Inaugural visit to the house with no name

Cathy and I have owned our place in Blanca for just under two months, and finally the time came for us to head out there and refamiliarise ourselves with the house and to properly investigate our new local area. 

Cathy picked me up at an obscenely early hour of the morning to get us to Gatwick for our 5.50am flight to Alicante. By 10.15, our adventure had begun - we had our hire car and we were on the road from Alicante to Murcia. Given that autumn had arrived in the UK just before we left, it was lovely to head out into blue skies and temperatures in the mid-20s. The satnav did its job and delivered us to the centre of Blanca but then it was a question of whether we could actually find the house by memory, since we didn't have a street address. The house is across the river from the main part of town, in a tiny area called Los Tollos. OK, so memory didn't quite do the trick but a quick squint on Google Earth helped us work out where we'd gone wrong and 5 minutes later we were rounding the bend for our first view of the house in 8 months. 

And there it was, in all its rural stone glory! It looked better and bigger from the outside than we'd remembered. Since we didn't yet have the keys, we were planning to just have a good look around the outside and take some photos before heading to the estate agents office to pick up the keys and the deeds. This plan was scuppered by the fact that we had an unexpected meeting with our lovely Spanish next door neighbours. It was a challenge language-wise as, quite rightly, they speak no English, my Spanish isn't really far above basic these days, and I'm used to the standard Madrid accent. Not much help when faced with a 60-70 year-old lady, missing a few teeth, with a very strong Murcian accent and a knack for speaking at a hundred miles an hour! After a brief chat, a couple of snuggles with their very cute (adopted stray) cat, and a lovely offer of "If you need anything, just ask us" from Pilar and her nameless husband, we went back to the centre of town to meet Tracey, Álvaro and Marina at Casas de España. 

Two hours later, we had the keys, the insurance documents (no deeds yet as they're still with the registry office) and our newly-issued bank card. We headed back to the house with the agents to go over the house with a fine-toothed comb and come up with a definitive list of required renovations. Tracey, lovely though she is, has the memory of a goldfish and didn't seem to be able to recall any of the details discussed in our multiple recent emails so we were effectively starting from scratch. Fortunately, Alvaro is not only a lawyer but also an architect, and he had the good sense to bring a pen and paper. An hour later, we had our list and Álvaro was ready to start contacting various contractors to sort out a quote (which has yet to materialise).

If things go well, over the next couple of months (and if the quotes are acceptable!), we should have at least the ground floor completely rewired including a new fuse box, the water connection reinstated, a repaired roof, two repaired ceilings, a false insulated wall over some damp, a couple of new beams, a new kitchen worktop, new toilet, repaired bath/shower, new kitchen taps, a water heater and, most importantly, a roof terrace! We are keeping our fingers very tightly crossed on the roof terrace front because there's a public streetlight screwed to one of the exterior walls (a wall which will have to come down!) and Álvaro is going to have to talk to the town hall about repositioning possibilities! There's a somewhat shorter list of "possibles" - replacement door and windows, and the demolition of an interior wall to make the entrance room much bigger - but they'll only get done if it all comes in under budget! Now it's fingers and toes crossed!

Over the next two whirlwind days, and in no particular order, we:
- stocked up on all sorts of cleaning products and implements ready for an assault on the dust and cobwebs;
- tracked down a second-hand furniture shop in Lorquí, haggled for and bought a cute little chest of drawers, and didn't buy the marvellous motorbike leaning near it;
- found another (recommended) furniture shop in Abarán but it was closed due to it being the town fiesta;
- negotiated the ludicrously enormous roundabout on the outskirts of Murcia in order to get to Ikea and bought a coffee table, a chest of drawers, an outside table and chairs, 2 bins, a loo brush (!), a washing-up brush, an uplighter (every house in the world has to have an Ikea NOT uplighter) and, most importantly, two cat-print design cushions;
- struggled from the car into the house with said purchases, very helpfully watched by two blokes on their balcony further down the road, who seemed to find our efforts rather amusing. Always happy to oblige!


- went to the market in Ricote where a very smiley stall-holder was so baffled by the fact that I only wanted one plum, he wouldn't charge me for it, and I bought some hilarious printed trousers for €3;
- walked a long way in Archena (where we were staying) to get to a highly recommended tapas bar only to find it's closed on Monday evenings;
- walked to the same tapas bar the next evening and had a really delicious meal with 6 large tapas, a huge plate of grilled vegetables and 9 beers (!) for just over €30;
- enjoyed a classic cheese and tomato breakfast toastie and fresh orange juice on both mornings at a lovely little bar down the road from our hotel;
- met our immediate next-door neighbour, a youngish guy who lives alone in the L-shaped house that abuts ours, and found his Murcian accent is almost more impenetrable than the older lady in the next house along, but we did get to see his bread oven (ooh er);
- visited the bizarre "Museo de Esparto" in Archena. No, we didn't know what it was either and the English translation "esparto grass" or "halfa grass" didn't help, but it's what espadrilles are made of (hence the name);
- found a dessicated lizard on the kitchen floor, probably the most recent living occupant of the house, who we formally named Des but then unceremoniously swept into a large black rubbish bag;
- swept all the floors downstairs, brushed all the cobwebs off the ceilings and walls downstairs, and discovered just how much better a place can look by simply doing those two things! 
- walked from the house into town to see how long it takes. 25 minutes, if you stop to take photos and cross the river to see the public laundry baths, but 15 minutes (slightly uphill) on the way back if you keep walking! 
- identified the first accessible panadería (bakery), so a lovely early morning walk into town, along the river, to buy bread for breakfast and get back will take about 35 minutes. Lovely!
- were inexplicably called over by a large group of old men near the river in town who (I think) thought we were looking for where to swim! We explained not and when I said we were English, they roared with laughter. OK. Bye then!
- found the Blanca tourist office (shut)

I'm sure we did lots of other things but my memory's not what it used to be!

For me, the best thing about those few days was the reminder of just what it was about the Ricote Valley that impressed us so much back in January. It is a beautiful, verdant valley, a gorgeous green lush landscape amongst the dry, arid mountains all around. 

With any luck, my photos of our trip are HERE. Everything about Picasa seems to have changed since the last time I used it so my editing and sharing might have gone horribly wrong. House pics should be first, both before and after our brief clean, then our tootling about shots. 

Sun, sea, sand but no sangria - Spring sojourn to Spain

The basics

San Juan de los Terreros, a small town in Almería (Andalucia), not far from the border with Murcia. A Facebook friend (one of those FB friends I've never actually met) let slip that he owns an apartment in San Juan and that was it. My yearning for some sunshine after the long, grey, wet winter had its solution. A week in May was available and so was Sid. Within a couple of days of our conversation, the apartment was booked and so were the flights and car hire. 

Finally, departure day came around and an uneventful flight from Gatwick to Murcia delivered us to warm, lovely southern Spain. The hour's drive from the airport to the town was fast and unbelievably quiet. Ian had told me the roads would be quiet but I didn't expect us to have kilometre upon kilometre of toll motorway to ourselves.

We met up with Ava, who handles meet and greet on Ian's behalf, she took us to the apartment and off she went. A bit of unpacking and it was time for a trip to the supermarket and a little look round. 

The accommodation

Milenio 1 is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom, ground floor apartment in a block of nine apartments. It's clean, airy, bright and nicely decorated, has WiFi, a fully equipped kitchen (including a washing machine) and a spacious patio. There's a communal swimming pool (not heated) surrounded by a small area of interestingly springy grass! With so many beaches to choose from every day, I only used the pool twice but it's a good facility to have.

The location

San Juan de los Terreros is very much a holiday development without being a huge area of high-rises and hotels. There are small, narrow original streets closer to the beach but the new development starts about half a mile back from the beach. The rows of houses reminded me of Portmeirion, with their pastel colours. The town is surrounded by mountains, behind which the sun sets quite spectacularly. And they do like a roundabout!

The town itself is small, easy to navigate and, in May, like a ghost town! There is a relatively new wide, palm-lined boulevard which runs from the central fountain, out along the back of the beach for a couple of kilometres, which then turns inland for another couple. To the back of the boulevard are several chiringuitas - cafe/bar structures, great for a drink or a snack when it gets too hot on the beach. 

The beaches

There are plenty of beaches within walking/driving distance of San Juan. The town itself has a huge long stretch of beach starting at the centre of town and running along in front of the boulevard. On the first day, we plonked ourselves down on Playa Mar Serena, the longest and widest stretch in town. It was clear that it was very early in the season - in fact, it turned out it is considered to be pre-season. It looks like no-one is employed to clean the beaches before July and even without many visitors, the detritus in some stretches is quite obvious.

Our favourite haunts, though, were Cuatro Calas (Four Coves), about a five-minute drive outside town. The beaches are La Carolina, Los Cocedores, La Higuérica and Calarreona. Ian had recommended them but didn't say which one specifically was his favourite. It was good to learn that ours (Los Cocedores) was also his. Each cove is sheltered with gently sloping sand into shallow, blue, warm water. (Well, I think Sid might argue with the "warm" description!) And to add to the excitement, there are loads of fish in the shallows so as you walk into the sea, you're surrounded on all sides by them. At the weekend, the beaches got much busier with the temporary visitors but during the week, we had pretty much any one of them to ourselves. With the exception of Los Cocedores, there are no facilities at all, so you have to make sure you take everything you need with you - plenty of water, sunscreen etc. 

We also spent a day in the Cabo de Gata National Park, which has some of the most well-known "best beaches" in the south of Spain. Now call me picky, but I probably preferred the ones local to town. Our first port of call was Los Genoveses, a rough drive down a dirt road. The beach stretches round a long arc of slightly crunchy sand and when we arrived, there was no-one else there. I went for a dip and we settled ourselves on our towels. And then the tornado arrived! That might be a bit of an exaggeration but it certainly was windy. We stuck it out for about 20 minutes, being whipped by flying sand, and with it finding its way into our noses and mouths before admitting defeat and fleeing to the car. We headed to Playa Playazo next where we found ourselves a little alcove created by rocks and settled down for a very nice few hours in the sun. 

We stopped off one day at the small town of Las Negras which has a small but sweet beach, dotted with fishing boats and a wonderfully old man who spent a long time rearranging some of them, to the chagrin of the group of older ladies who had set themselves and their umbrella up inches from the biggest boat. 

On our last day, we went to a small town called Bolnuevo which turned out to have a gorgeous, long, white-sanded (empty) beach and is definitely deserving of a return visit. And finally, before heading to the airport, we stopped at Santiago de la Ribera, which also had an unexpectedly nice beach. 

All in all, there is no way you could be short of gorgeous sunbathing spots in this part of Almería/Murcia.

The food and drink

The important stuff! Despite having lived in Madrid and shopped at Mercadona regularly, I still love a wander round a "foreign" supermarket. On our first evening, we stocked up on goodies (OK, mostly alcohol!), but we did eat somewhere other than the apartment patio occasionally, although breakfast at home every day was a lovely mix of bread, cheese, yoghurt and melon! And we ate chickpea stew and tortilla (handmade by Sid) on a couple of evenings, when we felt like just eating in the apartment (and watching the Eurovision Song Contest!)

Our introduction to San Juan's lunchtime offerings was at one of the chiringuitas at the back of the main beach. We ordered a media ración (half portion) of both patatas bravas and patatas ajo. When they turned up, we wondered if perhaps he hadn't heard the request for only a half portion. Both were huge! And very tasty. The questionable highlight of our meal though was being very badly chatted up by one of five Belgian golfers sitting at the table behind us. I don't know who they normally encounter but throwing "My ex-wife was Australian ... And she was a bitch" into the first thirty seconds of a conversation doesn't generally make me go weak at the knees! 

The chiringuita on Playa Los Cocedores was very helpful and twice made us a huge salad but without the tuna which normally comes as standard. 

In Las Negras, we stopped for lunch at Los Barcos, a nice little place overlooking the sea. We had queso manchego (delicious, served with sweet, salted almonds), and they served up probably the best plate of grilled vegetables I have ever tasted. The combination of courgette, aubergine, pepper, onion and tomato just melted in the mouth. Needless to say, the use of copious amounts of olive oil and a ton of salt in the cooking process just served to make them even tastier. We were joined by an inquisitive cat who seemed to forgive our lack of meat and fish upon being thrown small scraps of cheese. 

In Mojácar, we ate at two Italian restaurants! The first - Pizzeria de Muralla, was a lunchtime stop, delivering a delicious, huge veggie feast pizza for 2. On our final night, we ate at Ristorante Pulcinella, right up on their top terrace, overlooking the huge plain that stretches as far as the eye can see. The restaurant has won awards apparently, and you can see why. The food was delicious, the service impeccable and the location is stunning. We shared a gigantic pizza bread, and mozzarella and tomato for starter, followed by veggie lasagna for Sid and cream cheese and spinach riglione for m. 

We tested out almost every eatery in San Juan de Los Terreros during our stay, although we didn't eat at La Venta, just had post-dinner drinks there (huge and cheap!) Lunch on our final day was at El Mesón and we just might have over-ordered. We had pimientos picantes (which weren't spicy), tortilla española, another plate of grilled vegetables (the second best I've had) and patatas a lo pobre (soft slices of potato, with peppers, onion and oil). 

We shared a huge veggie paella at L'Escala, which is clearly a popular hangout with the locals. It was full of chatty Spaniards, eating, drinking, watching the news on the huge screen and ignoring (in a good way) their children who were playing football outside the shop next door. The food was tasty but I felt that using tinned vegetables in a "made-to-order" paella that we had to wait 45 minutes for was cheating just a bit. 

The pièce de résistance (or el plato fuerte) came from Mi Cortijo, on the main street in San Juan. It had great Trip Advisor reviews and we'd already called in to check out the menu and had a chat with the owner. We arrived at 9pm on Saturday evening, assuming it would be quite busy but we were the only customers. Undaunted as ever, we started chatting again with the owner, Alain (French, and lived in France for the first 30 years of his life). He assured us that his wife (Belgian) could turn her hand to anything so we invented a vegetarian dish, ordered starters and Sid's main of fish and drinks, a large red wine and a gin and tonic.

The starter, cauliflower soup, turned out to be a hundred times tastier than it sounds and came with a happy message written in cream! The invented veggie dish was buffalo mozzarella in a leek bechamel sauce with roasted vegetables and it was gorgeous! We also shared a side salad and a huge bowl of homemade fries. At the end of the meal, we were treated to a new (to us) liqueur - Guajiro or Ronmiel (rum and honey). Yum. 

We were pleased to see that we weren't the only customers of the night. At 10.30, a large family of 8 turned up to eat (I still forget how late the Spanish eat), followed by a few more people coming in for drinks. 

For one of us, at least, the best food in town was to be found at Luz Azul - an artisan ice-cream place on the main street. Twice we treated ourselves to dessert there before we'd even had dinner. Their Ferrero Rocher and pistachio combo was a winner, but the cheesecake and cherry cream came a close second. 

Other things to do

Tempting though it was to spend all day every day on a beach, we had hired a car for the week and there were things to do and places to see! 

The castle overlooking the town is reached via a long, hairpin-bend road which we considered walking up but ended up driving. It's a small fort which appears to be open to the public in the summer, but there are great views over San Juan, over Águilas and out to sea, making it worth the climb (or the drive). 

Águilas itself is a cute town, with two or three beaches, plenty of shops and eating places, and a classic square (called, of course, Plaza de España). We spent our final morning in the town, just wandering round and stopping for a drink and a cake from La Pastelería Katy in the square. It feels properly Spanish, at this time of year, at least. Every Saturday morning, there's a large market just by the bypass which goes round the back of the town. Loads of fresh fruit, veg, meat, fish, snails (!) and the usual range of household goods and clothes are on offer. It was teeming with fierce-looking Spanish housewives, filling their wheelie baskets to overflowing with goodies, and vying with each other to shout louder than the stall holders! 

We spent a morning investigating the small nearby fishing villages of Villaricos and and Garrucha, both deserted but sweet. There is a definite feel to the beach towns of Almería - they seem to like the long wide boulevards and I'm sure in the summer, both the locals and the tourists can be found having a leisurely stroll in the evening sun. 

Our day in and around the Cabo de Gata National Park simply wasn't long enough. It deserves a more thorough investigation at some point. Our best find that day was the small town of Nijar, right on the edge of the National Park. It's a small town with a few streets of shops, a much older residential area with steep, winding cobbled streets to the back and its a centre of arts and crafts, particularly pottery, weaving and rug-making. We could have spent hours in the pottery shops and if our luggage allowance had permitted it, I'm sure we'd have come back with a million terracotta dishes! We spent a rather hot 45 minutes in the old part of the town following signs uphill to a water mill but it eluded us! I liked Nijar. A lot. To the extent that I looked at properties for sale there when I got home! 

Along similar lines, being a Moorish whitewashed village, is Mojácar Pueblo. Not to be confused with Mojácar Playa which is the new, purpose-built tourist resort stretching along the sea to the south of the hilltop pueblo. Another long, winding drive takes you up towards Mojácar, with the car park based just at the bottom of the village. It's very pretty, and the Moorish influences are clear. However, much of it is not as old as it first appears, given that it was gradually abandoned over several centuries, with its resurgence beginning in the 1960s. That explains why some of the buildings look as if they'd be happier in Croydon! It's where we had our first glimpse of the Indalo - an ancient symbol now considered a lucky charm and which can now be found painted, daubed and for sale all over Andalucia. I'm glad we went in May as I imagine in July and August it's very crowded and the road up to it is probably one long line of cars and coaches. It was in Mojácar that we treated ourselves to some local goodies from an artisan shop - some local olive oil, a bottle of Spanish amaretto and a bar of cinnamon chocolate. 

On our last day, we visited Las Erosiones de Bolnuevo, a very strange group of wind-eroded sand "sculptures" behind the beach and in the middle of a town! 

Miscellaneous

What? You didn't think I'd finished, did you?! Randomness that didn't fit anywhere else. 

I was very happy to discover that much of my Spanish came back to me. Very few people in the area speak English (good) and I was mostly understood and I don't think I made a complete tit of myself. 

In Andalucia, they don't pronounce the final "s" on any words. 

Property is really cheap down there at the moment. 

There are lots of cats, dogs and caged birds (sadly) in the town.

The vans for Pastelería KATY in Águilas have a picture of a man on them. Is he Katy?

The cheesy pooooofs here are almost as good as the ones in Madrid.

We didn't see a single golf course the whole time we were there, despite this being a huge golfing area.

Sid had never driven abroad before this trip. Well done, especially for driving back from Mojácar on winding roads in the dark! 

That's it. Honest. Except ...

My photos of the week can be found HERE

One year on....

1 year. 12 months. 52 weeks. 365 days. 8,766 hours. 525,600 minutes. 31,536,000 seconds.

As I'm writing this, I'll have been in Spain a full year (plus about 3 hours!). March 13th 2009 was a big day. I was hugely excited about my big adventure, but at the same time I was completely terrified. I think I said in my first blog that for someone who had been in the same job for 19 years and 11 months, had never been out of the UK for longer than about 4 weeks, and who generally didn't do anything alone, I appeared to be confronting all those things in one huge hit.

I've been trying to remember what it felt like on my first afternoon here, but it's difficult. Everything here is now so familiar and normal, that casting my mind back to how it was to be new is really hard. I know I remember that everything smelt, sounded and looked, well, just different. That's always the case in a foreign country but usually it's accompanied by a feeling of "Well, it's just a couple of weeks on holiday". But this time, no. This was it. Home. One way or another, I was staying.

I have no intention of rehashing what's happened in the last year - most of it is on this blog anyway.

All I'll say is that I want to thank each and every person who encouraged me, supported me, practically pushed me in some cases, to take the plunge and come here. It's not all been plain sailing, but then staying in the UK probably wouldn't have been either. So thanks to everyone in the UK for wishing me well, keeping in touch and not telling me I'm mad even if you think I am. And thanks to all my friends in Spain for welcoming me, helping me out and making the last year such a memorable one.

Without wishing to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech, I want to mention (in no particular order):
Louise, Andy, Debbie, Cathy, Dade, Sid, Julie, Mum, Hannah, Dad, Eve, Jorge, Nacho, Ann, Pedro (both of them!), Richi, Bev, Kim, Donna, Krizstina, Mariano, Gabriel, Lizzie, Javi, José Luis, Richard, Max, Alex, Nat and Moira. Without you I either wouldn't be here at all, or wouldn't be having as much fun!!!


A little photographic trip down memory lane can be found HERE

Over-sanitising life?

Something occurred to me yesterday after a couple of weeks of watching Spanish TV, especially the news.

It strikes me that in the UK TV broadcasts are hugely sanitised.

For instance, a few days ago three people were killed in a shoot-out between a Turkish rebel and the police. Spanish news showed vivid, close-up images of of the dead rebel, lying in a huge pool of blood, rigor mortis clearly setting in as one of his hands was clawed and his forearm still vertical to the ground. (The other two people killed were a police chief and a 16-year-old bystander - not shown). This was all shown during broadcasts during the day as well as the evening, in a perfectly matter-of-fact way.

In the UK, it probably wouldn't have been shown at all even after the 9pm "watershed", but if it had been, it would have been preceded by the newsreader saying "Some viewers may find the following images disturbing". The nanny state alive and well again. It's the news. It is meant to report real life (and death) - and reality is frequently disturbing. That's the point. Do we really need TV stations to have to apologise in advance for simply broadcasting a news story? Would we actually prefer to just have happy stories about fluffy kittens and rainbows? Of course we wouldn't. But I don't remember anyone pointing out that viewers may find the images of, say, British and American troops invading Iraq, disturbing. I certainly did, but it doesn't mean I didn't want to remain informed.

The Spanish version of the Turkish rebel story was informative and entirely watchable. It would have been enhanced perhaps by saying who the dead were - not so we know who to hate, but to personalise it a bit more. After all, whoever they were, they had families somewhere who were going to be devastated. And as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The UK news goes even further in swaddling us in cotton wool. Before showing a clip of an awards ceremony, or someone on a red carpet etc, we're warned "This film may contain flash photography"! No sh*t! Nowadays many European laws (civil or otherwise) are being standardised, so presumably a TV station has much the same chance of being sued in Spain as it does in the UK. Does this suggest, then, that the UK has particularly litiginous epileptics? No, it simply confirms that in Spain people seem to be allowed to get on with life using a bit of common sense, without the threat of lawsuits and complaints. Apart from (occasional!) No Smoking and (more common) No Dogs signs, this country does not bombard you with officialdom telling you what you can and can't do.

I'm well aware that the UK is unlikely to move back to a less nanny state - presumably some people think it's progress - but it's refreshing to be here and to be treated like a grown-up!