in fear on believing she had seen a snake right at her feet 😲

We had enjoyed our bit of a more leisurely walk, but time was now knocking on, it was already mid-afternoon and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast 😲 Now that is not unusual for me, I can usually go all day without food if I have eaten a late breakfast, but for Shazza !! well that is totally unheard of, but not once during our time out had she mentioned food. “Are you hungry ?” I asked her, “Not really, but if we find a Cafe on the way back I would probably stop and have a sandwich” she replied. Now for anyone who has been following these rambles from the beginning, since our motor-homing days, you will recall how, if we hadn’t stopped to make, or purchase, lunch by 1pm, at the very latest, Shazza would go exceptionally quiet and get very grumpy, she was a three meals a day sort of girl, but for several days now she has kept saying that she has not been hungry, I have to admit that quietly, I was beginning to get somewhat concerned although, whenever I asked her if she was alright, she would say that she was fine 🤷‍♂️

We re-traced part of our route back the same way we had approached the park, through the nice quiet streets, but when we got to a certain point, Google directions instructed us to head in a different direction, which made sense as we were now across the opposite side of the town to where the ‘Forteleza’ was located and we were heading back down to our hotel from a different point. We had expected to continue in a downhill direction, back to sea level, so we got a bit confused when we started to climb up hills again, our calf muscles didn’t like it very much either. We were relieved though when we returned to civilisation, another very busy suburb of the city, which part though we didn’t have a clue and didn’t really care 🤷‍♂️ but we saw road signs pointing towards the Port. We saw several ‘fast food’ establishments, Pizza’s, Burgers, Kebabs etc. but not one Cafe/Bar that sold either sandwiches, or Tapa’s, and wether it was just the thought of food, or the smell of fat, but I was beginning to feel quite hungry myself, but I didn’t want ‘Junk Food’. We continued walking when it suddenly became quite noticeable that the sky had become much darker, cloudier and grey, and we had come out without rain jackets 😲

We could see the Port, and the sea, so our legs, although feeling pretty weary now, picked up the pace. When we got close to the hotel, having not found a suitable place to eat, we decided that we would go into the supermarket just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel and buy some food to take back to our room. Shazza grabbed one of those ‘Poke Salad Bowl’ things, a bag of crisps and a banana, I grabbed a couple of packs of sandwiches, crisps and also a banana. It was around 4:30pm when we got back to our room, feeling totally knackered, we had been out for the best part of seven hours, walking for the majority of that time, a lot of it uphill, so we both sat on the bed devouring our food, with a nice hot cuppa. I was glad to actually see Shazza eating something at last. Although tired, we had both enjoyed our day and we had both seen things that were of interest to us both, I would call that a successful day out 🤗

We didn’t leave our room again that evening, neither of us wanted to go out to eat dinner, we were still full after eating what was supposed to be lunch, but so late, and our legs were still feeling a little heavy. So we both took steaming hot showers, flicked through all the channels on the TV although we couldn’t find anything that we could easily understand, well not sufficient to watch a complete programme, so we sat in bed watching something or other on Netflix, on our iPads. Wether Shazza had got a plan for the following day I didn’t know and I didn’t ask, as I would of course be doing whatever it was that she chose to do 🤷‍♂️

I awoke in the early hours to the sound of pitter pattering of rain on the windows, this obviously the rain that had not appeared anywhere in the day’s ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast 🤷‍♂️ But as we know by now, Meteorology is not an exact science now, is it 😉

To be continued……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Day 3 – Mozarbez to Vigo

I had slept really well and awoke fully refreshed, I looked out of the window, fortunately to no fog today, instead it looked as if it was going to be a beautiful morning, the sun was just starting to rise and the sky was clear. Shazza grumbled as I filled the kettle and got the cups ready for what, on current experience, could be one of our only decent cups of coffee of the day, I try to do things as quietly as possible first thing in the morning if Shazza is still in dreamland, but it is difficult when you are in a hotel room where you don’t have a separate kitchen in which to conduct these morning routines 🤷‍♂️ She was still only half awake when I put the hot steaming coffee on her bedside locker, “Are you okay ?” I asked, a muffled response from under the cover said “What time is it ?”, “It has just turned 7:30am, did you sleep okay ?” I asked. She said that she hadn’t and that she had been awake on and off all through the night but didn’t know why, she complained of aching a little bit as if she was going down with a cold. Oh dear, not a good start to the day for one of us then, I thought to myself 🤔 I suggested that it was probably because of the much colder weather the previous day whilst we were in Badajoz, we hadn’t really experienced that sort of a chill in the air for a very long time, not since we had left the UK nearly eighteen months ago, and neither of us had been dressed appropriately for it, so perhaps it had come as a bit of a shock to her system, although I have to say that I was feeling okay, must be something to do with these youngster’s eh ! 🤭 Jokingly, I suggested that at our next stop we should perhaps book two separate rooms, as I didn’t want her passing her germs on to me, “Very funny” she said, but not in a humorous way, “So what is the weather like this morning ?” she asked, “You will probably need your thermal nickers on today, and your warm scarf and gloves” I said, “Really !!” She said with a bit of alarm in her voice, I chuckled, “No, you won’t have to wear ‘any’ knickers today as it’s actually a beautiful morning” I said, then proceeded to get my shower and get my stuff re-packed.

Now, the previous evening, when we had done our route planning, perhaps, on hindsight, we should have checked the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts first, as it would have saved us a lot of time 🙄 Initially I had got the road atlas out and had that next to ‘Google Maps’ on my iPad looking at routes up to Northern Spain. I suggested heading to a small hamlet in the Picos de Europas National Park which, but not taking any stops into consideration, would be around a six hour drive to a place called ‘Fuente De’, their were only two hotels there, but it was the location of a cable car that could take us up into the mountains, that would have to be pre-booked on-line, twenty-four hours in advance, and of course provided that it was actually in operation, as the weather dictates the schedule. At the top there was a cafe/restaurant and, according to our hiking ‘App’, there was a pretty ‘easy’ marked walking trail back down the mountain, which could only take 3-4 hours dependent on how wobbly your knee’s are or, alternatively, we could just have a short walk once at the top, as their were other smaller trails, take some photo’s, it would of course be rude not to, and then head back down in the cable car 🤷‍♂️ There were also lots of other scenic gorges to ‘drive’ through in the same area, with numerous stops at viewing points, as well as some other walking trails, of varying degrees of difficulty, but which included some easy one’s which enable us to test our fitness and stamina levels before progressing on to perhaps some intermediate level hikes. I suggested that we could base ourselves at one of the two hotels for perhaps 3-4 days, so Shazza did a check on her accommodation ‘Apps’ and confirmed that both currently had vacancies. From there we could drive on a little further, eventually reaching the Northern coast (Bay of Biscay), which would only be a couple of hours further drive away, at most, and then work our way around the headland in an anti-clockwise direction, stopping at various small coastal villages or towns where there were plenty of coastal footpath walks that we could undertake. I started to feel quite excited, because this was one of the actual goals of this trip for me, being out in nature, not walking around towns or cities. We both agreed that this was a good plan.

Well it would have been, until that was, we checked the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for the next five days and discovered that the weather perhaps had a different plan for us, one which would mean that we would certainly have to skip making our next stop in the Pico’s, for now at least 🥺 Further up the Northern coast, the forecast was also reflecting a mixed bag of weather over the coming week, so we somewhat reluctantly agreed that we would now have to come up with a different option for the next few days, it would be pointless shelling out good money only to find ourselves holed up in a hotel 🤷‍♂️

Another option, as the weather was looking much better, was to head across to the Western side of the Galician Coast, from there we could work our way up to the Northern coast in a clockwise direction, just really doing a similar thing to what Plan A had been, but in reverse, and then, hopefully 🤞 we could finish in the Pico’s before we headed South again towards home. I know, I was supposed to be just going with the flow on this trip, and I had been, well for the first two days at least 🤭 but now, and from here on in, the weather was going to be the dominating factor, and something we would be stupid not to take into consideration so Shazza agreed, we really did need to start to do some sort of planning 🤷‍♂️ So I made us another coffee and we once again studied the maps and route options. We decided to head to ‘Vigo’, a large coastal city that had a variety of things for us to do, both within the city, nearby beaches and coastal walks, and one’s that we could do straight from the hotel so, with the weather looking reasonable for the next five days and, with temperatures during the day forecast to be between 22-25 degrees(c), albeit a bit sketchy after that, we at least now had a Plan B sorted. We agreed on booking a five day stay in a hotel and to use that as our ‘base camp’, we had considered one of those Air B&B type accommodations, it would give us a little more independence and flexibility, but when we looked, the costs were excessive, compared to the cost of a very nice four star hotel that Shazza had seen, which had a vacancy and was pretty much close to the centre, so that was booked and pre-paid and it would now give us the opportunity to spend, after our travelling day, four full days to explore the area, we would of course keep reviewing the weather forecast for further up the coast, as it looked very much as if the weather up this part of Spain was now beginning to change.

Google Maps had given us a choice of three routes, but one of them wasn’t worth considering, as it would take us out to the East before bringing us back in to head West, which is the direction we now wanted to be travelling, but the other two alternative routes had both given warnings of ‘wildfires’ in the area 😲 It seemed strange that not far away it would be suffering with rain, but on this particular side of the country it was still hot enough to spark wildfires 🤷‍♂️ So we could head into Northern Portugal, then cross back into Spain on its Northern border ? That would have been our personal preference and, although the longer route, it would be on scenic country roads, with lots more nice villages to drive through, but, that would also entail driving through lots of densely forested areas 🤔 The shorter Spanish route would be, potentially at least, on safer and faster motorway routes, although probably much less picturesque, although it would also involve, at one point, leaving the motorway to cut across the corner and using a normal National Road (N631) for around one hour (52 miles), before then joining the A52 motorway all the way to Vigo 🤔 We decided to leave the choice until the following morning when we would check our routes again to see if their were any updates on the locations of the Wildfires.

So on our morning of departure, whilst Shazza got herself ready, I checked both the routes, their was no change, just the same warnings of ‘Possible Wildfires’ along both routes 🤔 I made the executive decision to do the faster Spanish motorways route, better to be safe than sorry as, if there were to be an issue, the overhead electronic motorway signs would give plenty of advance notice. With Shazza not feeling a hundred per cent, I elected to do the first leg of the driving and I told her that I was more than happy to do it all, if she didn’t feel any better later on. I had underestimated just how bad she was actually feeling this morning, for she offered no form of protest, either over me taking the decision on which route we would take, or me doing the driving 😳

We departed the hotel a little before 08:30am and joined the very quiet N630 road, that road took us very quickly onto the A66 motorway just south of Salamanca, we then headed directly North, towards and past Zamora. This I have to say was a very familiar route to us, one that we had driven very many times over the last eleven years, travelling to, and from, the Ferry terminals at either Santander or Bilbao. We had decided to not stop for breakfast until we got past Zamora and had got onto the N631, where we would then be back in unfamiliar and much more scenic territory, hopefully without the smell or sights of any smoke or flames🤞

It was a good travelling day, the sun was now already high in the sky with just a few clouds, nothing of any significance, the external temperature was 20 degrees(c) so we didn’t need the air-con on at this stage, the normal cool-air fan was sufficient, for now. The motorway was, as usual, very quiet, with very little traffic, and with very long straight sections that went on for miles into the distance, so on went the cruise control and we then both just sat back, relaxed and enjoyed looking out at the scenery, at times we would chitter chatter about nothing of any relevance or importance, but it passed the time. Now, as you may have already gathered, as I was doing the driving, there are obviously no photographs of the surrounding countryside in this part of the ramble, but considering that photo’s of those landscapes appeared very many times in my previous rambles over those last 11 years, let me assure you that you are not missing anything, they hadn’t changed 😉

Once we had turned off the Motorway, and on to the N631 road, the views didn’t actually change that much from what we had already been seeing, flat landscapes that stretched for miles, the mountains far off in the distance, acres upon acres of Olive groves, farm buildings stuck in the middle of large open fields, various livestock, cows, sheep, goats and horses and occasionally a small grouping of non-Olive trees, which did add a bit of variety for our eyes. We passed through the occasional small hamlets, but saw no evidence of any human life, we drove across bridges and aqueducts that spanned small ‘Embalces’ and, for a time, we even drove alongside a long straight train track, but we never saw any trains 🤷‍♂️ I had to take off the cruise control as the roads became very much more winding and bumpy due to the camber of the road which was very changeable, but this stretch of road was a nice change from the long straight motorway road. Eventually we entered a larger village and as we approached we saw a sign for a ‘Cafateria’, so we stopped for a break, inside it was quite nice, nothing special, probably more homely would be a better description, a few tables and chairs in the centre of the floor, on one wall a cigarette machine dispenser and on another, a colourful gaming machine, of the fruit machine variety. We were greeted with the usual ‘Buenas Dias’, not only by the man behind the bar, but also by the two men who were sat at it, both reading their papers, their glasses of beer within arms reach, we of course responded, ‘Hola’ we said, in cheerful voices, then ordered two Cafe con Leche’s, Shazza ordered her usual ‘Tostado con Tomate’ but I saw a nice looking ‘Tortilla’ on the bar so I ordered a slice of that. Surprisingly, based on our previous recent experiences, the coffees were strong, just as we like them. Shazza enjoyed her Tostado, the usual two generous sized pieces of baguette, my large slice of Tortilla came with a small bread basket with four circles of sliced baguette, the Tortilla was still warm and absolutely delicious, a giant potato omelette as I think of them, “I may just have to switch to this as being my regular late morning breakfast when we get back home” I said to Shazza, although today, as we were a little later eating, it was almost certainly nearer being a Brunch. As we were eating, another group of four people arrived, we, as in the royal ‘we’, the barman and existing customers, all offered them the usual greeting, they responded with ‘Bon Dia’, which suggested that they may have been Portuguese 🤔 When we came to leave, the bill was even cheaper than we pay at home, things were looking up I thought to myself, but just another reminder of what normal life, and prices, are like when you are away from the tourist enclaves. As we departed we said ‘Adios’ and, once again, I had to smile to myself, as they responded with ‘Luego’, but you never know, we may see them again ‘Later’, if we end up returning this way and stop in for a coffee and a slice of Tortilla 🤷‍♂️

Shazza was happy for me to continue to do the driving, which I was pleased about, as I was really enjoying being back behind the wheel for a long period, I have always enjoyed driving, wether that was in the Motor Home or the car, but since the issue with my right eye a couple of year’s ago, I think I had lost some confidence when driving in town’s and cities, especially when it involved close quarter manoeuvering.

Our journey on the next stage of this N631 became much slower, their was lots of re-surfacing work being done to several stretches of the road and we had to stop, numerous times, at traffic lights, due to one side or other of the road being closed. Their were no clearly evident signs that this work was being carried out as a consequence of damage caused by wildfires, the landscape and tree’s bore no evidence of having being scorched, so it was probably just routine maintenance, for this road was the short cut, the main cross-country link, from the A66 to the A52 motorway route. It had taken us a lot longer than anticipated, due to the roadworks, to get up to the point where we joined the A52 motorway, but it was a relief as I was beginning to get tired and I really needed to stretch my legs. Shazza looked at Google maps on her iPhone and identified a town, ‘Pueblo de Sanabria’, not far off our route that she believed, from the photo’s, would be a good scenic place to take a break and perhaps grab a spot of lunch. However, as we left the motorway we came to a roundabout, in one direction, the town, in the other ‘Lago de Sanabria’ which looked quite large, so just like we often do, we changed our minds about going into the town and headed for the lake, even though it would entail driving a further twenty-minutes (8-9 miles), but as we discovered, it was through some wonderful underlating lush green forested countryside.

Now this had been worth travelling the extra few miles for, the views were a feast for our eyes, forest, mountains and water. Although the sun was shining, the air temperature was cool, we had considered walking back to the car and getting our swimwear, and beach towels, out of our cases and spending an hour on the beach, their were toilet facilities where we could have changed but, fortunately, we had the good sense to check the water temperature first 🥶🥶 Obviously those already sunbathing and swimming were of a much hardier breed than us Southern softies 😂 We enjoyed a short but pleasant stretch of our legs around the lake. The Cafeteria was more of a beach bar selling beer, soft drinks, crisps, chocolate and ice-creams, than any sort of more substantial food, I could have gone a full on Burger and Chips, so we settled for ice lollies, we could always find somewhere else to eat once we got back on the motorway. However, just a thought to ponder on, isn’t this totally unscheduled deviation from our route just proof, if proof were indeed needed, that actually, I am still more than capable of just ‘Going with the flow’ 😉😂

The short stop, fresh air and walk had done Shazza the power of good, she was feeling much better than she had at the start of the day, how do I know that, other than her of course now being more than happy to eat a cold ice-lollipop 🤔……… yup, she now ‘insisted’ on doing the driving 😂 Now, I would have been more than happy to have continued driving but, her insistence on taking over the driving happened to be very good timing as far as I was concerned, for it was clearly obvious by the surrounding landscapes that we were now in ‘Green’ and very lush Galicia and I, now being relegated to the passenger seat, would be able to provide a public service to you my reader’s by giving my camera ‘clicker finger’ some much needed and overdue exercise 🤗

With our breakfast stop, the delays with the roadworks and the deviation to the lake, it was now well past lunchtime and we still had a little under a two hour drive to Vigo, we had not eaten since our brunch stop and we were both now getting hungry again, so rather than do a major deviation off our motorway route, we decided to just pull in at the next available service station where we could grab a sandwich and also take the opportunity to refuel the car. We hadn’t scheduled another stop until we reached our hotel, but we are suckers for wonderful riverside views and so, as we crossed a wide bridge that spanned the ‘River Minho’, we saw a small village below, down on the riverside, so of course, we went to see if we could get a closer look.

As we looked down, over the nice small vegetable garden directly below where we were standing, we also noticed the very nice swimming pool and the South facing balcony on the house they belonged to, with views directly over the river and the forested hills, this was certainly one of those idyllic ‘wished we lived in this’ sort of a house, on the side of it was a sign declaring that it was ‘For Rent’. Shazza mused over the thought that perhaps they may consider selling it 🤷‍♂️ and suggested that she may know some potential interested buyer’s 😲 “We would certainly not be too far from the ferry ports if, or when, we wanted or needed to go back to the UK and, we would not be too far from the French border and the rest of Europe for doing more road trips” she said, with a bit of a sparkle in her eyes and a grin on her face. “Very true” I said, then I reminded her of the fog from just the previous morning, and the cold temperature, and how she had felt. We already know how cold it gets in the Autumn and Winter months up this part of the world, let alone the Atlantic storms, frost, ice and snow 🥶 She gave one of her mischievous smiles, we both knew that she, and I, had no intention of moving anywhere else, well not in the immediate future at least, for we both enjoy our year round warmth and are very settled and quite happy where we currently are 😉

It was almost 5pm when we checked-in at the hotel reception, but we knew beforehand that this was going to be yet another very long travelling day, although in all honesty, we had enjoyed this day’s travelling more than the previous one, probably because we had some nice stops along the route, but now we were both ready to take a bit of a break from such lengthy driving day’s. The hotel was very modern and a smart looking place, the car parking was in an underground public car park, with reserved parking spaces for hotel guests (€13 per night), which we had pre-booked, and there was a direct lift up to the hotel lobby. We were allocated a room on the 5th floor, it was very modern and spacious and immaculately clean. Their were the usual facilities, Stocked Mini-Bar, with a choice of alcohol, soft drinks, water and various snack items, but those came at quite a cost 😲 so, apart from using it to store our ‘Oat Milk’ and our own bottled water, we wouldn’t be availing ourselves of ‘their’ provided contents. There was a large LCD TV, free WiFi (Very fast connection) and plenty of electrical and USB sockets. But of course, no Tea/Coffee making facilities, no balcony and only the side view of a tall building to see outside our large windows 🤷‍♂️ However, we were not planning on spending a lot of time in the room, only at the end of each day after we had been out somewhere sightseeing or walking, and then again after we had been out and eaten dinner, and perhaps partaken of a few Anti-Covid Vaccines in the process, well you know that it would have be been rude not to 😉 The hotel itself was in a perfect location, right opposite part of the large port, so I had plenty of very large fishing and commercial vessels to look at, but more importantly it was within a very short, flat and easy route to lots of eateries and, we were just a two-minute walk from a large ‘Mercadona’ supermarket, which sold water, snacks and just about anything and everything else that we may have needed, but at prices that were very much more aligned to our ‘pockets’. We had not booked breakfast as part of our room package, they wanted €13 each (per day) for the privilege 😲 The hotel had its own Cafeteria, and separate Restaurant, and it provided room service and, although no words of confirmation were spoken between us, they didn’t need to be, as we usually sing from the same hymn sheet on such VFM matters (Value For Money), so we each knew instantly that we would not be utilising any of those facilities.

We were both tired from the long journey but, unlike the previous evening, we daren’t risk taking a ‘siesta’, we needed to eat a proper meal this evening, so we enjoyed a hot strong coffee, checked our separate Email and social media accounts and then started looking on Google at the local eateries available, and of course the associated customer ‘reviews’. We were in Galicia, renowned for it’s seafood gastronomy, but we were not finding anything out of the ordinary, at least nothing that we couldn’t get down on the Costa del Sol, so we thought that a bit later we would just wander and see if we just fell on something that would tantalise our taste buds. We had read lots of reviews, which all gave a particular establishment 5* and sung its praises, but it was a ‘Mexican’ restaurant, really !! we said to ourselves, ‘Come to Galicia and Eat Mexican Food’ 😲 Little did we know though, that later that same evening, that is exactly where we would end up eating.

We saw on Google that most of the eateries shut their kitchens between 3-4pm, and then re-opened them again between 8:30-9pm, so we got showered and changed and headed out on our eateries reconnaissance mission. Shazza decided to wear her warmer fleece, we were on the Atlantic coast after all, but I risked just wearing a lighter one and was glad that I had, for whilst there was a stiff breeze blowing, it wasn’t cold, in fact the evening was warm and very pleasant. The thing with Google maps is that it is difficult to sometimes assimilate real time distances and, as this was an unfamiliar place, so we headed out at 7:30pm. However, it had only taken us a gentle 15 minute stroll to reach the main food street that accommodated the majority of the eateries, at least those in that particular area, we were later to discover that there are many other areas here in Vigo, but you needed hiking boots to get up hills to them 🤭 but more about that in another ramble. We walked up and down the long narrow alley, all of the eateries had their tables, chairs and umbrellas lined up on the pavements, some with menu’s on the tables that we could stop and peruse. Unsurprisingly, the majority advertised fish, fish and more fish, a variety of both shellfish and wet fish, and of course lots of Galician Octopus. There were plenty that also offered the usual mixture of Salads and, for the Carnivores, plenty of meat choices from Hamburgers up to prime Steaks and everything in between, their were also Pizza’s, Paellas and even Kebabs, this told us just how much of a tourist resort it actually was, so actually I had quite a wide choice, but nothing actually any ‘different’ to what we can, and already have, experienced in our own Marina and local Town, yes even there we can get Galician style Octopus. I did wonder what the difference was between this and any other sort of Octopus, unless it had an additional outer furry coat because of the cold sea temperature 😂 Anyway, I was a little disappointed, where were the Galician Stews or Fish Chowder’s 🤷‍♂️ As for Shazza, apart from Salads, or Vegetarian Pizza, there wasn’t a lot of ‘Plant Based’ options in fact, we didn’t see one establishment that advertised any kind of vegetables, so personally, I wouldn’t hold out much hope if you were truly of a ‘Vegan’ persuasion as I don’t think that they have yet heard of that particular word in these parts. Fortunately, Shazza does now eat some fish. As for those speciality Galician dishes, well perhaps these are more seasonal, more Autumnal style dishes and we had just arrived a little bit too early to sample them 🤷‍♂️

We stopped at a small bar, what Shazza calls and ‘Old Man’s Bar’, not a fancy pub with loud music blaring out so as to make any kind of normal conversation inaudible, or a lively cocktail bar, and certainly not a place for raucous youngsters, in fact we could have walked straight past it as it was such a quiet an anonymous looking place and, we probably would have done so, had it not been for an elderly man sat outside, with his beer, newspaper spread out all over the table, smoking a cigarette, and coughing a quite chesty cough after each puff 😁 We sat outside with our glasses of ‘Vermut’ just enjoying the evening, people watching and mulling over what gastronomic choices were available to us 🤭 We decided, that as everywhere appeared to be much of a muchness, we may as well try something different, okay the ‘Mexican’ it was then. We nearly walked past that too for it was advertised as an Oyster bar. I just happened to see a waiter preparing the outside tables and asked if this was the ‘Mexican Restaurant’, he said that it was a ‘Mexican Style’, not one that served authentic Mexican food like Chilli-con-Carne or Burritos, but they used locally caught fish and served it in a Mexican style, with an assortment of different Mexican fusions. That sounded interesting, we thought, our eyebrows raised, but only because neither of us had a clue what this ‘fusion’ business was that he was talking about, it was more a case of ‘Con-fusion’ to us 🤭 I looked at Shazza, she looked at me and we both said “Okay, why not”, he asked if we had made a reservation, our hearts sunk, “No, we have just arrived in the city this evening” I told him, “Just wait a moment please” he asked, a couple of minutes later he came back and said “Yes, I have a table for you”. Now this waiter, ‘Adoni’ turned out to be a right gem, we told him we had no idea what we would be ordering so asked him for his recommendations and from that, well what a truly different type of gastronomic experience we had that evening, he told us that much like Tapas, we just order as we go and stop when we have had enough, he recommended a ‘Ceveche’ starter which was a Salsa with raw fish, served with home-made Tortilla Chips, but when it came out there were two strange, what looked like dried flower buds, on a side-plate. He told us to squeeze lime juice over the ceveche and then eat some, with the plain unsalted Tortilla Chips, after our first taste we then had to chew these flower bud looking things, just one each, then taste the Salsa again. WOW ! If we thought the Salsa tasted good after the first taste, the rest was just amazing, it just seemed to combine and lift all of the flavours to another level, was that the ‘Fusion’ that he had mentioned 🤔 Thereafter he made other recommendations, explaining what each dish was, and without any exaggeration, each dish was just as absolutely fantastic, spicy hits with some, but not of the hot mouth burning spicy variety, he served each course and then went off to serve other customers, but he always came back and asked how we had enjoyed what we had eaten and wether we wanted to try anymore, we just kept going until we were full.

Well I said earlier in the ramble that I was disappointed with the gastronomic offerings, I take that back one hundred per cent, this wasn’t just food that once eaten you would forget about, this was a celebration of food, combining presentation, colour, flavours, or more simply put a ‘Fusion’ 😂 To top it all off, the exceptional service was quite honestly over and above anything we have previously experienced and the cost for this wonderful gastronomic experience, including four generous glasses of wine and at least four different courses, less than €50 😲 We were so impressed that we immediately booked to go back three nights later, to try some different things, Saturday evenings were apparently Oyster Night, so what the heck, I ordered half a dozen Oysters which, the waiter informed me, would be served three different ways, now I really did have another gastronomic experience to look forward to 🤗 I have only ever had Oysters once before, on that occasion they were just served naturally with a squeeze of lemon juice, they were okay, nothing to write home about though, so it will be interesting to see what I make of this next experience 🤔

We had had a very long day and we were both pretty tired, but what a way to round it off. As for what we will do on our first full day in Vigo, well that is for another day 😉

To be continued……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Before I continue with my ramble about the second day of our road trip, please note that I have added an amendment to the previous ramble, by way of a footnote at the end, it was relevant to the town of Jerez de los Caballeros and the Knights Templar and something that I felt needed to be added to complete the association between the two 👍

Day 2 – Jerez de Los Caballeros via Badajoz to Mozárbez

What a difference a day makes ? We of course were looking forward to experiencing some cooler temperatures as we travelled further North towards Galicia, but even up in that part of Spain the ‘Works of Fiction’ were forecasting daily temperatures still being around the 27 degree(c) mark, although very much cooler at night, but even those daily temperatures would still be a very welcome 10 degrees(c) cooler than we have been experiencing recently at home on the Costa del Sol.

On our first day we travelled nearly 200 miles in a North Western direction, skirting close to the Portuguese border where the temperature had remained high at 34 degrees(c), we had travelled a little further than we had initially planned, but of course we had added on an ‘extra bit’ for our somewhat unscheduled deviation from our intended route 🤭 But even when we arrived at our first night-stop location we were still pretty much South of Madrid and so the temperatures were still high, as we had expected them to be, but as we progress further North over the next couple of days we expect to reach some more bearable temperatures 🤞However, as well as our route planning, we are also continuously watching the advance ten day ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for the Galicia and Asturias regions, as that could potentially impact on our direction of travel as we get closer. The weather up there, under ‘normal’ conditions, is extremely changeable at the best of times, going from one weather extreme to the other, both on the Western and Northern coastlines and around the ‘Picos de Europas’ mountain range. Note however, that I said under ‘Normal’ conditions, for all over Spain this year their had been nothing normal in the weather patterns, with temperatures being very much higher than normal, creating devastating droughts, which are a more normal annual occurrence in the South, but less so in the North. However, even the more usual rainfall had not been occurring in the Northern part of Spain, which had created another major issue, the hotter and drier the weather, meant an increase in the incidences of sudden wildfires and we had been seeing warnings of wildfires when we had been looking at road routes up through both Spain and the Northern areas of Portugal, we certainly didn’t want to be caught up in any of those. This added another dimension to the choices we would have to make in our route planning once we started travelling a little further North. On the other hand, if the weather did change, and become more normal towards the approach of the Autumn months, this could impact on our opportunities for going on some of the hikes we were hoping to accomplish along the Western and Northern Coastal Paths, as well as some of the easier routes up in the Picos de Europa mountain range, as rain also brought low cloud and reduced visibility and being only ‘hobby’ walkers and not experienced ones with all the gear, we would be reliant on good walking weather and clear visibility. But, there was absolutely nothing that Shazza and I could do about any of this, the weather conditions were completely out of our control, all we could for now was to keep watching the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, on a daily basis, and be ready to adapt our routes and activities as necessary 🤷‍♂️

The previous evening, before we went out to explore the town and have dinner, Shazza and I had looked at the map and had made a plan for the next stage of our travels. We were only an hour’s drive from the city of ‘Badajoz’, a city virtually on the border of Portugal and a place that ten years ago we had driven through during our motor-homing days whilst on our way into Portugal to do some wildcamping, however, on that occasion we had not stopped to look around the city, so now this would give us an opportunity to do just that and to tick off another Spanish City on our ‘To Do’ list 👍

That evening we had a look at what their was to see in the city, judging by the photo’s on Google and reading many of the reviews, it looked pretty good, there was an ‘Alcazar’, I like them, a ‘Roman Bridge’ that spans the ‘Guadiana River’ which had a nice looking ‘Riverside Walk’, there were also the old city walls which we may have been able to walk around and, within the city itself, there appeared to be several Plaza’s. So our initial thoughts were that there appeared to be enough to keep us out of mischief for a couple or more hours, in fact we would probably have to watch the amount of time we spent there as we would still have quite a long drive to get to our next night-stop. After our sightseeing in Badajoz we would then drive North East, inland to our second night stop just outside the city of Salamanca. The total driving time, even with the slight detour to Badajoz, would be around 5 hours, so that just fitted in with our daily driving hour’s plan, although dependent on how long we spent in Badajoz, and anywhere else we may choose to stop off as we drove along the route, it would be another longish day, but we had not come on this trip just to sit in a car and look at the passing scenery, as nice as it may be.

The only issue, with spending many years motor-homing in both Portugal and Spain, is that we had already spent time sightseeing in a lot of the major towns and cities that were along today’s proposed route to our next night stop. After departing Badajoz we would probably follow the ‘new road’ that wound its way up through the scenic countryside, rather than heading for the motorway, we would pass close to the cities of ‘Merida’, ‘Caceres’, ‘Plasencia’ and then, towards the end of our travel day, we would be on the outskirts of ‘Salamanca’. But these were all places that we had previously visited, we had walked the walks, seen the sights, so more a case now of already seen it, done it but didn’t buy the tee-shirts sort of visits, so we made the joint decision not to make any stops in them. Of course we didn’t know what we would come across on the drive between these cities, but our road atlas and Google maps were not highlighting anything particular that stood out as a ‘must see or do’. However, sometimes you come across the unexpected, things that Google hasn’t highlighted, and they can sometimes turn out to be true gems, so we remained open-minded and decided to just wait to see what leapt out in front of us, although hopefully, not literally 😲

However, when the following morning arrived, it came as a bit of a shock when I stepped out onto the balcony of our hotel room, partially dressed, as usual, wearing only my shorts, I actually physically shivered when the cold damp air, from the fog that engulfed the landscape, hit my body 🥶 I did not expect that so soon into our road trip, but I guess, upon reflection, we were after all up in the hills. When I mentioned the fog, and the cold, to Shazza, who was still tucked up under the thin bed sheet drinking the coffee I had just made her, she just said “Yeah, right” in a disbelieving sort of tone, but it didn’t take her too long, after I fully opened the curtains and then slid open the large glazed balcony doors, for her to say, “Okay, Okay I believe you, shut those bloody doors it’s freezing !!” 😂 As I mentioned, in the previous ramble, we didn’t eat breakfast at the hotel that morning so it didn’t take us long to get ourselves sorted, checked-out of the hotel and put our cases and rucksacks into the car and hit the road, driving in to the murky damp greyness, it was the first time, in a very very long time, that we had to turn the car heater on and de-mist the windows 😲 Shazza had already got herself into the driver’s seat whilst I was packing the car boot. Fortunately, as almost everywhere in Spain, apart from around major cities, the roads are pretty quiet and by the time we got within striking distance of the outskirts of Badajoz the view in front of our windscreen had changed.

Part of our route planning the previous evening was to search on Google Maps for ‘Free’ parking locations near to the city centre, although if none had been available we would have used one of the paid for parkings, but you already know how thrifty I am 🤭 Fortunately, we found a place at the ‘Baluarte de S Pedro’, just inside the old town walls and conveniently close, within an easy walking distance, to almost everything we initially wanted to see. However, whilst the fog may have lifted, the sky was full with grey leaden clouds and the temperature had still not risen much above 12 degrees(c) 🥶 We had dressed in our usual shorts and short sleeve shirts, just by way of habit really, although the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast the temperature to rise to 21 degrees, so until it did, we dug out our hoodie tops from the boot and headed for our first priority, which was somewhere to have our morning ‘Cafe con Leche and Tostado’s’.

Badajoz

As with most European cities, Badajoz has a long history dating back thousands and thousands of years, the city walls, Moorish and Roman architecture, the Alcazaba, Roman Bridge etc. are all clear evidence of the city’s past history. The ‘Moorish’ invasion of Badejoz, and its location on the Spanish-Portuguese border, means that it has had more than its fair share of bloody battles over the centuries, but the most brutal was during the more recent, historically speaking, Spanish Civil War, when the Nationalists took control of the city. On August 14th, 1936 they herded literally hundreds of men and women of the town into the bullring where they had set up machine gun points all around the ring. Hundreds were killed on that particular night and, the next day, they began the slaughter all over again 😲 It is alleged that in total over 4,000 people were killed, under the orders of General Juan Yague, who became known as the ‘Butcher of Badajoz’.

I like discovering small snippets of historical information like this on places that we visit, so perhaps I am not such the history heathen that I may profess to be 😁 Shazza much prefers to seek out where the best Cafe’s and eateries are, I on the other hand, look for the dungeons and places of witchcraft and torture, what does that say about me 😲

We could see on Google maps that where we had parked was very close to the ‘Alcazaba de Badajoz’ so we headed in that direction, one of the very first things that we noticed though was just how quiet everywhere was, unusual for a City, I mean it wasn’t exactly the crack of sparrows when we arrived and got parked up and, technically speaking, it wasn’t yet the end of the tourist season, so where was everybody ? Perhaps they had got lost in the early morning fog and were now looking for ‘free’ parking spaces 🤭

After a short walk, probably no more than ten minutes, we found ourselves in a wonderful Plaza with a building that was decorated with red and white tiles, this was the Plaza Alta, located in the oldest part of the city and right next to the Alcazaba, and a location where, due to the acoustics, many musical events are held in the height of the Summer. The only acoustics we could hear were the sound of the pigeons, the noisy buggers !

In a corner of the Plaza was a solitary Cafe, but on the face of it, it looked nice enough, so we sat down and ordered our usual breakfast’s. Now one thing we are discovering here in Spain, not just on this particular trip, but also when touring in our own local areas, is that ‘Tostados’ come in an assortment of different shapes and sizes, from ‘regular’ sized slices of toasted bread, to brick size slabs, large long baguettes, toasted and cut in half, smaller toasted baguettes cut in half, or perhaps round toasted rolls. But they are all, generally speaking, quite decent sized offerings, except that is, at this particular Cafe establishment, who take it to an extremely different level, but not in a good way 🤔 We suspected, after eating there, that this establishment was one that the locals would never frequent, more of a ‘fleece the tourists’ sort of place, for when our breakfast was delivered, the thinly sliced bread was much like the small thinly sliced toasted bread soldiers I used to dip into my softly boiled eggs, no wonder the scrawny looking pigeons were complaining, no scraps left for them to feast upon. When it came time to pay the bill I got the biggest shock though and had to check it twice, I was convinced that they had charged for two full English breakfasts !! I think it would be fair to say that he quite literally saw us coming, it wouldn’t have been difficult, as we were the only bloody idiots there 😲 So, our first impression on our visit to this city had not got off to the best start, I must confess that I thought that by now we would have learnt to only eat or drink where the locals eat and drink, obviously not, so it served as a quick reminder to us as any savings I had made on the free parking had quickly just disappeared. Whilst I am on the subject, another thing we have noted since leaving home is that the standard of the ‘Cafe con Leche’s’ are terrible, like milky dishwater, not the strong coffee that we have become accustomed to down our own neck of the woods, we can only hope that it improves as we progress North, otherwise, I may well have to take drastic action and seriously up the number of my ‘daily’ doses of Anti-Covid Vaccine’s, now there’s a happy thought 😂

From the place where we had suffered our ‘daylight robbery’, we walked up some old stone steps, through a couple of ancient archways and alighted into the upper gardens and external grounds of the ‘Alcazaba’. The photo’s of this place on Google must have been taken from another Alcazaba located somewhere else, even with taking into consideration the time of year, and the recent extended drought period, the place looked totally unkempt, scruffy and disheveled. There was a museum, which involved parting with an Admission Fee, which we are guessing was housed within the old Palace buildings and would perhaps be in a much better state of maintenance, but we decided not to take the risk and subject ourselves to yet another ‘daylight mugging’, so early into our visit. Now, as you know, I have a thing for Castles, and ‘usually’ Alcazars, and even Lighthouses, which Shazza tolerates, well it would appear that Shazza has a thing for old Stately Homes and their Gardens, and for some inexplicable reason, even Roman Bridges it would seem 🤷‍♂️ Well, at the moment we couldn’t do her first choice but, if my beloved wants wants a Roman Bridge, then a Roman Bridge she shall have, or at least see, for I, and Google Maps, knew just exactly the place to go and see one, conveniently, only a short fifteen minute walk away along the banks of the river 👍

The sun had still not broken through the grey leaden clouds as we walked across the road and entered into the walled city, but there was a noticeable rise in the temperature 👍 Our intention now was to find the steps up and walk around the walls, to see how far we could get and what the views were like. Unfortunately, we were thwarted yet again, as the entrances were protected by padlocked rusty iron gates, the so called inner gardens beyond them again looked derelict, unkempt and more like a rubbish skip, it made us ask the question, just what exactly are the local and regional government’s doing to this place, they certainly don’t seem to be spending any money on general maintenance, grass cutting, litter clearance etc. Perhaps we were just at the wrong part of the city wall 🤷‍♂️ We decided to wander into the centre, in the hope that we would find that, to be more scenic and picturesque, and we were also now ready for another coffee as we had already spent over an hour of this visit seeing nothing very much of interest !!

I know that at this point of the ramble I must be sounding like a bit of a grumpy old git, although we did come armed in the knowledge that lots of inland places like this had suffered with water shortages during the height of the drought, so watering of grass, shrubs and plants during that lengthy period were banned. Also, away from the main coastal resorts, it had passed the period of the main tourist season, so we were not expecting to see or feel the same sort of ambience, we also anticipated the change in weather and the temperatures, so to be fair, we had not arrived with too many expectations, but being a city we had expected a little bit more than we were actually currently experiencing, to get us back into the holiday mood perhaps we should visit a few ‘Tourist Tat’ shops, we could purchase fridge magnets, flamenco dolls, key rings and even ‘I Love Badajoz’ tee-shirts emblazoned with a big red heart………… 🤔 Yup ! You are correct, never going to happen in a month of Sunday’s 😂

But you know what they say, ‘Patience is a virtue’ and as we entered the inner part of the city with it’s hustle and bustle, small little Plaza’s with Cafe’s, the typical big modern retail stores and the noise of traffic, it was as if we had just walked through an invisible outer defence barrier and into the real everyday world of down town Badajoz. Neither Shazza or I, generally speaking, like inner cities with their crowds, but on this occasion it felt good, as if we were not actually part of an Apocalyptic Disaster Movie as it had felt like a little earlier.

After a brief coffee stop, which by the way, was only a minor improvement on the rest that we had so far experienced whilst on this road trip, we decided to just wander, following a tourist map we had picked up from of the Tourist Information Offices we had passed. Now we could have spent time in Museums, Art Galleries etc but that really isn’t our thing, however, we did take the opportunity, seeing as we were in a city, to find a branch of our Bank and get some extra money. It wasn’t that we desperately needed any, as we were paying for accommodations and fuel on our Spanish bank debit cards, but we used cash for coffee’s, lunches, dinners and other incidentals, although in truth we could have used our cards for most of that as well, just call me old-fashioned, but I like cash in my wallet 🤔 Anyway, it seems that further North, the presence of our particular Bank Institution is not that well represented, and to withdraw money from other banks ATM machines, here in Spain, costs a fee, so this was more a precautionary measure rather than one out of necessity. The only reason that I am mentioning this is to highlight just how friendly and helpful complete strangers can be. Google Maps are very good for guidance on road routes, but we are discovering that when getting ‘walking’ directions it is not nearly as good, now wether that is because the GPS signal is not as good in small streets I do not know, but it doesn’t seem to be able to accurately pin point your location, so when you think you are heading in the correct direction and following the voice and visual directions, the on screen tracking suddenly changes and indicates that you are then travelling in the wrong direction, which is extremely frustrating to say the least. Anyway, we had stopped to study where we needed to be against where Google Maps indicated that we were and whilst we were looking for a wall plaque to indicate the street that we were on, a young chap, smart but casually dressed and probably in his late twenties, or very early thirties, stopped and asked if we needed any help. I told him the name of the bank we were looking for and he kindly offered to show us the way, now of course we were a little cautious, as you would be, but we accepted his assistance otherwise we could have been going around and around in circles forever. We discovered that we had actually been walking in the totally wrong direction, so thank you for that Mr Google 😳 Whilst walking, we started chatting, as you do, and, we discovered that although he originated from Badajoz and is currently living and working here, he had actually spent most of his adult years working in other cities and countries within Europe and, blow me down with a feather, he was in the same Pharmaceutical profession as my daughter in Munich, now how’s that for a coincidence ? Anyway, just before we got to the location of the bank he was stopped, and greeted, by a female friend, so he pointed to where our bank was, which was just a little further down the street we were now on, we could see the sign, so we thanked him very much for his help and said goodbye. We had to wait in a queue before we could use the machine and as we did so, the helpful stranger walked passed, we briefly exchanged pleasantries again and once again thanked him for his assistance. No matter where we have been in Spain, from the early days when we were travelling, or since we have lived here, it is not often that we have come across unpleasant, unhelpful or unfriendly locals, perhaps just the odd young female waitress having a ‘Personal Crisis’ 😂

After a little further exploration we decided that we had seen enough and decided to make our way back to the car and continue with our long journey, we had already passed a little over three hours of our day since leaving the hotel that morning, we considered eating lunch first but agreed to stop somewhere else along our route. On our way to the car park we stopped at a small supermarket, purchased a carton of Oat Milk for our coffee’s in our hotel rooms and a few snacks. We decided to take a more scenic route, away from the noise of the inner city, and walked through what turned out to be quite a nice large park on the outer side of the city walls.

The walk through the park had taken us a little longer than we had anticipated, probably because we were getting a bit leg weary and so had slowed down, by the time we reached the car the clouds had started to break and the sun had started to shine, it was feeling a little warmer than it had done during the majority of the morning. Our feelings about Badajoz, well, we walked the walks, saw some of the sights but it certainly didn’t justify buying a tee-shirt 🤭 To be fair and not too critical, in the height of the Summer it would probably have been a much better time to visit, the river walk would certainly have been a more pleasant experience, with the riverside Cafe’s actually open for business, and perhaps the local Council may have maintained some areas a lot better, we will never know, but if we do come this way again it will only be to either cross the border into Portugal, or vice versa, back into Spain, but we wouldn’t make a point of stopping in Badajoz, however, we can now cross it off our ‘To Do’ list 👍

As Shazza had driven us here I asked if she wanted me to do some of the driving, but she declined and said she would prefer to drive and let me click away on my camera, I didn’t protest but said that when she had had enough, I was happy to take a turn at the wheel as we still had the longest stretch of the drive to do, around four hours 😲 We had a choice of three routes out of Badajoz, our somewhat outdated road atlas of Portugal and Spain had shown the ‘old road’ route towards the direction we wanted to be in, but it also showed what was then the proposed new road, we took a gamble on the new road now having been completed and we were correct to do so.

What became immediately evident to us was the devastation caused in this area from forest fires, the majority of the trees had blackened trunks and branches, although there was evidence of new green growth, large areas of the land were still scorched black and even on this new road, there were several long areas of recent re-surfacing work where the original tarmac would have melted from the heat of the wildfires as they jumped the roads. Houses and farm buildings lay empty, their blackened interiors clearly visible through the collapsed roofs, many lives would have been lost, human and animals, as the fires swept rapidly across acres of land at great speed and without much prior notice. We had seen this in our own area, it is a common annual occurrence and is one of the reasons why many are leaving rural areas for the safety of larger coastal towns and cities. This is one of the main reasons why rural properties with acres of land can be purchased very cheaply, both in Spain and Portugal, by the unsuspecting foreign buyers who are unaware of the dangers. But some of the many older residents, who have lived here for decades and invested all their money into their properties, animals and farmland, remain, some have no other financial choice 🥺 As we moved further North and inland, to areas that are more arable and much less forested, the landscapes became green again with the usual acres upon acres of Olive trees and Hay meadows, the clouds all but disappeared, the sky was a deep shade of blue and the external temperature jumped to 30 degrees(c), thank goodness this car has really efficient air-con 🥵

We were both beginning to feel tired and weary, the scenery was very much the same for mile upon mile and I got bored of taking photo’s, Shazza needed a ‘rest stop’ so we pulled in at the next Cafe we came to, surprisingly, as we had eaten very little all day, neither of us felt hungry so we just settled for a small cold beer and then I took over the driving. Shazza booked us hotel accommodation on-line in the small village of ‘Mozarbez’ just on the outskirts of Salamanca, it had a swimming pool and an on site Restaurant which opened at 8pm, we had seen this the previous evening when conducting our route planning but had not booked it, just in case we diverted from the route. We both agreed to just head there, have a swim and go to the restaurant for dinner later that evening.

By the time we reached the hotel it had been nearly an eight hour day, we were both tired, we checked in and went straight to our room, which was very modern and immaculately clean, a lovely walk in shower, large LCD TV, free good fast WiFi and a small refrigerator, but nothing in it, no water or soft drinks, but we had our own which we had purchased from the supermarket before we left Badajoz, at least it would serve to keep them and our oat milk chilled, notably absent, as usual, was the lack of any coffee/tea making facilities, we were glad we had come prepared on this trip and now we were ready for a ‘decent’ cup of coffee. Neither of us felt like getting changed and going for a swim, we relaxed on the bed and fell asleep and didn’t awake again until 10:30pm later that evening 😲 We couldn’t be bothered to get showered and changed just to go down to the restaurant, so we snacked on what we had purchased from the supermarket, had another coffee, perused our Emails and Social Media on our iPads and then planned a route for the following day. We considered just getting into the ‘Picos’, it was closer, however the ‘Works of Fiction’ put a spanner in the works for that idea, with rain forecast for the next three days, we didn’t want to just sit in an accommodation doing nothing , we could have done that at home at no expense. We were also spending a lot of time driving and having long days, the driving was the most tiring bit and, although it had only been two days, we agreed that we just needed to now get ourselves up to Galicia, and take a few days break, basing ourselves in a hotel that we could use as a bit of a base camp, somewhere where the sun was still shining. However, getting up and across there in one go would entail another very long and monotonous drive, but we both agreed that it would be worth it.

Today had also not been a good eating day, a small, and I mean small, Tostado for breakfast followed by ‘junk’ food much later that evening, we were also not drinking enough water, so we agreed that on the rest of this trip we had to plan our travel and dietary needs much better than we had been doing. For really the first time since we sold it in April 2023, we miss not having our Motorhome, our home on wheels with all the facilities, being able to stop more or less wherever we wanted, cooking facilities (Hob, Grill and Oven) to ensure we could eat properly, and regularly, a proper large fridge/freezer, our own on-board toilet and shower facilities and our own bed to sleep in, damn it, I don’t half miss that ‘Little Fokker’ right now 🥺 But the grass is always greener as they say and life is never completely perfect, their would have been issues of living here in Spain with the van, financial implications and even practical issues with parking/storage 🤷‍♂️ I guess just seeing lots of other motor homes, and camper vans, on the road, or parked up discreetly under the shade of trees, the occupants sat in sun chairs outside enjoying a cool drink, yes I admit, it did make us more than a little envious.

To be continued……………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, ‘La’ Vida Es Buena

(even without our Little Fokker 😉)

Day One – Home to Jerez de los Caballeros

We awoke on the Monday morning, our chosen day of departure, to an unexpected and somewhat cooler morning, a nice fresh breeze was blowing in through the open balcony doors, although we both knew that that wouldn’t last long as the day’s temperature was already forecast to climb to yet another sweltering 36+ degrees(c). We had packed our bags the night before so, after our usual morning coffee’s, we loaded the car boot and at 10:00am we drove away, I had elected to do the first stint behind the wheel, not knowing where we would stop for a late breakfast, or perhaps brunch and, to be perfectly honest, at this point in the proceedings, we had no idea of when we would actually be returning home again, it could be in a week, or even a month, so this really was going to be an adventure 🤗

I had elected to do the first stint at driving, but this was much to Shazza’s displeasure as these days she prefers to do the majority of the driving, although she assures me that it has nothing to do with a lack of confidence in my own driving ability 🤔 she just get’s bored with being a passenger and she certainly isn’t like me, as I enjoy being a passenger so that I can take lots of photo’s as you know, of anything and everything 🤭 However, as we had travelled the first part of this trip on numerous occasions, I wasn’t bothered with doing any clicking away on my camera, but I knew that she would still get her way at the first opportunity, probably our first stop and to be honest she would probably then elect to do the majority of the driving over the coming days, or weeks, but I wouldn’t mind as by then we would be in unfamiliar territory so my clicker finger would get plenty of exercise.

Now you may recall from my last ramble, I mentioned that we had made a loose plan for our first day’s travel and that I may have, unbeknown to Shazza at the time, made my own cunning plan based on the knowledge that my beloved did not want to be driving for more than 4-5 hours per day. Well, as I knew would happen, within a very short time of being on the road, Shazza asked me the question that I knew she would, “Have you got any ideas of where we should head for once we get clear of Seville ?”, I smiled inwardly to myself, “Well actually” I said, and then reeled off my surreptitious pre-conceived plan 🤭 Fortunately, once she had looked at the small town on ‘Google Maps’, and my suggested modest three star hotel, with breakfast included, use of their swimming pool and free parking all included in the price, she agreed with my suggestion and went on to her phone ‘App’ and made the necessary accommodation booking. But I knew that from here on in, each night in our selected accommodation before going out for dinner, we would both sit down together and look at the road map both on ‘Google maps’ and our road Atlas and agree on a general direction for the following day’s travel and for potential night-stops. We would wait to book accommodation as we didn’t know at that stage if, or where, we may choose to deviate from our tentative route, as it was quite possible that we may have seen a ‘Brown’ Tourist sign to somewhere, or something, that may have been worth a detour off our planned route 🤷‍♂️ This road trip could be quite interesting and exciting, although perhaps, for me, tinged with some slight anxiety, not just because we may not go straight from Point A to Point B, but maybe several different ‘Points’ in between or, actually never getting to the original planned ‘Point B’ 😲 Additionally, there were no guarantees that there would be any accommodation vacancies at places that we did eventually decide to overnight, after all it was still, until the end of September, the tourist period both here in Spain, and also in Portugal. I mentioned this to Shazza, her response took me back to our full-timing Motorhome days when, in our early novice days, when Wildcamping seemed a dangerous option to me, I had similar concerns, she would always say, ‘Don’t worry, we will be alright, we will find somewhere”, and we always did.

I have to say that, for me, the first part of the journey was pretty boring really, which is a bit unfair as the scenery is absolutely amazing, but now that we have travelled this same route ‘numerous’ times, and are more than very familiar with the scenery, and all the landmarks, which now only serve to remind us of how far we have driven and ultimately how far we still have to go. After only an hour into our journey we made a stop at a small Cafe, one that unsurprisingly, Shazza had found on her route map and which was just off the main motorway but not a service station establishment. I am not the only one in this relationship that makes surreptitious plans. Yes she may have been hungry for, as unlike me who does not usually eat before lunch, Shazza needs feeding ‘at least’ three times a day 🤭 However she also had another purpose for stopping sooner rather than later. Although we had been travelling in the cool comfort of our very efficient Air-con, as soon as we stopped and opened the car doors the heat hit us, it was still relatively early, but the external temperature was already reading an opressive 30 degrees(c) 🥵 We ordered our usual coffee and tostado’s, but the toasted slices of bread that we each received were the size and thickness of a house brick, needless to say, we would not need to stop anywhere else for lunch, not even Shazza on this occasion. After devouring our late breakfast’s, it was then that Shazza implemented her own cunning plan and took the opportunity, whilst I was using the bathroom facilities, to jump into the driving seat 😲

Now just because she had evicted me from my driving position, I am not saying that it was she that was solely to blame for sailing right past our exit junction, part of my passenger duties, other than taking photo’s of anything and everything, was to be back-up navigation assistant to our Sat Nav 🤔 Let’s just say that perhaps we may both have been a little pre-occupied, either at concentrating on the scenery around us, or to be honest, due to the fact that we had been acting like a pair of irresponsible teenager’s by singing along, very very loudly, to some of our favourite 60’s, 70’s and 80’s pop tunes that were blasting out on Apple Car Play from the playlist selection on my iPhone, we did get some strange looks from the occupants of vehicles that overtook us 😂 Anyway, as a consequence, we missed our proposed turn-off into what would have been an even more scenic ‘Sierra de Aracena National Park’. It really didn’t matter though, we just drove for a few more miles then took the next available turn off the motorway and headed West, towards our destination, which was not far from the Portuguese border and now our new route would take us along some narrower country roads through a more central area of the National Park. But come on, alternative routes, pre-planned or otherwise, isn’t that what part of this road trip is all about, at the end of the day we didn’t actually need to be anywhere in particular 🤷‍♂️ Well, except that on this our first day we actually did, as Shazza had pre-booked and pre-paid for the accommodation, and at such short notice their was no refund if we cancelled, so no matter how many deviations we may take, we did have to end our first day of travelling at the hillside town of ‘Jerez de los Caballeros’.

Once we were on the roads within the National Park we noticed the change in the surrounding scenery, from long views of miles upon miles of Olive groves to now some many different types of trees, including a lot of Pines, and there were a lot more undulating hills, but the neatly aligned rows of Olive groves had now too become less regimented just acres upon acres of Olive trees. We still hadn’t, as yet, escaped the searingly hot Southern temperatures, it was now registering 34 degrees(c) 🥵 so, even though we had the Air-Con on full, our bottles of water were getting a little tepid, so we decided to stop at the side of the road, in a small village, for a very nice ice-cold cervesa (beer), although the bar initially looked closed, but as we passed by we saw the the front doors were open and their were lights on inside, I don’t know who was more surprised, us or the man sat at a table inside, but he stood up with quite a start as we entered, we passed the usual pleasantries and then ordered our two small beers. We took our beers outside and sat under the shade of a large sun canopy, it certainly did the trick for him, as shortly afterwards two small Spanish registered camper vans passed by, looked at us, gave a smile and then parked further up the road. Six adults alighted from the two vehicles, they were obviously travelling together in convoy, they said ‘Buenas Tardes’ as they passed our table, for it was now after 2pm, so the greeting changes from ‘Dias’ (Day) to ‘Tardes’ (Afternoon), much later it would change again to ‘Noches’ (Night), we responded appropriately, as you do. They sat on a large table adjacent to us and engaged in their own conversation. Suitably refreshed, and availed of the establishments other ‘conveniences’, after saying the usual ‘Adios’ (Goodbye) as we departed, in a general way to everyone, to the response of ‘Luego’ (Later), which always seems odd to me, unless they knew something that we didn’t, but it was very unlikely that we would ever see any of them ever again 🤷‍♂️ Although we were still heading towards the Portuguese border, we would not, on this occasion at least, cross into Portugal itself, although we hadn’t ruled out perhaps doing so at some point, dependent on our selected route up to Galicia, or perhaps even on our return trip 🤷‍♂️

Not needing to now stop for lunch actually turned out to be very advantageous, as we got to our hotel, ‘Los Templarios’ (The Templars) which was a quite basic but comfortable 3* hotel in the small town of Jerez de los Caballeros, a little earlier than we had anticipated. In the main reception area their was a suit of armour standing guard near the entrance, the cogs in my brain started to turn and my association with the name started to resonate with the ‘Medieval Knight’s Templar’, as you know by now, we are both self-confessed history heathens, but you may also know that I, much more than Shazza, have an interest in Castles and their inhabitants over that period of history, so this had intrigued me and I needed to find out if there was actually any connection, but more about that a little later.

Once we had got booked in and settled in our room we got changed into our swimwear and enjoyed a couple of leisurely hours in the hotel’s relatively large open air pool, it was a little after 4:30pm, six and a half hours after leaving home, a little longer travelling than we had planned but we did have two stops en-route, the temperatures were still in the very high 20’s and so it was refreshing to spend time in the cool water, we had to share the pool though, with a small family of four, but there was more than enough room for the six of us 🤭 so after our long hot drive we enjoyed swimming lots of lengths and getting some exercise, however, had we have known the physical effort we were to need, to explore the town later that evening, and also where we would get some dinner, we may have just decided to have had a late afternoon siesta instead 😲

After our refreshing swim we returned to our room, it was still far to hot to venture out to explore the town and the reception staff told us that the Restaraunts in the town did not generally open until after 8pm. We made ourselves a coffee, we had brought our own travel kettle and supplies as hotels here in Spain do not always provide such facilities, unless you want to pay for the more luxurious type of establishments. Shazza lay on the bed and read a book on her Kindle device, for me it was an opportunity to research a bit of history around these ‘Knights Templar’. Now to be honest, their is lots of stuff on the Internet, so I am not going to write a ‘War and Peace’ type novel in this ramble, my interest was purely on who these Templar Knights were and, what connection did they have to this particular part of Spain.

The ‘Order of Santiago’ were a Christian Military-Religious Order of Knights founded around the year 1160 in Spain. Their purpose was fighting Spanish Muslims, and the protection of ‘Pilgrims’ on a series of routes on their way to the shrine of St. James in ‘Santiago de Compostela’, these routes later became known as the ‘Camino de Santiago’ or ‘The Way Of The Saint’. The Order of the ‘Knights Templar’ got established in Andalusia between 1253-1258, when Islamic power began to dwindle and the Knights Templar made ‘Aracena’ one of their strongholds. symbols and signs of this mysterious order of Christian Knights can be found just about everywhere in these parts, even the town’s ‘Coat of Arms’ includes many of them. It was here that the Templar’s rebuilt the fortress they found upon their arrival and some of the rooms can still be observed, as well as part of the Towers and some of the Wells.

’

The Christian rulers in Northern Spain and the Muslims ‘tolerated’ each other in a ‘Political-Financial Arrangement’’ in a form of ‘co-existence’ after the Northern Kingdoms took advantage of Muslim Principalities (Taifas), that had become fragmented and weakened. After having fostered the ‘threat of Civil War’ the Christians intimidated Muslim Ruler’s, charging them a form of ‘protection money’ called ‘Parias’, in the exchange for their ‘Alliance’ and ‘Loyalty’ and in return for NOT attacking them. The situation was similar to that in the ‘Holy Land’ in the 12th and 13th Centuries, where the Latin Christian Lords allied with Muslim Lords for ‘Mutual Advantage’. As in the holy land, Christian Ruler’s in Spain, would also ally with Muslim Rulers ‘against other Christian’s’. Far from being straightforward, the bloody history of Spain and its early presence of Muslim Kingdoms demonstrates a turbulent power game between Christian Rulers and Muslims, where a level of tolerance existed usually because of the exchange of money maintaining the status quo.

Jerez de Los Caballeros’ is a town located in South Western Spain, in the Province of Badajoz. It is located on two hills overlooking the River ‘Adrila’ and is situated 18Km (a little under 9 miles) from the Portuguese border. The old town is surrounded by a Moorish wall with six gates. The town is said to have been founded by ‘Alfonso IX of Leon in 1229. In 1232 the town was extended by his son, ‘Ferdinand III the Saint, who gave it to the Knights Templar, hence the name ‘Jerez de Los Caballeros (Jerez of the Knight’s).

Now I found this information, and believe me, a heck of a lot more, a very interesting read and in my opinion it would be very easy to ‘interpret’, or conversely to ‘mis-interpret’, some of these past historical events, and arrangements, to what is going on in today’s world between Christian Rulers and Muslim Rulers, but food for thought eh 🤔 What also intrigued me was to discover that the ‘Knights Templar’ may have been founded in the Middle Ages, but were then accused, some say falsely, for heretic and other crimes and all members were hunted down and sentenced to death. But keep researching and you find that the Knights Templar’ continue to exist ‘globally’ today, in a more modern form and are a quite separate, but not totally un-associated organisation, to the ‘Masons’ and other similar organisations. But, as they used to say at the end of the weekly televised ‘Crime Watch’ programme, please don’t have nightmares and in todays technological world where Social Media channels are rife, mis-information can often be very difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction 😳

Having read all of this history, I was sorry that I hadn’t known about ‘Aracena’ beforehand, the castle looked magnificent and it would have made a very interesting stop, without actually deviating off our route as we were only 2Km from it 🥺 Perhaps worth a weekend visit at some point in the future 🤔

So back to the script…………………….

The evening was still warm, but much cooler than it had been, so we showered and changed into, cleaner and smarter, shorts and tee-shirts. We headed towards the town but could not find the actual ‘Old Town’ area or where the shops and eateries were located, we just got ourselves lost in narrow streets with lots of residential dwellings and more modern type small supermarket style retailers. So I stopped a woman who I made the assumption of being a local and asked, in my bestest Spanglish, for directions, she smiled knowingly and gestured with her hand that we needed to walk in a ‘downward’ direction, the way she stabbed her finger in the downward direction got me a little concerned. We should have known, we had had to drive ‘up’ to our hotel accommodation and as I looked from the poolside balcony, all I could see were the roofs of the houses 😲 Of course, going down would not be the issue, but walking back up may very well be another matter !! The ‘old town’ itself was typical, quite pretty in a narrow cobbled street sort of way, all of which eventually seemed to meet up around a central Plaza, which are generally either overlooked by a large church or a town hall, this one was in the shadow of a church. However we were to discover that Monday was actually ‘closing’ day, although obviously nobody had informed ‘Mr Google’ 😡 So many of the shops and formal type restaurants were not open, but we always find that their are always a couple of Cafe/Bars available to quench the thirsts of both the locals and visitor’s alike and they all generally serve some sort of food, as long as you didn’t want A’La Carte, right now we could have eaten a scabby donkey, one each 😂 Their were two Cafe/Bars located directly next to each other, we chose to sit at the one that looked the busiest, but we soon came to rue that decision 😳

We know that we will never be considered as Spanish, nor do we actually want to, to be honest, no matter how good our Spanish becomes, we do not speak with the right sort of dialect, a bit like a foreigner who speaks very good English but goes to places in the UK, like Merseyside, Tyneside, the Midlands etc. well the same applies here. However, we do always try to speak in Spanish and we are always polite, saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ where and when appropriate and we know sufficient to make other conversations now and especially ordering food and drinks. So we sat down and waited for the waitress to come and take our order, she was young, probably mid-twenties, but her whole demeanour was one that said, “I don’t really want to be here”, she was dower and even though I said, in Spanish, “Good evening and how are you ?”, which generally promotes some sort of response, she remained aloof and expressionless, so I ordered our two drinks. It was quite evident that this was nothing personal as we observed that she was exactly the same with all the customer’s, the majority of whom were actually Spanish. When she eventually delivered our drinks, and with no exaggeration, she slammed them down on the table with such force that other customers looked around, she then just turned around and walked away, she was obviously having some sort of personal crisis 🤷‍♂️ The actual ambience, the warm evening air, the tables with the sounds of the other customer’s chitter chatter had, initially at least, made us feel quite relaxed and so we planned on staying where we were, ordering some more drinks and some food, then afterwards we would have a wander around the narrow streets before we made our ascent of Everest. However, we promptly changed our mind and after consuming our drinks we paid the bill, leaving no tip, as we normally would have done, which I am sure would have done nothing to cheer her up, but we hoped she got the message although we doubted it. We spent some time wandering the small alleyways and were quite surprised to discover a medieval style archway entrance that led into an inner courtyard and a rather nice well maintained park. It became evident that we were inside the walls of what was once a Castle and the views out over the surrounding countryside stretched for miles into the distance. It seemed a bit odd because Castles are usually at the top of a hill, with the newer more modern residences built around and below it, but here, the new more modern township had been built above it 🤔

We were all walked out, and as the evening turned to night we were now pretty ravenous, we realised that we hadn’t actually eaten anything since our brick sized tostadas earlier that morning 😲 The lights in the narrow streets and around the small central Plaza streets, took on quite a different but still pleasant ambience. We would rather have gone hungry than have returned to that same Cafe/Bar, so we decided to try the one right next to it, and what a difference, the waiter, perhaps even the owner, greeted us with a warm and friendly smile, showed us to one of the tables in the cordoned off traffic free street and asked us what we would like to drink and wether we wanted to eat something. As usual we spoke to him in our bestest Spanglish and he asked us where we were from, we engaged briefly in the usual pleasantries and then he brought us two menu’s, in Spanish, although he asked if we would like the ‘English’ versions, we declined and stated that we understood enough Spanish. Now I will not go into all the intricate details, suffice to say that the service we received was first class, friendly and attentive, the food was served hot and tasted delicious and when we came to pay the bill, which was amazingly good value, we were offered ‘shots’, gratis of course, one of us refusing, the other accepting, well it would have been rude not to, although I may have suggested that he used Shazza’s shot on the waitress in the establishment next door 😂 The walk uphill back to the hotel was not actually that bad, although that may have had something to do with the very nice large glasses of Anti-Covid Vaccines the waiter kept plying me with, I did protest but perhaps something got lost in translation, our Spanish isn’t as perfect as it could be maybe 🤭 Anyway, I did manage to submit two establishment reviews on Google, you can I am sure imagine for yourselves just how different they were.

just as a conclusion to the end of our first day on the road, I have to say that the hotel was very large, with several floors, but it was virtually empty of guests, it appeared to be more one of those accommodations that served larger coach trip type customer’s, but it was now nearing the end of the season. However, on saying that, the staff were all exceptionally friendly and we both enjoyed a comfortable nights sleep, and although the facilities were pretty basic everything was meticulously clean, although the rooms did look a bit dated. Breakfast had been included in the cost of our accommodation, however, when we went into the large, but virtually empty, dining room the next morning, their was very little to select from on the buffet style offerings and the coffee machine was not working 🤷‍♂️ We decided to leave and get on the road to commence Day two of our road trip with a stop, for our usual breakfast, somewhere along our route.

To be continued………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

Footnote:

I have to offer an apology to you, to you the readers who have read this before I added the below amendment. As I don’t make any notes, I often get quite carried away with what I am writing and only after publishing it do I remember something that I had wanted to mention, usually it isn’t of any major importance so I don’t re-publish. however on this occasion I discovered that I had missed something of relevance in respect of the association of Jerez de Los Caballeros, the town where we had our night stop, and the Knights Templar.

”The last of the Knights Templar were actually killed here in the town of Jerez de los Caballeros, they were besieged in what is now known as the Bloody Tower”

I know that after my last ramble, I left you with an anticipation that I would be publishing another one just a couple of weeks later, which would have been shortly after our last family visitor’s had departed. But to be completely honest, albeit I enjoy writing, I thought to myself, who really wants to read about someone else’s grandchildren visiting their grandparents for a fortnight, that sort of stuff doesn’t really mean very much to anybody else, or does it 🤷‍♂️ However, all I will say is that we did have a great time and it was really good to see them all again, although we do speak with them, via video chat, on an almost weekly basis, but it isn’t the same as actually seeing them in the flesh so to speak, the last time we did so being a year ago now. With the twins now having literally just turned 9 years old, and the youngest a couple of weeks short of becoming 6 years old, my goodness, how much they had grown up over those last twelve months.

It would be fair to say that we have recently had quite a busy time, what with our recent trip to Austria, and then, within twenty-four hours of our return from that trip, having our family visitors staying with us for nearly a fortnight, so the week after they had departed we felt that time was right to take a bit of a break ourselves, but not before doing some necessary domestics, which involved washing all the bedding and towels used by our guests, then catching up with our own laundry and doing a thorough clean, at least then, when we returned from our own rest break, all the domestics will have been done 👍

You may recall that for a couple of months now, if not more, Shazza and I had been considering taking a road trip to Northern Spain and, what with the continuing high and very oppressive temperatures that we have been experiencing in our part of the world, for months, with no rainfall worthy of any note since March, so we decided that now was the perfect ‘Time To Get Out Of Here’ to hopefully get to some cooler temperatures. Northern Spain, particularly the Region of ‘Galicia’, is commonly referred to as ‘Green Spain’ and that is for a very good reason, it tends to rain a lot in the Autumn and Winter months as well as it being quite Foggy with Ice and Snow and battered by the Atlantic storms, so we were hoping to get some hiking done on the trip, especially in the areas in and around the ‘Picos de Europas’ mountain regions, before they started to get covered with the white stuff which can start to accumulate in October, many parts of Northern Spain are very popular with Skiers in the Autumn and Winter months ⛷️🎿 However, on many of the roads at that altitude, it is mandatory to have winter tyres fitted between October and April and it is quite possible that some of the roads can get closed at short notice. So if we wanted to get a road trip in we needed to do it sooner rather than later. However, like most other parts of Spain this year, Galicia and Asturias regions have also suffered with unusually high temperatures and the subsequent drought conditions, so we were hoping to catch the latter end of the good weather by going now, at the start of September, when the daily temperatures would hopefully remain between 24-26 degrees(c), although the night temperatures could fall quite significantly, a drop of between 10-15 degrees (c), but for us that just meant not having to suffer with the intense humidity, either in the mornings or at night, like we have been doing, but the cooler temperatures often brought morning fog and low cloud so that too could potentially have an impact on where we could venture once up there, and what we could or could not do, but we wouldn’t actually know that until we were there.

Our plan, apart from heading North to Galicia, was to have absolutely no plan, with no predetermined route, no advance pre-booked accommodations and no particular time constraints, apart of course from us having to be back in four weeks time, as that was when Shazza’s mum would be flying out to stay with us for a fortnight. So, we had the potential, if we so desired, to spend anything up to four weeks on our road trip. Now such a trip would normally have involved me making some detailed planning logistics, with of course, pre-defined routes, pre-planned and advance booked night stop accommodations and with some sort of schedule on how many days we would spend at each hand-picked location, however, that was not going to happen this time, for I had promised Shazza that I would just try to ‘go with the flow’ on this occasion 😱 Although it has to be said that my constant companion, no not Shazza, my other constant companion, my OCD buddy, on hearing my agreement to this revelation, was already on the verge of having severe cardiac palputations so we shall have to see how that works out 😲🫨

From all of our frequent travels over the last nine years, we knew that the Northern coastline of Spain, namely Santander and Bilbao, were actually only a little over a ten hour drive away, easily reached, if we wanted to, within a day’s travel, but on this occasion we didn’t want to rush straight up there, there were still places up and along the route North that we had not yet visited, so we would just zig zag our way up and when we came across a village, town or even a city that we had not explored before we would then stop and have a look around, and dependent on when we got there, and how much time we spent exploring, we may then perhaps choose to then move on a little further and get a few more miles under our belt, unless of course we felt that we had done enough driving for one day, then we would look for a convenient place to park our heads for the night, wether that be B&B type accommodations or hotels, we were not looking for luxury accommodations, just comfortable one’s, a bed and en-suite bathroom would be our only preferences, we could stop en-route somewhere for breakfasts and lunches. We had a number of Accommodation type ‘Apps’ on our iPhones along with our trusty ‘Google Maps’ and even an old fashioned form of navigation, yes a well worn Portugal/Spain road atlas that we had kept from our Motorhome travelling days, although by now, as it was five year’s old, how useful it would be we would soon discover 🤭 Shazza had said that ideally she didn’t want to be driving for more than 4-5 hours each day, which seemed reasonable, she also said that she didn’t want to be travelling every single day, so hang on a minute, basically she did, when all is said and done, have some sort of a plan 🤔

Anyway, that is why I have not, until now, published another ramble, but, with our upcoming road trip, you can be assured that there will be several to follow in quick succession with, I dare say, the usual deluge of photographs just to give you a flavour of our road trip.

On the subject of photography, unfortunately, I had a slight accident with my trusty Canon ‘pocket camera’ when our family visitors were staying with us, whilst trying to take ‘action photo’s’ of the granddaughters playing in the sea, an unanticipated wave crept up on me and hit me with such force that I fell over, although natural instinct made me hold my arm out of the water, but still some sea water did get into the camera and, although I managed to recover the images from the SD Card, the camera, although it is still functioning, it is not working properly, so I have now had to resort to bringing my older, much larger and heavier Canon camera, out of retirement, for this particular road trip at least. I guess that when I eventually replace the smaller pocket camera I should also perhaps consider investing in a waterproof one 🤔

Now I do have to make a confession at this point, for although we had agreed, in principle at least, to not making any plans, other than perhaps to not doing any more than 4-5 hours driving on any one day, we had both agreed that we wanted to get out of our own Andalucía Region as quickly as possible as we had already explored a lot in this area, although perhaps not all of it just yet. Anyway, I knew that it would take us the best part of 3-4 hours, on Motorways, to clear this region, so armed with our already pre-agreed information, that being about limiting our driving hour’s, I may have just taken a sneaky peek at our proposed route out of Andalusia, and yes okay, I may also have taken a second sneaky peek at a potential hotel, in a town that we had not visited before, just for our first night’s stop you understand, but of course I chose not to share that bit of information with Shazza, well not just yet at least, what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve about 😉 I am certain that Shazza will ask me the question about where we should make our first stop, once we actually hit the road on our Spanish road trip…………

By the time I actually get around to publishing this ramble, and you are reading it, we will already be on the road, somewhere in Spain 🤷‍♂️

To be continued…………………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena 😉

By the time you get to read this current ramble it will probably have been close to a month since I published my last literary masterpiece 🤭 But whilst I may have provided you my reader’s with a bit of a rest from my usual constant publications of verbal diarrhœa, for me, well I have been continuing to draft paragraphs for this latest ramble throughout that period, bit by bit, for as you may already know, I do not actually make any notes so rely purely on my memory, or from any photographs that I may have taken, to piece together my ‘rambles’ so, I guess that I can understand if, at times, you sometimes wished that I suffered with ‘Alzheimer’s’ 😂 So let me bring you up to date with what Shazza and myself have been up to over these last few weeks………………..

In the three weeks, after Stacey and Dean had returned to Munich after their brief five day visit to us, to be honest, we had not done too much, other than just continuing with our normal Summer daily routines and, whilst the temperatures have remained searingly hot, with daily highs ranging between 38-42 degrees(c) 🥵 we did, somewhat surprisingly, still manage a few morning walks along the seafront and into the town, some of those being out of necessity, haircuts and bits of grocery shopping, whilst others, upon reflection, were out of complete and utter stupidity, why would we go out unnecessarily in that sort of heat 🤷‍♂️ but to be fair they did, occasionally, come with the advantage of stopping for an unscheduled tapas lunch and of course the mandatory re-hydration stops and they had provided us with a change of scenery and routine. Although, in the main, the majority of our morning’s started as usual with a slow relaxed start to the day, with our morning coffee’s and catching up with all the daily ‘doom and gloom’ that is continuing to go on in this world of our’s, then, generally by 10:00am, we were down at our swimming pool, getting in our exercise regime, and a spot of sunbathing, before the tourist hoards descended with their ‘Little Darlings’ and took over the area with all their inflatable pool toys, which would then make any serious swimming virtually impossible, and then, as the noise from the excited children started to increase, at points almost piercing our eardrums from their highly pitched and somewhat overly enthusiastic screams, which spoilt our earlier tranquility, we knew then that it was time to retreat to the sanctuary of our much cooler, and quieter, home sanctuary. I often make comments about these little darlings, making it sound as if we are just a pair of old grumblies, which at times we are becoming, but as you may already have worked out, a lot of that is actually just a bit tongue in cheek, as we know that when our own grandchildren arrive and get down to the pool, which will be on a regular daily basis whilst they are here, they too, like all the other ‘Little Darlings’, don’t appear to have a volume adjustment switch 🤭

Once we get back up into our apartment we usually just sit and enjoy a leisurely lunch, it’s amazing how hungry you get after swimming between 50-60 lengths of the pool, although worth it when that bit of daily exercise can almost instantaneously lose me 0.7kg, where, in comparison, our walking regime only makes a difference of 0.3kg. After lunch, we would spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in the cool of the apartment, unless of course it happened to be a ‘Treat Weekend’, when we would shower and get dressed and then venture out for dinner. I think that if it wasn’t for the views of the sea from the balcony, with lots of nautical stuff going on to keep me occupied, and the adjacent communities pool which is located directly opposite my private raised viewing observatory, affording me lots of people watching opportunities, those long and searingly hot afternoons could become a bit boring, but we always managed to pass the hour’s doing something or other, as you do.

The un-relentless searing heat of the day’s sunshine started to dissipate in the evenings, but only to be replaced by warm and sticky humidity and we are utilising our air-con system far more this Summer than we had in previous year’s. Over the last couple of weeks we have seen, and heard, the inevitable increase in the number of tourists in our immediate area, although still not in the number’s that we have seen in previous year’s, albeit that the reports in the local news indicate that there have been record number’s of tourists arriving into Malaga airport this Summer so far, we suspect that upon arrival the majority must head towards the other more popular ‘Costa’ locations 🤷‍♂️ So, during these busier months we tend to generally just rely on ‘pot luck’ as to where we manage to find a place to eat over the busy weekend periods, but we are spoilt for choice, either in the Marina or in the town, as long as we don’t have a particular preference for the type of food we want to eat. We could of course pre-book a table in a restaurant in advance if we really wanted to dine somewhere specific, but to be honest, we never really know what type of food we fancy eating until we actually get out, too many choices I guess 🤷‍♂️

There were no more ‘large’ Fiesta’s going on in our own particular local area, well not for the time being at least, although in these Summer months there is always something going on in the area, either within our own Province of Malaga, or our neighbouring Cádiz Province, but to be honest they do become much of a muchness after a while. What we did currently have going on was the usual Summer ‘Medieval Market’, which spends one week along the seafront promenade just down from the castle, in the local village, then it packs up and moves on, spending a second week on the seafront promenade in our local town, which is only actually a further twenty minutes walk away, so it is more like a two week Medieval Market to us 😁 Whilst, at the same time, but at the opposite end of the town, still on the seafront promenade, there is also the usual evening Summer Markets, so all in all, with the neon light’s shining brightly from the individual stalls, the mixture of aromas in the air, from Candy Floss, Popcorn, an array of Roasted Meats being sold from a Barbecue grill, mixed in with the stalls selling aromatic spices and scented soaps and candles, it all just adds to that holiday resort ambience. Of course, being Spain, and much like many other Mediterranean coastal locations I would imagine, the extensive beachfront, and shoreline, is lined with families enjoying the warm calm water, some of them utilising the Council provided sand filled barbecue boats on the beach, which have to be pre-booked in advance. The vast gatherings of adults and children would remain here until after it got dark, but with the fire from the wood fuelled barbecues, and the lanterns they had brought with them, it was actually quite a lovely sight to witness as we ‘Promenaded’, along with many other’s, after enjoying our own leisurely evening meal. Even for us, it still has the sort of ambience that we remember experiencing when we ourselves were on a Summer beach holiday, although now of course we do not have to count the days before we have to fly, or drive, back to what would once have been our own home country, and that is a nice feeling and, yes, even now, on evenings such as these, I have to admit that they do still remain one of those ‘pinch me’ moments, for it just serves to remind us of how fortunate, and indeed grateful we are, to be in a position to be able to be living this kind of lifestyle at this time of our lives.

Sometimes it is difficult for us to comprehend, living in this extremely peaceful and tranquil environment, the extent of the aggression and carnage that has been going on, primarily with the street riots in the UK at this particular time. We of course do still read all the news headlines, and sometimes the more actual detailed news reports, so we are familiar with the purpose behind some of them, but to be honest, my personal belief at least, is that, as usual, and as generally happens with football related hooliganism, certain more extremist thugs are hijacking, for their own ends, what are otherwise intended to be primarily peaceful rallies. But suffice to say, ‘enough is enough’ on that particular subject from me, I am sure we all do have our own opinions on the subject, but for us it just really serves to reinforce our own opinion that leaving the UK when we did was really a matter of both good fortune and good timing. We certainly feel no desire to return to live, or, in the current state that large parts of the country are experiencing, even to visit the UK in the immediate future, although we are also very much aware that not all of the UK has been subject to these disorderly behaviours and street riots and that there are still areas of normality. Shazza’s mum lives in the North of the UK, our Son lives in the South, neither of them, fortunately, have been effected, but of course, the outside world only get to view what the Corporate Media, ‘You Tube’, or other Social Media platforms, choose to show and it is disturbing to now see the other side of the fall out from that 🤔 We have been used to seeing, over the years, the UK Government warnings to British Citizens about ‘Not Travelling’ to certain countries, on health, criminality or terrorism grounds, well the boot is now firmly on the other foot and many Countries are now advising the same to their citizens about travelling to the UK at this current time.

But finally the time had come for us to start to prepare for our trip to Austria for the big family reunion event, which I have been mentioning in my previous rambles for some time now. You will not be surprised to know that all of our personal travel and accommodation arrangements had been made, booked, and paid for, month’s in advance of this event. Shazza, as usual, doing all the on-line booking administration, me just doing the financial accountancy aspects and ensuring that we had all the necessary physical travel documents, we still needed to carry our British Passports but also our Spanish Residency Permits, not that travelling within the Schengen Zone we have had to produce either 🤷‍♂️ Of course I had also made, or checked, the essential travel itineraries, times of flight’s, trains, location of our overnight hotel accommodation in Munich etc. yes my OCD buddy was certainly still having an input, wether Shazza liked it or not, although she constantly reminded me that the invitation to the family re-union event was most certainly just for the two of us, and not for a 2+1, so my OCD buddy would have to remain hidden away and remain inconspicuous 🤭 Our rail tickets, for our onward travel from Munich to the Alpine town in Austria where the event was being held, were also all pre-booked and we were already in possession of our rail travel E-Tickets, so, all we actually had to do now was turn up 🤗 Stacey and Dean had treated us, even though we had remonstrated with them, but they had insisted on paying for our three-night luxury accommodation at the Spa Hotel in the Austrian Alps, and for the taxi fares to and from the main event on the Saturday, which was at a separate location from the hotel, about a thirty-minute drive a little further up into the Austrian Alps, but they had also done the same for Dean’s parents as well, so that was very nice of them, I guess it is one of the advantages of now having a daughter with the title ‘Doctor’ in front of her name and now being employed in a very good Science Research based profession and Dean having a decent paid Aircraft engineering type of profession. She had told us that there were to be around fifty ‘confirmed’ guests at the event, comprising of relatives, from both sides of our respective families, and some close friends of their own, so there would be a good International representation from Australia, Spain, France, Germany and the UK.

For quite literally the last couple of months the weather, in the Austrian area that we were travelling to, had been nothing but wall to wall rain, or should that be ‘Alpine Mountain Peak to Alpine Mountain Peak’ 🤔 Anyway, I had been checking the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast, on a daily basis, in case we needed to pack our raincoats, umbrellas and wellington boots, but fortunately, over the last couple of days, the forecast had changed and, for the days we will be there, it is forecast to be full sunshine with temperatures around 28-30 degrees(C), which would actually be a bit of blessing in disguise for us, we are so looking forward to being somewhere a little cooler than we are here in Southern Spain 🤭 However, we also know that the ‘Works of Fiction’ often like to play games so my OCD buddy is still trying to get me to stuff our raincoats into our suitcase. I went to a shop in our local town, but a translation in Spanish for ‘Wellington Boots’ doesn’t actually exist, I wonder why that is 🤔 Instead, the proprietor of the shoe shop, directed me towards the Marina, thinking I wanted to purchase a pair of ‘Boats’ 😂

Now you may think that I am often joking when I mention Shazza complaining at times about my OCD tendencies but I am not. By way of an example, Shazza informed me of the times of the flight’s and so, from that supplied information I, as usual, planned the time we needed to leave home. We needed to be at the airport two hour’s before the flight departed, although Shazza had already done the on-line check-in the previous evening, so why we had to arrive at the airport two hour’s prior to the flight departure I do not know 🤷‍♂️ It would normally take us around seventy-five minutes to drive to the airport, but I would add on some time, in case of any traffic hold-ups en-route, which okay, to date we have never encountered but……… better to be safe than sorry 🤔 We had already pre-booked our car parking in the airport multi-storey car park, but for that, we could not arrive before a pre-determined time, neither does the booking give us a particular reserved parking bay, so we would have to find an available space on one of the six levels and that in itself can take some time hunting one down, so that also needed to be built into our travel timings.

Our flight was an early evening one, so we decided that we would drive down to the village, with our hold baggage in the car boot, walk to the Marina and have a late lunch, before driving from their, directly to Malaga airport. Shazza had opted to do the driving, because of the tight access roads in the multi-story car park, the focus in my right eye from the detached retina incident a couple of years ago never having fully recovered, so I do sometimes tend to over compensate on distance on my right-hand side. So, being sat in the co-pilots seat I would keep a check on my watch, to ensure that at each stage of our journey to the airport we remained within my allocated time frames for each stage of the journey. But come on, surely that is not being OCD, everyone else undertaking similar travels must also do this too, and not just me, so I question wether this is really an OCD thing 🤷‍♂️ Okay, perhaps Shazza may have a minor point, as perhaps having a clipboard on my knee, with a ‘landmark’ checkpoint time list, that I tick off as we pass each one, may be considered as a little over the top 😂

Of course, being so well prepared, the ‘Dark Forces’ didn’t bother springing any nasty surprises upon us and we arrived in good time, we found a parking space without too much bother and got into the airport and checked-in our hold baggage, only to discover that our flight would be delayed by thirty-minutes, due to bad weather over Munich, so perhaps those ‘Dark Forces’ did have a little snigger to themselves 😉 The small delay didn’t really matter too much as our overnight hotel was right outside the air terminal and, the following morning, the ‘metro’ rail line (SBahn) was just a couple of minutes walk away, this took us on the thirty-minute journey to the Munich East railway station where we would commence the first of our two part onward rail journey to Austria. The train schedule meant a one hour journey to a place called ‘Wurgle’, from there we had six minutes to get from Platform 4 to Platform 11 to connect with our next train, another half hour’s journey to the town of ‘Kitzbuel’. But the ‘Dark Forces’ caught up with us and had decided to get even, after our outwitting them the previous day 😲 To start with, our train departed Munich five minutes late, giving us just one minute to make our connection, with one heavy large bag to pull, and two rucksacks to carry, we were not equipped for a sprint. We had pre-booked two seats on the one hour journey from Munich, but the train was overcrowded as it was going all the way to Bologna in Italy. people were standing in all the aisles, with large bags or rucksacks blocking any through passage, so we spent the whole journey stood all the way. The train hadn’t made up any time so we got to ‘Wurgle’ in a bit of a panic, we were told that they were holding the onward train connection for us but we had to get there quickly, on the dash up and down the steep platform steps, I tripped and stubbed my toe on one of the hard concrete steps, but we managed, only just, to get to the train, for as soon as we threw ourselves, and all our bags, quite literally, through the train doors, the doors closed and the train started moving. As you can imagine, we were both out of breath and sweating profusely, my toe was quite painful and constantly throbbing, to the extent that I could not bear to put any weight on it and, to cap off what had already turned into a journey from hell, once again there were no seats available, so we had to stand for the half hour journey in the corridor between two carriages, this had certainly not turned out to be the leisurely scenic rail journey we had envisaged. We got a message from Stacey, who we had kept informed of our nightmare journey, and she had informed us that the hotel would send a car to meet us at the station and transport us back to the hotel, we just needed to call them with our arrival time. The ‘Dark Forces’ had certainly won this particular day’s battle 🥺

The staff at the hotel were fantastic, upon arrival we were met by a concierge, who unloaded our bags on to a luggage trolley and then took them inside, when we checked-in we were greeted by a wonderful and friendly female receptionist, she told us that they had upgraded our room to a ‘Studio Suite’. Once in our room the hotel porter dropped our bags, not literally, inside our room, but declined the offer of a tip for his service. I took off my shoes and my toe was already turning a dark shade of purple, red and black, fortunately though I could still move it, although painfully, so at least it wasn’t broken.

Later that evening their was an informal gathering and buffet in the large terrace bar, we were the last to arrive 🤷‍♂️ We were greeted first by my sister and brother-in-law, who live in Brisbane and who we had not seen for nearly two year’s, then by my two nephew’s and their wives, one who lives in Australia and the other in Leipzig in Germany, we had also seen them both in the UK two year’s ago, but it was our first opportunity to meet my five month old niece 🤗 Unfortunately, my third nephew, who now lives in Marseilles in France, was unable to attend as he is a Rugby Coach and was away on a pre-season game and couldn’t get out of going, so we have yet to meet his partner and my other niece. Then my daughter took us around the room to meet all of Dean’s wider family who had all, except one, travelled from Australia. We had previously met his mum and dad, Jo and Terry, several year’s ago when we were living and working up in the Scottish Highlands and they were doing a tour and called in to see us, but we had never met any of his other wider family members, until now. We were also introduced to some of Stacey and Dean’s friends and work colleagues who were also attending the weekend event.

So I feel that I should offer some sort of an explanation as to the actual purpose of this large family gathering, something that in all of my previous rambles I have referred to as a ‘Family Re-union Event’. Stacey and Dean got married around two and a half years ago, in Winchester in the UK, where they both lived and worked. However, this was a small Registry Office affair and although they had at that time been together as partner’s for ten year’s, they were due to move permanently to Germany just a couple of months later, so for ease of bureaucracy with attaining their Visa’s they decided to get married. Due to the quick ceremony and small reception, Dean’s family had been unable to attend at that time but, Stacey and Dean had always planned to have a larger ‘Wedding Type Reception’ once they had got settled in their new Country and new jobs, so this event in Austria, just over two year’s later, was that much larger family wedding reception event.

The morning after the meet and greet we all assembled in the hotel reception and were transported by a fleet of minibus taxi’s up to an ‘Alms House’ thirty minutes further up into the Austrian Alps where the reception was being held.

Thee were two ‘Official’ photographer’s in attendance, however, at the time of publishing this ramble we have not as yet managed to get access to them, so photographs of the wider family were not available. I had my iPhone with me and had taken some photo’s early on in the proceedings and I had intended to take some more as the day’s events unfolded, however, yet again the ‘Dark Forces’ struck 😲 After doing the initial mingling with everybody, as you do at such events, I went to grab my phone but couldn’t find it, it wasn’t in any of my pockets, so we searched everywhere but couldn’t find it. Now usually Shazza and I would ‘share’ our device locations, for such unwanted occurrences, Shazza would then have been able to pin point my phone location, however, when we had purchased our new phones we had forgotten to do this 🥴 so although she rang the number we were unable to hear it, a mass search was conducted by all of the guests and the staff but sadly with no luck 🤷‍♂️ So we now have to wait for the official photo’s to be released.

It was a long very hot day, and night, we, and most other’s of a certain age group, only managed to last for ten hour’s, to around 11:00pm, before getting taxi’s back to the hotel, the younger element, including Stacey and Dean, a total of around fourteen of them out of the original fifty guests, remained partying away to the disco music until 2:00am 😲

Sunday was recovery day, for some more than other’s 😂 Once we had got back to the hotel, the previous night, I went on to my iPad and tracked my phone’s location, it was still showing as being at the Alm House. So, after another very nice breakfast Shazza and I ordered a taxi and went back to the reception location. We eventually heard the phone ringing, it had slipped out of my pocket and fallen inbetween one of the gaps in the outside wooden decking, so the owner’s got an electric screwdriver and lifted the wooden panel and I recovered my phone, in full working order 👍

After returning to the hotel, with phone secured in my ‘Man Bag’, if only I had taken that with me the previous day I thought to myself, but isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing 🥺 So relieved, we went to explore the pretty alpine town, although it was a Sunday all of the Cafe/Bars and Restaurants were open, along with several ‘Tourist Tat’ shops. As we wandered through the streets we met up with some of the other guests from the event, so stopped and chatted, as you do.

After wandering through the pretty streets, and marvelling again at the stunning alpine scenery that surrounded us, we stopped for a light lunch and cooling Anti-Covid Vaccine before making our way back to our air-conditioned hotel room. My sister and her own family members departed later that day, they were on their way to Lake Como to finish off their holiday before returning to their respective home locations. We said our farewells and said that we may get another chance to meet up again next year, at my other nephews wedding, the one who lives in France, who is holding the ceremony and reception on the Island of Corsica, where I believe his partner’s family live. Sometimes having family member’s living all around the globe has distinct travel advantages 🤭

later that evening we walked back into the town and sat outside on a terrace at an Italian restaurant and enjoyed a Pizza. On returning to the hotel we met up again with Stacey and Dean in the hotel terrace bar, and with the guests that remained and like us would not be leaving until the following morning. Shazza and I, and Jo and Terry (Dean’s parents), were the last to leave the bar that evening 🤭 Of course, we have been invited to go and stay with all of Dean’s family members, who are spread right across Australia, from Sydney in the East, to Perth in the West and up along the Gold Coast and all points in between, that is if, or when, we ever go back over to Australia. Likewise, we have extended an open invitation to them too, they really were all very nice people and it had felt really good to have met them all in person.

The following morning, after breakfast, we started our return trip to Munich, the hotel once again providing us with transport back to the railway station. This time we would have to change trains three times, and with yet another quick connection after the first one 😲 Fortunately this trip was very much calmer, we managed to get a seat on all four trains, the fourth being the SBahn back to the hotel at Munich airport, and so were able to sit and enjoy the wonderful scenery and, my toe, although still badly bruised was nowhere near as painful, I would certainly be making sure that I didn’t bang into any more concrete steps on this return journey 😁

With having an additional train to catch on the return journey it had taken us an extra thirty minutes to return to Munich. Once again we had pre-booked a hotel just outside Terminal 2, just a couple of minutes walk away from the flights departure area. After checking in at the hotel we dropped off our bags and went on a reconnaissance mission, to find the baggage drop for the following morning, we had managed to complete the on-line pre check-in and so had already got our on-line boarding passes on our phones. After that we went into the nice sunny plaza outside the terminal building and sat, in the shade, and enjoyed a late but leisurely lunch, that would see us through until we got breakfast in the terminal after dropping off our one piece of hold baggage the following morning. We had a 10:35am flight back to Malaga, although it was delayed by twenty-five minutes 🤷‍♂️ but we landed at half past one, so the pilot had made up the delay, which is not surprising as it was downhill all the way from Munich 🤭 Wow, we had forgotten how Spain was such a dry heat, as opposed to the cooling alpine breeze which cooled things down to a pleasant more tolerable heat in Austria. The temperature here in Malaga registered a stifling 39 degrees(c) and it scorched the backs of our throats when we breathed in. Fortunately the car had been parked in the shade of the multi-storey car park and so the air-con blew cold air immediately. Once we reached Estepona the temperature had dropped to 35 degrees(c) but there was a very strong ‘Teral’ wind which would last throughout the night. Fortunately we had closed all the external shutters so when we got inside our apartment it actually felt a lot cooler, but we still put on the air-con system to keep it that way. The relatively short break had been wonderful, apart from a stubbed toe and a lost iPhone 🤔, but those minor inconveniences faded into oblivion as we had come away with such wonderful memories, from the reception, the wonderful location and scenery and from meeting, for the first time, many of our much wider extended family but, like most trips, going away on adventures is very nice, but at the end of the day there really is ‘No Place Like Home’.

After several days of over indulgence, food and alcohol, we settled for a very healthy salad for our evening meal and we spent the rest of the evening watching a ‘You Tube’ video, which was nearly three hours in duration, about a middle-aged Welsh chap who mountain biked from Canada to New Mexico, having never bike camped before in his life, now that really is an adventure 🤗 but one that Shazza and I certainly have no plans to replicate, there are adventures and there are adventures and the only recycling that we like to do is of our household waste 😂

We both slept well and were awake a little earlier than usual, but we had no time to idle, Shazza put all our laundry into the washing machine and then we drove to the relatively new, but large, ‘Mercadonna’ supermarket in Estepona, to commence a mega shop, for, in less than twenty-four hours, we would have another five mouths to feed as our son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren would be arriving to stay with us until the end of the month. Although we speak to them pretty much on a weekly basis by video call, this would be the first time in a year that we had actually seen them in the flesh so to speak. The twins had celebrated their ‘ninth’ birthdays on Monday, Orla would not turn ‘five’ until next month, so we were really looking forward to spending time with them again.

So it has been nearly, but not quite, four weeks since I last published a ramble and it would probably now be another two until the next one. So I hope this one was worth the wait for you, and so all that is left for me to say is, until the next time………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena 😉

Now you will not very often hear me complain much about the climate over here in Spain, even though it is searingly hot right now, and yes I have said in previous rambles that down on this part of the Costa del Sol coastline, generally speaking at least, that it doesn’t get much higher than 35 degrees(c), so, the 40 degrees(c) that hit us on the weekend before our visitor’s arrived and, the week of 38+ degree(c) temperatures that followed, were, I have to say, a bit of a surprise occurrence 🥵 Even under the shaded balcony it was like having our own personal Sauna, but, eventually, it had even got the better of me and forced me to surrender in defeat.

With the windows, doors, and security shutters all ‘closed’, and yes I did say closed, the living room and bedroom, although much like living in a cave house, was exceptionally cool. This is why when visitor’s come to Spain and see the majority of apartments, and houses, in towns and villages, with all their shutters down, that it makes them look uninhabited. During these Summer months we rarely tend to go out during the day, unless it is in the mornings to go down to our swimming pool, when it is a ‘little’ cooler and much quieter, or if we need to go and do some shopping, or some other ‘essential’ task, although to be honest we do not have many of them these days. But, there is a ‘disadvantage’ to having now reverted from our Winter to our Summer schedule, as we do not now go out on our daily walks very often, so we tend to miss seeing the ‘Posters’ that remind us when a particular local ‘Fiesta’ is happening, even though we do have a Calendar of Local Events, but that is only of any use if you check it from time to time 🤔

Fortunately, Shazza and I do still have regular morning conferences on the balcony, once she has of course completed her customary morning period of solitude in the bedroom with her coffee and iPad. “Isn’t there a local Fiesta coming up whilst Stacey and Dean are here ?” I asked, in a casual sort of way, for Shazza is the font of all knowledge about such things. “Yes”, she simply replied…………🤷‍♂️ Shazza can be quite economical at times with her use of words 😂 She has also been known, quite regularly in fact, to inform me that I should probably consider having my own limited daily allowance of words 😲 ‘Whatever could she mean’ 🤔 However, whilst she was checking when that particular Fiesta would be, she announced, “Oh ! It is the Luna Fiesta tonight”, I was a bit confused, which isn’t an unusual state of affairs with me at times 😂 “But they don’t arrive until Monday so they won’t be here for it ?” I said, “No, not that one, that is a different fiesta, that one is on Tuesday night, the one that is happening tonight is the one that we went to last year, but I forgot that it was actually happening on this particular weekend” she said. So, I think I had grasped what she was now telling me, and that was that there would be two Fiestas within a few days of each other “So, are you wanting to go and do this weekend one again ?” I asked her. “Is the Pope Catholic ? Is the sun shining again today ? And is it another ‘Treat Weekend ?’ she said with a playful grin on her face. “I take it that’s a Yes then ?” I had no expectation of a reply, which is good because I didn’t get one, but at least now I knew that even though it was going to be a hot and very humid night, and there would be crowds as large as their were during the ‘San Juan’ Fiesta, which we feel more than a little uncomfortable being amongst, but yes we would still be going out on our usual ‘Treat Weekend’ 🤗

However, it would only be the one ‘Treat Night’ this weekend, as it is the Euro 2024 Cup Final on the Sunday night and we had decided that it may not be a good idea to go out to watch it with the mixed Spanish and English crowds as, apart from the usual Bars that have the large TV Screens, they were also putting a very large ‘Fan Zone Screen’ up in one of the town squares. Now we know what some alcohol induced England Fans can be like, if they don’t get the right result, and there are quite a few English permanent residents within our immediate locality, also short term residents who own holiday homes here and of course the now growing band of holiday makers, but what we didn’t know was if Spanish Fans were also bad losers 🤷‍♂️ At least it would be safer, either way, watching it from the comfort of our own home.

But before that ‘Big Event’, we have a little matter of the ‘Luna Fiesta’, on the Saturday night, so, what is it all about ? I hear you ask, which is a fair question, as most ‘Fiestas’, as well as being an excuse for one hell of an all night and early morning public party in the streets, do have a meaning or purpose. Now I could try to give you my explanation, but why do that when I can just cheat and just ‘copy and paste’ from ‘Mr Google’ 🤭

Fiesta de la Luna Llena

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Sabinillas beaches in Manilva will be decorated in white on the 13th July in honour of the full moon – and everyone is invited! Join the celebrations amid performances by jugglers, fire artists, tightrope walkers and stilt professionals throughout the evening. And that’s just the start. You can also stop off at the different music stages that will be set up along the seafront promenade to dance to the beat of different music genres. This is a Festival which brings together friends, families, locals and people who are visiting for the day and keen to have a whole lot of fun in the moonlight.

Now I could argue that actually, this isn’t the first full moon that we have had 🤷‍♂️ I have seen several, and fairly recently, from my balcony observation post, but, perhaps, it is a particular cycle of the moon during a particular period of the celestial calendar 🤔 Anyway, who really cares, let’s just go and party whilst the mood is still a friendly one, for that mood could, very quickly, change over the next twenty-four hours 🎉🥳🌝

We had departed home at 7:45pm, it was no good leaving much earlier as the sun didn’t start dropping until a little after 10pm, and after all it was a ‘Luna Fiesta’ 🤷‍♂️ but we had also forgotten that apart from the crowds for the evening’s entertainment, there were also all the every day beach goers, who would remain in their coveted beachfront locations until late in the evening, which of course meant that our usual car parking area in the village was rammed full, people parking anywhere and everywhere, on kerbs, across pedestrian crossings, on roundabouts, which by the way, is not an unusual occurrence on any day of the week here, fiesta or not 😳 Fortunately, having seen the state of the lower car park as we passed by, I took an alternative route through a small side street to the opposite end of the village, although the parking there was just as bad, but by pure luck I managed to grab the one last available space just as another car approached from the opposite direction, the driver just gave me one of those half smiles, as if to say ‘Another thirty seconds later mate and that parking bay would have been mine’.

The Marina Cafe/Bars and restaurants were pretty quiet, unusual for that time of the evening, but we guessed that the normal hoards would have made their way into the town to eat, to be part of the party mood. We hadn’t bothered pre-booking a restaurant, although that was primarily because we had forgotten about this weekends fiesta, so at this late stage we knew that it would be very unlikely for us to get a table in any of the usual popular seafront establishments, but we knew that we would be able to find somewhere to eat in town. We did try a couple of our favourites in the back streets, in one of them we were offered a table inside, but who wanted to be inside in this sort of heat, it was still 29 degrees(c) at 8:30 pm 🥵 and, apart from that, their was no ambience inside or people watching opportunities, so we declined the offer, there was also no chance at our favourite Pizza Restaurant either, so we headed a little further away from the seafront, into the Plaza, where a week or so earlier, they had held the musical event with the ‘Tribute Bands’. Next to the small Spanish Bar, that we had used on that night, was a Spanish Restaurant, lots of the tables had ‘Reserved’ signs on them, but we took a chance and asked anyway. We were rewarded and offered a table under the pavement canopied awning, which was absolutely perfect, we were out of the direct sunshine, in the shade, and there was lots of people watching opportunities. I often say that things happen for a reason, we had often said that we should try this restaurant, although to be honest it was more a bar inside, and dining outside, rather than a formal restaurant affair, but we had never actually got around to trying it. It was primarily a menu full of different fish dishes, from individual dishes, or a selection of Tapa’s that you can share, although they did have three meat dishes to cater for the ‘Carnivores’, we decided that we would share a simple Tomato Salad, Patatas Frites (Chips to us English), Rosada Frito and Calamari Frito, with a basket of Pan (Bread). We were both very impressed, the service was exceptionally friendly, the food was very good, the ambience perfect and there was loads of ‘people watching’ to be done so it would have been rude of us not to.

Then it was time to join the masses along the seafront promenade and, as with the ‘San Jaun’ Fiesta, there were a lot of additional ‘pop-up’ bars and each one, without exception, had queues of thirsty revellers. We wandered the full length of the promenade to see what was going on, the main event would once again be held on a large stage erected on the beach, but that wouldn’t kick off until midnight, but there were lots of other smaller musical acts going on, along with giant Unicorns, A Fire Eater on stilts, ‘Lookie Lookie’ men selling LED lit balloons, head-ware with flashing lights and all that sort of stuff, their were Bouncy Castles for the youngsters, Popcorn stands and the usual market selling ‘Tourist Tat’, Oriental spices, Sweets, Barbecued meats, all the usual kind of stuff, it was a real party atmosphere but one that was for all age groups, from babies in prams to the much more senior age-groups. We made our way to our usual Spanish Cafe, the one where we would normally have our Cafe con Leche’s and Tostado’s on our morning walks, but it is not usually open at night, apart from occasions like this, when there are none of the usual tables and chairs outside, just a large open area and a bar. It pays to be a regular here, I was stood in the queue waiting to order, one of the lady owner’s saw me, we engaged in some brief pleasantries, as you do, and then she asked me what I wanted, which from some of the looks of those in front of me, didn’t go down too well 🤭 We remained there until the main event started, which of course couldn’t happen until the local Mayor had once again said his piece and taken yet another public photo opportunity, we of course had to refill our glasses several times during that period and, funny old thing, each time I went to the bar I didn’t have to wait very long to get served 👍 Shazza had volunteered to be the ‘Duty Driver’ again so she went on to the Coca-Colas and before you think it, I always do offer and tell her that I am more than happy to do the driving and let her have a few drinks for a change, but Shazza isn’t really a drinker, only one or two when she has a meal, or an afternoon refreshment, if and when we are out somewhere. The drink drive alcohol/blood levels are very low here in Spain, so even just a couple of regular sized beers, or glasses of wine, will put you over the limit so we never risk it, the Spanish drive erratically enough as it is, so you can imagine what they are like with alcohol inside them 😂

We have never actually attended a ‘Rave’ or and open air musical concert, but perhaps this was the closest we would come to one, the music thumped out and the crowds danced on the beach and on the promenade, people were punching the air to the beat of the music, not just the younger element either, it certainly had that party ambience and not one Flamenco dress or Castinet in sight, we even actually found ourselves having a bit of a ‘wiggle’ ourselves 🤭 The crowds didn’t really bother us, until that was, we decided to make our way back towards where we had parked the car, it took us an age to navigate our way between the masses but, eventually, we broke into some very welcome open space and made our way towards the Marina. It had gone 1:15am but the beachfront ice-cream kiosk was still doing a lot of business, so we decided to join the queue and partake ourselves, and then we sat, enjoying our cold tubs of deliciousness, in the moonlight in the humid heat of the morning, whilst we did a spot of people watching. We never feel unsafe here and we both commented on how we probably would not have done this back in the UK, not the fact of eating ice-cream, but just being out on the streets at this time of the early morning, although that may be us being unfair and just based on our own perceptions of the thuggery and criminality that we read about in the media these days 🤷‍♂️

Although we had had a pretty late night, well more so for Shazza than myself I suppose, as I tend to stay up late on most nights anyway, but even so, I was still up relatively early that same morning, although we had decided that, apart from a morning dip in the pool, we would have a leisurely day and then watch the Euro 2024 football final later that evening.

As a football nation, over the last fifty-eight year’s, we have been used to the men’s team promising, through ‘every’ major tournament, wether that be the World Cup or the Euro’s that, ‘It’s Coming home’, but always failing to deliver on those promises, they always ‘talk the talk’ but unfortunately they are just never quite good enough to ‘walk the walk’ but, even so, we always try to remain positive in the hope that one day the miracle will happen, just like gambler’s who reckon the next roll of the dice will win them the big one, which of course it rarely does. And so it was that, once again, we had reached yet another Final, a time for them to once again prove me, and all of their other critics, that we were wrong to doubt them, but of course we weren’t, and so, once again, it was a case of ‘Always the Bridesmaid, but never the Bride’ 🤷‍♂️ Yes, our new ‘adopted’ country of Spain had won, now that should have been something to celebrate and to be happy about, but we weren’t, we were once again left extremely disappointed 🥺😢 Congratulations to Spain though, last Summer the Ladies ‘La Roja’ National football team had won the World Cup, this year it was Carlos Alcoraz from Spain who, for the second successive year, had won Wimbledon, and now the men’s Spanish National football team who had won Euro 2024, and deservedly so I have to say, as they have been the most consistent team in the tournament throughout every round. So I guess you might say that, all in all, sporting achievement wise, Spain has had a pretty good twelve months. I will be glad when we get through the next week, by then our Spanish neighbour’s, and all those we know in the Cafe/Bars and Restaurants that we frequent, may, finally, have stopped offering us their less than sincere commiserations, but I guess we would have been doing much the same had the result have turned out differently 🤷‍♂️ But I am a positive and optimistic sort of soul, thinking that at least now we can look forward to the World Cup in 2026. You of course may well ask, why is that being optimistic ? Well primarily because England have not even gone through the qualifying stages yet, so there is nothing to say that they will actually qualify to participate in that tournament when it does come around 😂

We enjoyed the next couple of days just relaxing, and although every day is still searingly hot, into the very high thirty something’s 🥵 we did go for a walk one morning, then on the second day we got the car fuelled up and put it through the car wash and then just did some final bits of shopping, ready for the arrival of our guests. Their flight arrived on time and it didn’t take them long to appear full of smiles in the arrivals lounge. It was around 8pm when we got home, Shazza had, earlier that day, pre-prepared a wide selection of both cold and hot Tapas for our evening meal, not knowing how Stacey or Dean would feel about a heavy meal after such a long travel day, but they were more than happy with everything and we sat on the balcony relaxing, eating and just generally catching up with our respective bits of news, not that there was that much as we had been in communication on-line most of the past week 🤷‍♂️ To our surprise, later that evening, they suggested going for a walk, so we drove down to our usual parking place in the village and walked into town, stopping at a local bar for some Anti Covid Vaccines, it would have been rude not to 🤭

Prior to their arrival we had asked them if there was anything that they particularly wanted to do, or places that they wanted to go, personally of course we had a long list of possibilities, but on this visit they only had four full days with us before returning to Germany and, we had to take the heat into consideration. So they decided that they would like to see the towns of ‘Gaucin’, ‘Ronda’ and ‘Mijas Pueblo’ up in our nearby mountains, as well as seeing our own local towns of Sabinillas and Estepona, with of course some time around our pool, so we had an itinerary to work to and we agreed to just play it on a day to day basis as to what we did and when.

After a breakfast stop in Estepona we did a brief walking tour through the pretty back streets, trying to remain in the shade wherever possible and of course partaking of a few ‘refreshment’ stops whilst doing so 😉

The weather in the Bavarian area where they live had been very wet and stormy for several weeks prior to their arrival in Spain, so they were pleased to get some sunshine, however, as the temperatures quickly climbed into the low 30 degree(c) mark by lunchtime we elected to return home for a late lunch and then they cooled down at the pool. We waited until early evening before going down into town for some ‘Tapas’.

There would be no let up with the searing heat so the following morning we set off early into the mountains, our first stop was the pretty small mountain town of ‘Gaucin’, a place that Shazza and I had first visited some eight year’s ago when we had started exploring our local area.

From ‘Gaucin’ it was onwards and upwards along the twisting switchback mountain roads towards Ronda, although we never tire of the awesome views, Ronda itself, for us, had no appeal as we had done this place to death with all our visitor’s over the last nine years, but for those visitors we can understand why it had that certain ‘Wow’ factor. We stopped at a roadside Cafe/Bar that had an outside terrace surrounded on one side with an assortment of different trees, the noise from the ‘Cicadas’ nestled in them was almost deafening but they were well camouflaged so we could not see them, however, the views from the terrace across the surrounding mountain peaks were amazing.

We had not planned to drive into the busy centre of Ronda but to a car park on the outskirts, however, our ‘Sat Nav’ decided to test Shazza’s nerve, but it had not accounted for her ability to not be phased by such trivial matters, we have both encountered much more alarming ‘brown trouser’ moments during our former motor homing adventures, so this was a piece of cake really. The first public car park we came across was ‘Full’ but fortunately we found another just around the corner and, quite conveniently, just a couple of minutes walk from the centre. We did the usual tourists stops first, the ‘New Bridge’, which we had actually driven across on our way in and then some of the back streets in the ‘Old Town’, with of course the mandatory refreshment stops 😉 Although the main tourist areas were busy, Shazza and I both commented on how it seemed unusually quiet, compared to our previous visits here and we have been here at all different times of the year, both during the Summer and Winter months. Was it still too early for the bulk of the Summer visitor’s ? Could it be the impact of the Anti-Tourist protests that had been taking place all over Spain ? We just didn’t really have a clue, but for us, crowd free was very nice.

We took an alternative route back down the mountain from Ronda and stopped at another small town on the way home for a refreshment, well it was another very hot day even with the car Air Con set on the maximum setting, that was our excuse anyway 🤭 By the time we got home it was early evening, the ‘Terel’ wind had raised the temperature and so it was still in the mid-thirties, so Stacey and Dean went to cool off in the pool whilst Shazza and I remained in our much cooler cave house to recuperate from another long day. We had intended to go out that evening to another Fiesta, this time one being held at the Castle and Park in the village, however, we were all quite tired from our day trip so Shazza prepared a makeshift meal and we just enjoyed a relaxed night on the balcony and, yes you guessed it, with a few more Anti-Covid Vaccines, well it would have been rude not to 🤭

The following day our much ‘younger’ guests decided that they wanted to ‘walk’ into Estepona 😲 Although it is a relatively flat coastal path, there are little opportunities on the route to stop for refreshments and we knew that it was going to be yet another searingly hot day, with the temperature forecast by the ‘Works of Fiction’ to get to 38 degrees(c), which from experience told us that you needed to add 3-4 degrees to that. Shazza and I decided to take a rest day, that walk, for us, is one for during the much cooler months. I received a text message to say that they had made it to Estepona in two hours, which is pretty good going but later that afternoon I got another message, “Dad, can you come and pick us up, it is too hot to walk all the way back and there isn’t a bus until 6:30pm”. I just laughed to myself, my daughter is now 40 year’s old and I am still providing a ‘Dad Taxi’ service for her 😂

On their final day with us we would take them back up another part of the mountain, this time to ‘Mijas’ which, I have to say, is another very touristy place that we have done very many times, although it is much easier to park. We agreed to let the ‘kids’ go and explore by themselves, it would be new for them and quite hilly through the narrow cobbled streets so we knew of a nice Cafe with lovely views, and a nearby tree shaded park by a fountain where we would patiently await their return. We decided to treat them both to a nice restaurant lunch for Stacey’s birthday, albeit that event had taken place the day before they had arrived, Stacey had selected the venue after perusing ‘Google Maps’ the night before and so, whilst they were off doing their own thing, we went and booked a table on the terrace overlooking the main town square. I wasn’t really surprised when they turned up in the park looking hot and sweaty a good hour before our restaurant reservation time, but we decided to go and see if we could get a table earlier than scheduled. As with Ronda, this usually very tourist crowded town was very quiet, so we had no problems in eating earlier, the restaurant was virtually empty, only one other table occupied. But it was very nice, we sat outside on a shaded balcony and in the square below was a youngish chap with a guitar who serenaded throughout our meal. We had an assortment of ‘Starters’ before ordering our own individual ‘Main’ courses.

Once again, we had planned to go down to the Marina, or into the town, for their last evening, just to have a few drinks, but they were sapped of energy from the heat of the day, so they had their final dip in the pool and then we had another ‘makeshift’ tea and spent the rest of the evening on the balcony, just relaxing and talking about the upcoming family event in Austria where we would be seeing them again, that event was only three weeks away.

Earlier in the day, whilst we were in Mijas, I had received an Email informing me that the following week, on Wednesday 24th July, we had our appointments at the Police Station in Estepona to go and collect our new TIE Residency Cards, so at least we would now have them prior to our trip to Austria. So now we have no more Spanish Bureaucracy for another two year’s, now that really is ‘Something Worth Celebrating’ 🤗

It had been great to have Stacey and Dean come and visit us for the first time in our home in Spain, they were quite surprised at the size of our apartment, which is actually bigger than their rented flat in Germany, but more so at the location, they knew that we lived near the mountains and close to the sea, but they hadn’t expected both to be quite so close to our front door. They had thoroughly enjoyed their brief visit with us and something tells me that it will not be their last. Although it may have been a much drier heat than they had anticipated so, as Winter months in Munich involve much lower temperatures and, a lot of the white stuff, than we experience here, I think future visits to us may just be outside of the much hotter Summer months 🤭

We didn’t have to leave home until 11:00am on the Saturday morning, to get our visitor’s back to Malaga Airport for their 14:30 flight back to Munich. Like us, once at the airport, they just wanted to drop off their suitcase, they had already done the on-line check in, and then they could go straight through the security check area and relax until called forward for their flight, so we agreed to drop them off at the ‘Express’ drop-off point right outside the departure terminal, which suited us, we hate long goodbyes and we needed to call in at the supermarket on the way home. The only time we generally park up at the airport multi storey car park is when we are dropping Shazza’s mum off, just to give her a hand with her suitcase and to ensure she gets checked in okay and gets through the security checks without any issues, she is in her 80’s after all. We were back in the comfort of our own home by 2pm, shopping done to last us over the weekend, but when we checked the on-line flight information we saw that Stacey and Dean’s flight had been delayed, by a little over an hour and a half, so they would not get home until 8:30pm, another long day for them 😲 At least Malaga Airport had not had to cancel flights due to the Global IT glitch the previous day, as they had reverted to doing everything manually, so it had only created ‘delays’ to flights and not cancellations of flights or closure of the airport.

I apologise for the length of this latest ramble, but it would be fair to say that we have been a little busier than even we had anticipated, what with the forgotten ‘La Luna’ Fiesta and then our family visit, just think yourselves lucky that we didn’t attend the Fiesta on the Tuesday, that would have really have made this a marathon read 😂

So, unless anything unexpected arises in the meantime, I will give you my readers a bit of a respite, well at least until after we return from our trip to Austria that is, which will be quickly followed by the next set of family visitors, so get some rest, reading this should help with any sleeping difficulties you ‘may’ have had 😂

Hasta Luego mi Amigos (La Vida Es Buena)

I do try in my ramblings to remain unbiased in my comparisons between life here, and our old lives back in the UK, for there are things that we do still like about the UK…………. okay, brakes applied, for I have always said that I will always be honest in these ramblings and tell you how things are, the good and the not so good, so I will re-phrase that last statement and just say, ‘There are things that ‘I’ still like about the UK’ and if, for any reason, we found ourselves having to return to live there again, it certainly would not be too much of a hardship for ‘me’, although Shazza has her own quite different opinions on the matter. So, and whilst staying on that subject of honesty, let me just say, if you hadn’t already picked up on it in any of my previous rambles, but not everything here in Spain is always true perfection, complete harmony and bliss, shock, horror, gasp 🙀 However, it really isn’t my fault if the minor ‘imperfections’ here in Spain just happen to be very much less than they are in the UK 🤭 Wherever possible, I will try to reflect those differences, and although the word ‘Brexshit’ still leaves a bitter taste in our mouths, our lives now are not effected as much as they were, prior to coming to live here on a permanent basis, although the wound of that event in our lives has not, as yet, completely healed 🤷‍♂️ As for the costs associated with living here, well, you know me and my OCD Buddy, and so, just like I have always done, even when living back in the UK, or when we were living ‘On the Road’ in the van, I still keep detailed records of all of our daily, weekly, monthly and annual incomes and expenditures, and so, at the end of what will be our first full Spanish Financial year, at the end of December, I will share those living costs with you, although for those of you living elsewhere, outside of Spain, you will have to do your own cost comparisons, as we have not lived in a house for eleven years, so we do not know what the current comparative costs are, although it would be fair to say that I already know the answer to that, from our own personal monthly financial costs perspective.

The week that started, immediately after I had published my last ramble, was going to be quite interesting, although this time it was not particularly from our own personal perspective, but more because of the assortment of ‘European’ events that were scheduled to take place. So, although none of these events will actually have a direct impact on us, I do always like to try and keep abreast of things that are occurring outside of our own little bubble, for, as we have discovered, what may create a tumultuous storm for other’s living elsewhere, that same storm can also create ripples for other’s, who may be living on the otherwise storm free shores, a bit like a large wake created by a ship that, by the time it has travelled some distance, is just about enough to gently rock another one but without too many drama’s.

First up on the activities Agenda was the little matter of the UK General Election, although in complete honesty the result, I believe, was already much of a foregone conclusion. Now we ‘could’ have actually had a ‘personal input’ into these UK Elections, as all UK Legal Immigrants (Expats) living elsewhere in the world, and provided they are registered to do so with the UK Electoral Body, are eligible to vote by post in these UK Parliamentary Elections, although not the local Council one’s, and yes, both Shazza and myself would have actually exercised our legal ‘Right To Vote’, that is if our Ballot Papers had arrived in time to complete and return them 🤔 Mine did eventually arrive, but far too late to return it on time to be included in the counting of the votes, whereas, Shazza’s Ballot Papers didn’t arrive at all 🤷‍♂️ Surely, in this day and age, where millions upon millions of global transactions can already be conducted securely ‘on-line’, there should, by now, be a secure system to be able to cast your democratic vote electronically 🤔 Anyway, I contacted the Electoral Authority by Email, but they just responded by instructing me to complain to the ‘Electoral Commission’ directly, but not until ‘After’ the Election had taken place, which, and correct me if I am wrong here, but surely that would appear to defeat the whole purpose of me being able to actually cast my vote in this election 🤔 So now, the next UK Parliamentary Election that we can participate in, will not be for another 5 years, so I think I will put in as much effort, and haste, in complaining, as they did in getting my Ballot Papers to me. It does however beg the question, ‘How many other UK ‘Expats’, who were eligible to vote, also had the same issues and, considering that there are very many thousands of ‘Expats’, all over the World, who knows what impact those combined votes may have had on the overall outcome 🤷‍♂️ But that is now a mute point and so we will not lose any sleep over it, well not until 2029 anyway, when they may have reverted to the much more efficient Postal Delivery System, yes the Carrier Pigeon, it isn’t as if their isn’t enough of them available in London itself, never mind around the rest of the country 😂

So the next event to talk about was that crucial second round of Voting in the French Elections, now prior to that second round of voting, the ‘Far Right’, the week previously, won the first round by some margin, and they were in line to record a historic victory and possibly hold a majority and become the majority Party in the Government. Well they may well have succeeded had it not been for a bit of Political skulduggery going on, and so, on the Monday morning it appeared that the French public had achieved their objective of preventing this second round win by the ‘Far Right’, as a result of a tactical voting decision to combine certain groups of ‘other’ parties. It was announced, to huge cheers of relief, that it was this combined group, from the ‘Hard Left’, that had won the majority of seats and had pushed the ‘Hard Right’ into third place, only just below the second placed Political Party of Macron. Now for clearly obvious reasons, we had no input, or influence or control over these particular election results, the words ‘French Elections’ are the clue here 🤭 Anyway, by now, most of you will already be aware of what my personal philosophy is about not having any influence or control over things and so not worrying over them needlessly. However, Shazza and myself do have control and influence on other important decisions in our lives, like ‘Where should we go and eat out on our ‘Treat Weekends’ ? Do we go down to the ‘Beach’ or, stay by our own ‘’Pool’ or, perhaps even split the week up and do both ? What day should we go and do the shopping, or re-fuel and wash the car ? I have to admit, it is a very nice feeling to at least be able to have some influence and control over our own lives 😂

Now, whilst I am on the subject of principles, or sayings, that I often like to use, their is one that perhaps the French Public should have been taking heed of, especially after watching the result and impact on the UK after the ‘Brexshit’ vote eight year’s previously. ‘Be Careful For What You Wish For’ 🤔 For in their successful bid to prevent the ‘Far Right’ from winning the Election, there tactical voting had actually resulted in putting the ‘Hard Left’ into the winning position, which, from the media frenzy that followed, appears that that in itself has also not been a good result. I just have to say here that I am not that clear on what all of these terms, ‘Far Right’, ‘Hard Left’ or even ‘Centrist’ actually means when it comes to Politics, but can I just say in advance, thank you, but please don’t waste your time even considering trying to explain any of it to me, I am more than happy to remain blissfully ignorant.

Now of course, nobody currently knows what the full impact of this result is going to be in the long term for France, and perhaps, even for the Eurozone as a whole, we, just like everybody else will have to wait and see the extent of the fallout. However, one immediate impact for us personally, is a very positive one, for the value of the Euro has already started to drop against other world currencies, including the British Pound. All of our UK Pensions are paid in £Sterling into our UK bank accounts, as normal, we then transfer a proportion of the total amount, although not via our UK Bank with its expensive currency transfer rates, some may say that we have been very ‘WISE’ to do it another way 🤭 But they are transferred from £’s, into Euro’s, which then get paid directly into our Spanish Bank account, with the result that we now receive, for the same amount of money that we usually transfer from the UK each month, even more Euro’s, to spend here in Spain 🤗 So, and I suppose quite ironically, and quite unintentionally, the French have actually done some of us Brits a bit of a favour, without them actually realising it, now that’s not something that you hear too often these days.

Now, as I alluded to earlier in this ramble, as in previous rambles, it has also to be said that even here, in some areas of Spain, it is not all peace and harmony because, albeit seven or eight hours to the North of us, in Barcelona, Tourists, of all Nationalities, are now being attacked !! 😲 I took a leaf out of the Media Publications copy book there, using an ‘alarming’ statement to gain your attention 🤭 but in truth, Tourists were ‘attacked’ only in the sense that they were sprayed with water from water pistols, as opposed to being physically attacked or injured in a reign of actual bullets, and also worthy of note, it was just the same photograph, of the same ‘two’ women armed with water pistols, I repeat, just two of them, in a protest march comprising of hundreds of other ‘unarmed’ people, that was regurgitated in several different media publications around the globe.

However, that does not mean that because it isn’t right in our own backyard that it could not happen here, in fact there have been smaller anti-tourist marches in Malaga, but these Anti-Tourism protests are beginning to gather pace, not just on the Spanish Islands or within mainland Spain, but currently in other countries too, the Netherlands, Italy, and Greece, to name but a few. To be honest, there have been elements of it even in the UK, I am just surprised that it hasn’t taken off in much wider UK areas, I mean with the ‘reported’ numbers of Illegal Immigrants arriving every year, how can there be any accommodations left for Tourists anyway 🤭

I have to be completely honest, all of this Anti-Tourist protest stuff does still seem a little surreal to us, as we only actually see any of this on the National Spanish News, or read about it in the Media, but sometimes it feels as though we are living on a different planet, for this is certainly ‘currently’ not the scene down on this part of the Costa del Sol where ‘International Expats’, who live here permanently, and not just the British, but also the temporary Tourist visitor’s, and the local communities, all still continue to live, work and play, without any sort of hostility or animosity which appears to be going on elsewhere. Although I am in no doubt that that too could change here, we do understand the issues for the local communities, with the shortages of ‘Affordable’ housing, the expensive short-term rental properties, or the costs associated with them purchasing and owning there own properties. We do see examples of this with our own eyes in our own locality. It certainly doesn’t help to quell the anger and frustration of the local communities when they see an area of waste land, not far from us, now having gained approval for the building of a development of several new Luxury Villas, at a starting price of €850,000 (£740,000), at this price, even if I had that sort of silly money, I wouldn’t purchase one as they will not be ‘Front Line’, or have any sea views, you can certainly get better locations and properties much cheaper 🤷‍♂️ But that is not the point here, these sort of constructions are currently going on all along the Spanish ‘Costa’ Resorts and in Major Towns and Cities, but their appears to be no ‘Local Community Housing Projects’ being provided, like all the unused buildings that could be re-developed into local community apartments, or even newly constructed apartments, or houses, specifically for the local Spanish population, so we can understand the anger and frustration which, although being communicated and vocalised at the Tourists, via these Anti-Tourism Groups, the actual message and real focus of their attention, is towards the Government, whose only answer to the problem at the moment appears to be, to now start to restrict the number of ‘licences’ issued for ‘Tourist Let’ properties. However, whilst that may, in theory rather than in practice, reduce the number of tourists who are able to visit, it doesn’t address the actual main problem of the lack of provision of ‘affordable’ accommodations within those local communities for local Spanish residents 🤷‍♂️

It really is a funny old world, not in the 😂😂 sort of way you understand, but when you take the ‘Rose Tinted Glasses’ off, there really is no place that can truly be considered as real ‘Perfection’ anywhere in this world of our’s, what with the huge number of Wars going on in different parts of the world, Political instability, the vast variety of Climate related and Environmental issues, Financial Instabilities of Countries, Poverty and Mass Human displacements, the list goes on and on. But, what can any of us, as individuals, do about any of these things 🤷‍♂️ The honest answer is that at the end of the day, we can’t really do anything, not as Individuals at least, these are large scale global issues that require large scale global solutions, and not just the false promises made at every COP Conference or Pre-Election Campaign Rally. So it may appear selfish of me, but my belief is that all ‘we’ can do, as individuals, is to live ‘our’ lives the best way that we can, with mutual respect for each other, other cultures and beliefs, even if we don’t necessarily personally agree with them, for who are ‘we’ to say that ‘our’ beliefs, our ways of living, our standards, religious, moral or even political beliefs, are the ‘only’ right ways 🤷‍♂️ That sounded like it would have made an excellent Sunday morning sermon, perhaps I missed my true vocation in life 😂

Now I know that you have been waiting for me to mention it, even anticipating it and so, not to disappoint you, here it is 🎶 Sweet Caroline, Olay, Olay, Olay, Olay 🎶 Of course, my dream at the start of this Euro 2024 footbal tournament was for our ‘Home’ Country 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 to somehow miraculously, get through all of the rounds to play, in the final, against our new ‘Adopted’ Country 🇪🇸, it must have been written in our stars to be the perfect way to celebrate our close association with both countries. Sometimes it seems, miracles do happen, and dreams do come true, but, do Shazza and I now find ourselves with a bit of an identity crisis 🤔 No not at all, we always have, and always will, be ‘Made in England’, but dare I even risk dreaming about the result 🙈 You would be right to assume that, at the time of drafting this particular ramble, that final game has not, as yet, taken place.

On the same day of that Final, it is also our daughters birthday and so she, and our Son-in-Law, will both be celebrating in a ‘Biergarten’ in Munich, where they will be remaining to also watch the match, so let’s hope it is a double celebration for her 🙏 However, the following day they will both be departing from their home in Germany and travelling to Spain, if, depending on the result of the game, they let them in of course 😂 Shazza and I are driving to Malaga Airport to collect them and are looking forward to spending a week of quality time with them 🤗 We did of course go and stay with them in Munich over Christmas last year. But then, just two weeks after they return to Germany from this trip, we shall be seeing them again for three days when we attend the big family re-union event being held in the Austrian Alps. It’s funny really, because although we live here, and the rest of our family members are scattered elsewhere around the globe, which appears to be very far away, but with the modern technologies available to us these days we still speak regularly with them on either a daily or weekly basis, either through text messages or video calls. Sharon speaks with her mum every other day, she too is coming out again for her annual visit for a week, or perhaps a little longer, in October 🤔 We also speak on the phone or, more generally, via a video call, once a week with Chris, Sarah and our three Granddaughter’s, who themselves are coming out to stay with us for a fortnight, just two days after we return from Austria, and we speak with Stacey and Dean in Germany several times a week, if not on a daily basis some weeks 🤷‍♂️ We also text, although less frequently, with my brother in the UK and also with my sister in Australia, who we shall also see in Austria, along with my nephews and their two new recent additions to the family.

Being far away from family was one of the ‘Disadvantages’ that we envisaged, when we were considering the permanent move here, although don’t tell them, but that particular disadvantage came in at number two on the list 🤭 In the number one position, as if you really need me to tell you, was of course the consistently poor British climate. However, with their annual visits to us, and the frequent contact we have with them, that ‘disadvantage’ has not, thankfully, materialised, in fact some may consider the distance thing to be much less of a disadvantage than perhaps other’s 🤭 We also have two really good friends in the UK that we keep in touch with, Dougie and Avril up in Scotland, and Paul and Debs who live full time in a Motorhome, although they now also own a ‘Bolt Hole’ here in Spain.

So as you will probably already be anticipating, the next ramble will include some Photographs of what we did during the week with our family visitor’s, and of course, any other ‘ramblings’ that I will obviously be keen to share with you about what is happening in our lives here in Spain, it would of course be very rude of me not to 😂

Until then………………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos (La Vida Es Buena)

It was day One Hundred and Eighty Three of this current year, or to be a little more specific, Tuesday the 2nd of July. What has that got to do with the price of eggs, I hear you ask 🤷‍♂️ Well actually, now that you mention it, absolutely nothing really 😁 But, that is how many days it had actually taken us before we finally decided that it was probably about time that we got ourselves down to the beach. Now it’s one thing having it right on your doorstep, but quite another to actually go and use it although, yes, it is very nice to be able to look at it everyday, but come on, isn’t this one of the reasons that we liked about this particular location and why it was also part of the decision to come to live here permanently in the first place, rather than move anywhere else, either within Spain or even another Country, so, the question is, what had stopped us ? Well if there is one thing that you can be certain of, it wasn’t due to the inclement weather now was it 😂 On numerous occasions, when we have been on our walks, Shazza, or I, have said, “We don’t have to rush back home, we could just get the sun-loungers out of the car and have an hour or so just sitting on the beach”, but we never did 🤷‍♂️ There was always an excuse, we weren’t wearing the right clothes, was the popular one, but as it happens we were always in shorts and tee-shirts so what more did we need ? Okay, yes I know, we were not wearing swimwear and, Shazza certainly couldn’t be sat on the beach without feeling the need to go in and have a splash, although, as you probably already know, the swimming in the sea bit, well I can take it or leave it, I am more than happy just being nosey ‘People Watching’, or looking at boats, or the surrounding scenery, I never get fed up of that, even if the mountain backdrops don’t move or change very much, but the sea conditions can change from one day to the next, there are always lots of different boats coming in, and out, of the Marina, which is right next to the beach that we always tend to use, or they pass in front of me a little further out to sea. We also always have the sun loungers and Umbrella in the car boot, that is apart from when we are collecting, or returning, visitor’s to and from the airport and so need the luggage space.

So the truth of the matter is, we have just been too lethargic, we have settled into our nice relaxed retirement routine’s, and with the heat being too excessive to really do anything any more energetic, the morning walks, taken now only on some morning’s, when it starts off a bit cooler at around 25 degrees(c), or even just swimming and lazing around the pool, before the more noisy individuals arrive, has actually fitted into our daily and weekly routines perfectly, just like weekly shopping and doing the domestic chores. But, in comparison, going down to the beach is much like a military planned operation, it also means that we have to make an effort, even having to think about things, now that would never do, for goodness sake we did not enter into this retirement lifestyle to actually then have to ‘think’ about doing things. We always apply the sun lotion ‘before’ we go down to the beach, apart from it being a really time consuming task, and not, before you even think it, especially after my last couple of posts on my stomach ‘bloat’ , no it actually isn’t because their is now a lot of skin surface to cover 😂 but because, putting it on later, down at the beach, there is a high risk of getting sand on our hands from setting up the furniture, then the sand, and fine gravel, stick to the cream on your hands and so, when it is applied, it is more like sandpapering your skin, peeling it off, and doing in advance, what the sun will probably do a few days later, when we change from lobster red to a nice shade of light golden brown 😲 Then of course there is the checklist, oh yes, there definitely has to be a checklist, Water Bottles filled with ‘chilled’ water from the filter jug in the fridge, Beach Towels, Kindles, Camera, E-Cigarettes (Fully charged and filled with fluids of course), bottle of sun cream, just in case and somewhat reluctantly, more needs to be applied, sunglasses, reading glasses…………. So generally speaking, it is easier to just go down to the pool, which is conveniently surrounded by manicured lawn, not a grain of sand or gravel in sight, the sun loungers and umbrella’s are already provided, so no unloading and re-loading of the car boot and carting them, albeit only a few metres from the car park, down to our selected piece of beach space, and the pool is actually only a couple of minutes walk from the apartment, not the laborious five minute drive to the beach in the car 🤭 Mind you, the swimming pool does not have a handy Cafe/Bar a few minutes walk away, where you can sit and drink a nice ‘Cafe Con Leche’, and enjoy a ‘Tostado’ for breakfast, before the hectic task of hours of sunbathing and swimming, and yes, before you comment, we have started back with the ‘Tostado’s’ again, now that I have ruled it out as being one of the possible causes of my ‘Middle Age Spread’, well my ‘bloat’ at least.

The morning had started pretty much as usual, my coffee on the balcony, Shazza’s in bed, but when she did eventually grace me with her presence she uttered those immortal words “What do you want to do today ?”, I guess anticipating the usual response from me, which could either be, “Not a Lot” or “Shall we go down to the pool”, and I know that she would have been happy with whichever of the two I answered with. However, and nobody can ever call me predictable, because on this particular morning, just to shake things up a little, I responded with, “How about we go down to the beach today ?”, there were no remonstrations, or words of rejection to the idea, she simply turned around and, as she left the balcony she said, “Okay, I will go and get ready” 😳 And that my friends is how we ended up going on our first visit of the year to the beach and, which ultimately turned out to be two consecutive days visits 🤷‍♂️ A bit like waiting for a bus, which doesn’t turn up on time, and then two come along together 😁

We had replaced the reclining sun chairs last year with the sun loungers, although we do still have the chairs, which we now allocate solely for the use of ‘guests’ 🤭 To be honest, the chairs are very comfortable and they do recline quite a way back, so for me, it was always exceptionally easy to have many moments of ‘Personal Contemplation’, which as you know, is always best done with one’s eyelids closed 🤔 The problem was that they did not go perfectly flat, so turning over in them to get some sun on my back was impossible and so ended up with me having to lay on a towel on the sand, which is never as perfectly flat as it looks, and so I personally found it very uncomfortable. These sun loungers are very lightweight and they fold up in three sections, so they are very easy to carry and easy to store and, as a bonus, they have one of those adjustable sun shade contraptions that stop the sun from burning your head, so they are actually perfect, and just as convenient, if not more so, for obtaining those moments of ‘Personal Contemplation’, well it would be rude not to 😉

So our current new routine was to drive down to our usual parking spot in the fishing village, the one that we more often than not park in when we go on our walks, and then we head to a little corner Cafe/Bar, opposite the village church, to get our Coffee’s and Tostado’s.

Once we had finished our breakfast’s we returned to the car, unloaded all our beach stuff and then looked for an appropriate area of beach to get ourselves set up to solar baste for the next 3-4 hour’s. On that first morning visit we were not the first to arrive, their were other couples like ourselves, you know, of a certain age group, if you get my drift, but also, now that the Spanish school holidays have commenced, there were also lots of family groups, still primarily Spanish, although we did hear the occasional English voice, but most of these beachgoers had come with the sole intention of staying for the best part of the day, with their sun chairs, umbrellas of all sizes and colours, some of which could have been designed by the LGBT Group as they were so colourful, tables, cool boxes, and yes I do mean ‘boxes’ in the plural, water toys of all shapes and sizes, buckets and spades, beach tennis rackets, the whole bloody nine yards 😲 and of course not forgetting their precious cargo of ‘Little Darlings’, although some were not so little, but they were all pretty much well behaved and just having fun on the beach or in the water, their were the occasional screams from some of the youngest when introduced to water for the first time, who I am sure did not see the funny side of things, albeit that everyone else was laughing at their discomfort, including their own parents, grandparents and siblings, and perhaps, if I were to be totally honest, that included me too 🤭 But it is funny, as you already know when you see the adult carry the youngster into the water, what is about to happen. As they try to lower the youngster into the water, the child automatically pulls both legs up anticipating what is about to happen, a bit like an undercarriage on an aircraft once it has got airborne, but eventually, once said undercarriage cannot retract any further, they get that dunking that they were so not looking forward too, and after which they are not afraid to let ‘everybody’ know about their displeasure 😱🙉 I am sure that anyone reading this, who has had children themselves and introduced them to water for the first time, will now be reminiscing that experience which they had with their own precious ‘Little Darlings’ 😁

I had forgotten the simple joys of just sitting on this particular beach, one that we had used numerous times over the last nine years, and which is located quite conveniently, close to the small marina entrance, so I could witness all the comings and goings of the different boats. Just sat there listening to the gentle sound of the sea, as it rippled up on to the shoreline, looking out across five Andalusian mountain peaks that stretch right up the coastline to Malaga, and beyond, and which served as a backdrop surrounding our particular bay, the almost clear blue sky, scarred only by the thin wisps of vapour trails, from aircraft thousands of feet above us, but still visible, the differing colours of the Sea, completely crystal clear at the water’s edge, but then changing to turquoise blue, then dark blue, as it extended outwards towards the horizon, and which, through the heat haze, in the distance I could see the tell tale shapes of the Sailing and Motor Yachts, heading to their own far off destinations, they stood out quite easily from the much larger cargo vessels in which they shared these waters. Much closer to us were the various array of smaller vessels, from Paddle Boards, Jet-Skis, Sailing Yachts and Motor Yachts, but these were not of the multi-million pound variety, those big boys were either moored at the more luxurious ‘Sotogrande’ Marina, twenty-minutes South of us, or at ‘Puerta Banus’ near Marbella, which is around 40 minutes North of us, and in-between their is of course Estepona Marina, where the main local fishing fleet is based, as well as leisure craft, located just on the opposite side of the bay from us, we do often tend to see lots of boats from there, which either pass by, or call in to re-fuel.

Now it does seem a little contradictory of me, for one minute I am telling you that I dislike the noise and disturbance from our own pool area, yet here on the beach I am much more tolerant of it, I can only assume that that is because our own pool area, which is relatively small, unlike a larger tourist hotel pool, and is also enclosed with tall hedging, whereas, down here at the beach, it is a much more extensive and open area 🤷‍♂️

It wasn’t long and the sea-view in front of me just got busier and busier with more people coming out to play on the water, in their array of different sized boats, jet-skis and paddle-boards. Fortunately there is a breakwater between the Marina entrance and our stretch of beach, and a yellow marker buoy in the sea, delineating the boundary between the safe swimming area from the motorised marine traffic.

It wasn’t just events on the water that caught my attention, there is always a vast array of birds to watch, seagulls, unlike their cousins in UK coastal locations which have learnt to steal food out of the hands of their unwary human foes, Battered Fish, Chips and even Ice-Creams, but here, they still fly out to sea to catch their own fish, or follow the fishing boat nets hoping to get an easier meal, we also see a lot of Cormorants and it is not uncommon to see Egrets and Griffin Vultures, along with flocks of much smaller birds which run along the beach at the water line, catching whatever morsel they can that the incoming or outgoing tides serves up for them. However, I was attracted by a small flock of sparrows, which are everywhere, no matter what part of the world you may be in, they are quite daring and will get as close as possible to humans in an attempt to feast upon any scraps that get dropped. However, on this particular day at this particular time there was no food being consumed, especially not by us, where a small flock kept landing, almost at my feet, and they would peck away at whatever insects there were laying between the fine sand and gravel particles. They are quite nervous little birds so they didn’t stay still for long, often spending only seconds on the ground then taking flight, before returning again to the same spot a few minutes later. I waited patiently and then was fortunate enough to get a decent picture of one, only then did I discover that there were literally hundreds of ants amongst the sand and fine gravel, and this is what they were feasting upon. In the local news the following morning, quite coincidentally, I came across an article explaining that the whole of the Malaga coastline had been ‘Invaded By Swarms Of Flying Ants’, many that had landed on the beaches were washed into the sea on the incoming and receding tides, bather’s right along the coastline had been alarmed at the black masses just floating on top of the water, indeed, Shazza had seen them when she was out swimming on our first day, but as she pushed them away in the water she just mistook them for dead flies. So I guess these small nervous little birds were doing us a favour, acting as a kind of Natures ‘Beach Dyson’ by hoovering them all up, for the following day there was no signs of the ants, either on the water or the beach 🤷‍♂️

After reading the article it did make me wonder wether this was just another sign of the impact of Climate Change, yet again another ‘unnatural’ phenomenon that we will just shrug off as being a strange one-off incident and not give it a second thought, and I do include myself in that statement. Nature is our ‘Early Warning’ system that things are not as they should be, and when you stop and think about it, unusual weather patterns, Volcanic eruptions, Earthquakes, Floods, Wildfires, Droughts, Pandemics etc. etc. etc. have been happening at increasing regularities all over the World but which, in the main, we humans are just putting down to freak incidences of nature or just generally ignoring them 🤷‍♂️ I don’t know how many of you will have taken any notice of the rise again in ‘Bird Flu’, which is currently and quite alarmingly infecting global ‘Dairy Milk’ production, yes the stuff that some of you put in your tea and coffee, or pour on to your breakfast cereals 😲 Shazza and I on the other hand no longer drink ‘dairy’ milk but occasionally we have no choice, when we go to the Cafe/Bars, unless we drink it black, which we don’t tend to do, so perhaps this is another good excuse for just sticking to drinking Anti-Covid Vaccines 🤭 And how many of us are taking any real notice of the global increase again in ‘Covid’ incidents. I am not trying to be one of those ‘Doom and Gloom’ merchants, or a ‘Sooth Sayer’ wandering around the streets with a sandwich board strapped to my body pronouncing that ‘The World Will End Tomorrow’, that would be ridiculous, because we all know that nothing will happen until after the Euro 2024 football tournament, or Wimbledon, has finished, so we have at least another couple of weeks yet 🤭 I don’t mean to make light of the situation, but what can any of us, as individuals, realistically do about any of this, I mean how much of our food is produced which has been grown using ‘Commercial’ fertilisers or exposed to Chemical Sprays, directly or indirectly before it even gets into our shopping baskets ? How do we know what the personal hygiene standards are of the people who both process and package those foodstuffs ? It really is another minefield for which we have no control over, of course there are simple measures that we can all take, like washing our fruit and veg before cooking or eating them, and cooking them properly, but is all of this just a measure of how far we have now come as a society ? I remember as a kid, ‘scrumping’ fruit off trees in orchards, I never worried wether they may have been sprayed with some sort of insecticide, and I certainly never took them home and washed them before devouring them. Neither can I recall my mother ever washing fruit, or vegetables, before serving them up to us, perhaps maybe she was surreptitiously trying to kill us off 🤔 Anyway, once again I am beginning to digress and go off on a tangent so, enough of all of that, I am depressing myself, now where did I put that ‘Sandwich Board’ 😂

We remained on the beach on that first day until mid-afternoon, probably until around. 3:30pm, but decided to leave when we observed a bit of an exodus, there had to be a reason for the Spanish leaving the beach this early, normally they would remain until 8-9pm 🤔 We had seen all day, what we thought at the time, was a heat haze, creeping up the coastline but it was bright sunshine where we were. We got home, had a nice hot mug of tea, as we Brits tend to do of an afternoon, normally accompanied with a nice slice of cake, or some biscuits, but not these days for us though ☹️ Then we both took showers to get rid of any sun cream that was blocking our pores, sat with our iPads on the balcony to see if anything important had occurred whilst we were out, it hadn’t 🤷‍♂️ and then we waited for the next set of Euro 2024 football fixtures to commence, starting at 6pm (5pm UK time), which is also when we would have our evening meal, Vegetable stir fry tonight 😋

Suddenly without any warning the thick ‘Sea Fret’ totally engulfed us, now we have witnessed lots of these over the years, they are common occurrences, but it still always amazes me at just how far inland they stretch, and just how quickly they enclose everything in a veil of invisibility, buildings, roads, lights, it is quite an eerie sort of vista really, and with it comes a notable temperature drop, to the extent that we have to close all the doors and windows, this time to keep the heat in, it really does feel that chilly, whereas we normally have all the doors and windows open to help to dissipate the heat at this time of the year. This explained the mass exodus from the beach earlier, but how did they know ? I hadn’t seen any pre-warning by the ‘Works of Fiction’, perhaps the Spanish just know the difference between a ‘Heat Haze’ and a ‘Sea Fret’ 🤷‍♂️

It was not quite the same routine the following morning, for we must have been far to eager to get down to the beach again, as we were half an hour too early at the Cafe/Bar to get our breakfast’s 😳 We just went back to the car, unloaded our beach paraphernalia and then trundled it to the beach to bag another space close to the water’s edge, in order that we would not have to walk too far, barefoot on the hot sand, to get into the sea. As it happened we had a wide choice, as it appeared that we were also far too early for any of the other beach goers too, I mean come on, where were they all ? It had after all just gone 7:30am 🤭 Only joking, it was actually 10:30am, I am sure you know us better than that, we don’t move very fast first in the mornings, unless we have to of course.

We got ourselves set up on the beach, uncertain as to wether we had missed a beach warning, perhaps there had been ‘Shark’ sightings in the area 🤔 We discounted that as they would almost certainly have taped off the beach access points and put up warning signage, the Spanish are very efficient at taping off access roads and putting up ‘Prohibition’ Signage 🤭 Although the ‘Shark’ quip is not as silly as you may first think it is, as a lot further up the Spanish coast from us, and only a week or so ago, a ‘small’ three-metre Hammerhead Shark had been spotted very close to a popular tourist beach, however the media immediately discounted claims that it had been put there by any of the Anti-Tourism brigade 😂

After obtaining our breakfast’s at the Cafe/Bar, at the second attempt, we returned to where we had left our sun-lounger’s, beach towels and umbrella. There were now a lot more people on the beach, much like the previous day, but nobody had taken umbrage at us leaving our beach accessories there, it wasn’t as if we had left a big reserved sign and towels with English Emblems on them 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, and at least down this part of Spain, people are a bit more civilised than in some ‘other’ tourist hot spots. Over breakfast I had joked with Shazza that we should have left a ‘Gone Swimming’ sign on our sun-loungers, but she reckoned that that may have sparked a coastguard alert when we hadn’t returned after half an hour, although I am not really convinced that ‘anyone’ would have been actually bothered or unduly concerned, apart perhaps the police beach patrols at around 11pm, when they came to check that the beach was clear, and by that time, it would surely have been far too late for a rescue attempt, but they may have got a good price on the sun-loungers and umbrella 😂 Did you know that here in Spain you can be fined if you set up on a ‘Public’ beach ‘before’ a certain time in the morning, and you certainly cannot pre-position beach furniture and then leave it, ‘before’ a certain time in the morning, which I believe I am right in saying is 8:00am, and, you can also be fined if do not ‘leave’ a ‘Public’ beach by a certain time at night, again I believe that to be 11:00pm 😳 Unless of course there are ‘official’ functions or events, such like the recent ‘San Juan’ Fiesta.

The previous day Shazza had done a lot of swimming and snorkelling, which is nothing out of the ordinary, as usual I wasn’t that bothered so I just sat underneath the umbrella, People and Boat watching mainly, not even having time for a period of ‘Personal Contemplation’, there had been just so much going on, in and out of the water, so I didn’t want to miss anything did I 🤷‍♂️ However, I should just mention the young woman right next to us, she was probably in her early thirties at a guess, now she ‘paraded’ topless all day, and I do mean paraded, and then there were numerous young women, mid-twenties, who wore, well what I can only describe as ‘Thongs’, there certainly wasn’t enough material for them to be considered swimwear, especially at the back, I have never seen so many ‘bare and very firm female bottoms’ in one place before, not that I was paying that much attention you understand 😳 Shazza did say at one point, “It’s pointless them actually wearing anything”, I of course agreed very enthusiastically 🤭 before saying, “Disgusting behaviour my darling, it shouldn’t be allowed” in my bestest ‘Frankie Howard’ voice, with a big ‘cheeky’ grin on my face 😁 “Did you know that there was a Naturist Beach in Estepona ?” I said to her, just by way of passing related conversation, “Well you can get that idea out of your head before you even suggest it, and looking at this lot, you don’t need to go to Estepona” she said, this time with a wink and a wry mischievous grin on her face. It did remind me of an old TV fashion Advertisement where the strap line at the end was, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it” and this lot were certainly taking that quite literally.

On our second consecutive beach day the unthinkable happened, no, not that unthinkable, I didn’t wear a skimpy thong to fit in with the crowd, that would only have served to get Shazza looks of sympathy from onlookers and, in my case, it would be more like, ‘If you haven’t got it, wear something loose to disguise the fact’ 😂 No, the unthinkable was, that for once, I actually went in to the sea for a swim ‘before’ Shazza, in fact I even had two swims before she even considered dipping her toes, mind you, I must be honest with you, my swims were not really swims in the true sense of the word, my little dips were only so that I could cool off and which lasted no longer than a couple of minutes at a time, whereas when Shazza goes in she is gone for up to half an hour at a time, and she swims way out, way beyond my personal comfort zone. But also on this particular day, I actually spent most of the day solar basting, whilst Shazza, somewhat unusually for her, remained under the shade of the Umbrella. Wether I live to regret that choice, I will get to know in a few days time, if the peeling stops, and new skin grows back that is 😲 I still had plenty of opportunities for both People and Boat watching though, and once again, much like the previous day, I was so preoccupied with ‘everything’ that was going on around me, that I hadn’t had an opportunity for any ‘Personal Contemplation’ 🤷‍♂️

By mid-afternoon, having been out again for what turned out to be another five hours, we had both had enough sun, beach and sea, and now we were both feeling a little ‘snackish’, on past beach days we would take some ham, tomatoes and cheese down with us, we would purchase a baguette from a small local corner shop in the village and that would be enough to see us through the afternoon. Mind you, those were the days prior to the late breakfast’s of Cafe con Leche and Tostado’s. There was also a ‘Chiringuito’ on the beach, one that we have used on numerous occasions for non-beach day lunches, which serves some delicious fresh Fish dishes but, my lack of discipline would have inevitably led to me also ordering a portion of fries and an Anti-Covid Vaccine, or perhaps two, as I had to of course allow for the ‘evaporation’ factor in these sorts of temperatures 😂 However, we did both agree that whilst we were ‘both’ sorely tempted, we preferred to stick to our ‘current’ weekly healthy dietary regimes, at least between Monday-Friday, if we didn’t, it would be so very easy over here to acquire much more than my little ‘Middle Aged Spread’ and border on us becoming Alcoholics, I for one do not need much excuse to stop for a cheeky Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 whenever the opportunities arise We currently very rarely drink any alcohol during the week, unless we are out somewhere and decide to stop for lunch. We also knew that at home we had a nice big juicy water melon chilling in the fridge for our mid-afternoon snack and, for my evening meal, well I had a nice quarter piece of chicken to have with my salad (I need to keep my protein levels up as I am still eating very minimal carbohydrates), Shazza on the other hand still eats her normal portions of carbohydrates, Rice, Pasta’s, Jacket Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes and an assortment of Legumes, and with her salads she enjoys her home-made meat free ‘Falafels’, or ‘Bean Burgers’ although sometimes she will join me in eating Fish, mainly Tuna, Pilchards, Prawns, Salmon, Sea Bass or Cod, the latter not being covered in batter I hasten to add 🤭

I have never really eaten breakfast’s, for year’s, this isn’t a new thing, and often, in my former working life, I could go all day and just eat a main meal in the evening, now not so many years ago some dieticians would say that that was a really unhealthy practice, but these days ‘fasting’ as they now label it, is the ‘in thing’, the latest health fad. However, I have never taken any notice of these fads, my stomach always tells me when I am hungry, then, I eat, and if I am not hungry then I don’t, it’s a pretty simple system really and I haven’t, as yet, starved to death 🤷‍♂️ Shazza used to eat breakfast everyday, in fact at one point she had to have three meals a day or would get very grumpy if she didn’t, but now she too tends to miss out breakfast, other than our late one’s of course when we go on our walks or, like the past couple of days, going down to the beach, which we then actually consider to be more of a ‘Brunch’ than a breakfast, and that always tends to last us until our evening meal, with perhaps a piece of fruit mid-afternoon. Shazza does still make her home-made soups, Cheesy Broccoli, Spiced Red Lentil, African Peanut and Minestrone, although some of the titles are a bit misleading as the Cheesy Broccoli has no actual cheese in it, it is what they call ‘Nutritional Yeast’, and she often puts that in some other meals she prepares. The African Peanut has no Peanuts in it, not sure what substitute she uses, Cashews I am guessing, but I can honestly say that they are all absolutely delicious, as well as healthy, and each batch she makes serves six individual portions, so we often have those for lunch, even now, in these hot Summer months, with a slice of her home-made sour dough bread, which then see’s us both through to our evening meal. Shazza has always enjoyed cooking and baking, my regular reader’s may remember by rambles from our Motorhoming days, when I would give accounts of all the cakes she used to make whilst we were ‘On the Road’. Obviously things have changed a little over the last five year’s, she rarely bakes cakes anymore ☹️ but since we have been on our ‘Plant Based’ journey she has adapted her recipes and cooking skills, there are of course ‘Plant Based’ baking options but, apart from the very occasional ‘Scone’, she hasn’t really been that enthusiastic about going down that particulate route.

We had every intention of making it three consecutive days down at the beach, the previous evening we had even talked about missing out the late breakfast routine and going back to taking some fillings for a sandwich down with us, and then purchasing a baguette from the local shop. However, we both awoke and it looked very misty across the sea, almost as if there had been another ‘Sea Fret’ that hadn’t quite cleared away. Although the sun was shining, it was the usual 24-25 degree’s, the sky had a thin haze to it, not the more usual clear blue sky, to be honest I don’t think either of us were really that bothered about going down, but this did provide us with the perfect excuse not to, not that we needed an excuse, we were free agents now, we could do whatever we wanted. However, I think that it was more a case of the both of us thinking that the other, after the previous evening’s conversation, now had it in our heads that that is what were were doing, and especially as Shazza knows what I am like for making plans, and my OCD Buddy, for not liking last minute changes 🤷‍♂️ We could have chosen to have just gone down to our pool, but we both just couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm for that either 🤷‍♂️ In the end, I had the opportunity to finalise these ramblings, something I probably would not have got around to doing until the weekend. Shazza was happy to spend the morning in the kitchen, where she prepared another batch of soup, Cheesy Broccoli this time, we had just finished off the last of the African Peanut batch, so that would be on the menu for that day’s lunch 😋 She also made a fresh batch of Humus and some Pesto and just generally enjoyed pottering around in her kitchen domain.

As I sit on the balcony, tapping away at the keyboard, stopping occasionally to cast my eyes at what is going on outside, there is a gentle breeze blowing in, the sun, fortunately during the Summer months, sits high in the sky, so it does not shine directly into the balcony and force me to take refuge in the inner sanctums of what, with the external shutters down, I call the cave house. The temperatures will continue to remain in the low thirties, as they have been for several days now, they will steadily climb by only a few more degrees, unless we get more of the strong ‘Terrell’ winds which will push those temperatures up even higher. However, the main change is in the evenings, nights and early mornings, when the temperatures do not drop very much below the very warm and humid 24 degrees(c) mark, but we have learnt how to cope with that now.

Fortunately, neither of us are suffering any adverse effects from the last couple of days of solar basting, my skin was already a nice shade of light brown, gained from being constantly out in the sun, primarily though from what were our daily walks, going into town, either our own town or in Estepona, doing bits and pieces, as you do and then, much more recently, being out around the pool. However, I never tend to go deep bronze, I could stay in the sun for day’s, or even week’s, and I still would remain the same shade of light brown, although Shazza always goes a slightly deeper shade of golden brown than me, more irritatingly, she seems to retain her tanned features far longer than myself, although that is probably because generally I tend to hide under the sun umbrellas most of the time 🤷‍♂️

So I will be now publishing this latest ramble a few days earlier than originally scheduled. Now, we are just awaiting for those two all important big final results 😲🙈 No, stop being silly, I am not talking about either the UK General Election result, or the French one for that matter, no these two results are far more important than those two put together, I am talking about the Quarter Final match of Euro 2024, Germany 🇩🇪 v Spain 🇪🇸, and the other important Quarter Final the following day, Switzerland 🇨🇭 v England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, fingers crossed that we will be singing both 🎶 Olay, Olay, Olay, Olay 🎶 and 🎶 Sweet Caroline 🎶 on those respective two days, rather than seeing the premature appearance of the ‘Fat Lady’ making an unscheduled early appearance, and singing us a song, an indication that, like in Operatic terms, means that for us, it really is ‘All Over’.

Until the next ramble……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, (La Vida Es Buena)