Wedneasday & Thursday 27th & 28th September. I think??

27-9-2006 Wednesday
We were sorting out boxes again, I feel that we will be doing the very same for at least three months. It’s like a very big and heavy rubic wall where you can only get to the box that you want by moving at least three other equally heavy boxes up, down or side ways.
Last night was a sort of ‘turn’ night at Lentisco’s. Lots of folks that we are now acquainted with had said that we should go down there because ‘it is a good night’ with food laid on.
So we got showered and changed, when we could have turned in, and arrived in Taberno at about quarter past nine to find the place in full swing. The place was packed to the doors with English people and a few Spaniards were sat out on the terrace. The artist was an old guy who sang to records from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. We had a few drinks and were introduced to more people. We settled down with a table full of people to sort of endure the evening. BTW when one buys a drink here they don’t believe in using measures. Elayne asked for a Baileys with ice and I had a tankard of lager. Elayne’s Baileys arrived in a very wide whiskey tumbler and it was over half full of Baileys. Any way needless to say we had a super evening, the artist was very good and we made some more new friends. We danced, laughed and drank until about half past one before driving very slowly home in a concentrated manner. The road seemed more twisty and windy than normal so I drove at about five miles an hour all the way back (one cannot call a taxi here so you drive or you walk).
The pictures were taken last night (if our new friend Angela reads this, it would really pay her well to buy the negatives from me of the pictures that we are not showing).
Thursday 28-9-2006
We arose slowly and rather late this morning. We breakfasted on coffee and orange juice back down at Lentisco’s before going once more to see our architect, with Bob, to try to get to the bottom of the delay with the house planning. Angel the architect is insisting on seeing our building approval documents before he will do further drawings because to continue if we have not got building permission would be a waste of his time. The building approval documents were sent away with the change of ownership documents about four weeks back , so are stuck in some government office awaiting recording onto the land registry. However Bob has persuaded Angel that we do have the building approval (although not quite up-to-date yet) and he has now agreed to have amended drawings ready for us to collect on Tuesday next week (we’ll see).
We drove back via Huecal Overa where we did some shopping and we are now in chill out mode for the rest of today.
We need to conserve energy because there is another ‘do’ at Lentisco’s tomorrow night. This time it is the Spanish men and ladies playing traditional Spanish music on their own guitars and dancing. And also there is a fiesta in Albox on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. What a life.
BTW again. The weather is now a little cooler, than in August , with temperatures in the mid twenties. It’s very nice and we are still in shorts during the day although when the sun goes down we are very quickly into long trousers and jumpers.
The picture today is of The Editor in Chief and her adoring lackey before we went out last night, just in case you don’t remember what we look like.

Oooops!!

23-9-2006 Sunday
Today started, once again, with morning coffee, tostardo (toasted French bread with tomato and grilled cheese) and serious ablutions at Lentisco’s bar, what a life! This was followed by a walk up to the local church to see if we could see the inside (seeing that it was nearly eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning) for a change. The church was, as usual closed and bolted. We did see a coach, bearing a few very well dressed Spaniards, leave the village square at about quarter to eleven and one wonders if church clergy here also service many districts as per the C of E churches in East Keswick and Bardsey etc.
This afternoon we went ‘down the track’ to visit Dave, Ruby and daughter Fathom (Chi Chi) Stead. They are a really nice family that have settled here. Dave is a solar and wind energy genius who has built their own house and energy system and very quickly and easily baffled me with all the details of his solar and wind generated energy system.
When we arrived back here we had a really splendid and surprise visit from Angela and Phil Kendall, from further down the rambla towards Albox, who are originally from Salford, Manchester (but we forgave them very quickly). They have been here for six years and were so generous with their information. Recently their daughter joined them here from Salford and has also quickly settled into local life and now has a boyfriend in Albox. We had a long and really nice chatter with them over a cup of tea. They are also into EBay and the internet, via micro wave, so we can easily keep in touch when we also get back on line.
What a super day it turned out to be from only quite a modest early potential.
24/25-9-2006 Monday and Tuesday
The furniture etc arrived about half past one today. As there was only really lots and lots of boxes and only two or three pieces of real furniture it took the removal men just about two hours to offload it all into the portacabin. We then spent the rest of the day and a lot of Tuesday just juggling the boxes and finding out what was in them. The removal men in the UK did as best they could with writing on each box details of it’s content but of course when you are looking for the iron for instance you have to search in five or six heavy boxes marked kitchen. There was 113 items in the end and all of them arrived with very little damage considering. When we unpacked the vacuum we found a little snake that had perished due to getting stuck to the brown sticky paper.

Saturday 23-9-2006

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Layna.
Happy birthday to you.
We are going Chinese at Albox tonight to celebrate Elayne’s **** birthday and her first birthday in Spain.
Last night we had a storm with big lightning and thunder and rain going on all around whilst we tried to ignore it under our blankets, some chance. It first came around us at about two o’clock, we think, and then moved off and returned with a vengeance about five o’clock. The five o’clock session was flashing and banging nearly together. As the bedroom has windows on both sides we could watch it stereo. We knew that we were safe but it doesn’t stop one from thinking, in the early hours, that perhaps we could have a land slide, and ,with all the rain, we could end up down the bottom of the valley
A little group of three men arrived on site this afternoon and put a lid on our hebe. They then drove off again so we suppose that a different little team will come to finish the potto. Hey it’s progress so we are grateful.
Almond Pickers Arm Pits.
This is a strange affliction that has just started to make it’s presence felt.
It is brought on by greed and is aggravated whilst one is picking almonds and one must just get that very last almond that just happens to be three or four inches (100mm to our converted friends)above where one can normally reach. One has then to get very intimate and dirty with the said almond tree trunk and the maze of branches to be able get an extra couple of inches needed to get that last almond. It may take longer to get this last almond than to pick the rest of the tree. However, tight fistedness comes in and a dogged determination that you will get this damned almond. Now thing would be Ok if it was England with it’s temperate climate. But here in Spain picking the almonds can be a very hot occupation. As we have lots of acreage and that our nearest neighbours are some way off, I do sometimes divest myself of my upper garments and this is where the fixation with the very last almond takes it’s toll. The branches and budding tips on the almond trees are very brittle and rather sharp so that when you move in close you get your arm pits scratched to pieces. I suppose it doesn’t really help being a careful Yorkshire man.
From the Editor in Reserve…and I quote …“there’s nowt so queer as folk “J
Pictures are of the morning after the night before.

Friday 22-9-2006

‘Manana’ in Spain means ‘tomorrow‘. However ‘tomorrow’ in Spanish does not necessarily mean ‘the day after today’.
Paco (of JCB and at only €30/hour fame) said that he would call today between five (after siesta) and eight this evening to do further work on the ‘lay-by’ where the caravan and the portacabin will move to whilst Javier (the builder), who also said that he would come ‘manana’ and finish the hebe (water deposit tank) and the potto (human waste soak away tank) today, before he starts to build our house. That of course is providing and when Angel (the architect and designer) gets together with his mates at Albox Town Hall to see if we can build a 120 sq mtrs footprint and then put a second floor on top. Or if we can only build a 120 sq mtrs footprint on one floor because that was the original building permission plan given, and then finishes the house plan so that Javier can start building the house, after we have moved the caravan and portacabin onto the amended lay-by that Paco was doing manana.
It all gets a little frustrating, but in Spain manana will always mean manana and we are strongly advised to get used to it quickly to save our sanity.
Tonight it rained and we had two spectacular, horizon to horizon, rainbows. We tried to capture them with the camera, but chicken Elayne wouldn’t stand out in the rain taking pictures and getting wet. so I had to hold an umbrella over her. Funny old life isn’t it?
From Elayne…However I have since been out in the rain to photograph the sunset and some funny old bloke picking the almondsJ

22-9-2006 Friday

15th to 21st September
In the last six days we have been very busy and at times very dirty and dusty. The very first night after Juan and the driver had left we settled down in our El Pinar bed attire. We were ruddy frozen by midnight and spent the remainder of the night putting more and more clothes on, needless to say we were not ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’ by morning. We have now bought extra blankets and sleep relatively warm all night.
We have gone from that first pretty bad and windy first night managing with just a torch and a Camping Gas stove to having 240 volts from the ‘genny’ running lights, fridge, freezer and micro wave. We have now connected up the bottle gas so that we have cooker, oven and gas fire. We have bought a water butt and have installed a submersible water pump in it so that we have all the taps, sinks and shower working although only on cold just yet.
We still have to conquer the central heating/hot water system and we do have to carry all of our water up to site from a village water supply in Taberno. For the first few days we used two buckets of hot water and stood up in the portacabin for washing after our dusty days work.
On Tuesday we had a television and a sky dish installed. We can watch over 150 television stations and even Yorkshire TV, should we wish. It will take at least three years to work our way through them all. Quite soon we will have an internet/ telephone microwave link installed (in the mean while we can go down the road to Albox where they have six computers that can be used.
The cats, bless them, are now enjoying exploring the area but come galloping back home when tea time is called by you know who.
The evening sun and the sunsets are astonishing and we have baskets full of almonds.
All in all we are getting more and more civilised and organised with life with each new day here. On Monday next our furniture and chattels are coming so it will be quite exciting to be reunited with everything. Elayne is longing to see her wardrobe clothing, shoes and play station once more and I am looking forward to having and using my work tools and having the ‘puter’ back.
It is exactly two months today since we left the UK (20-7-2006). What a journey it has been. Elayne and I hope that you all have enjoyed the trip with us so far and we look forward to keeping you abreast of our further developments and on the building of the house, over the next six to nine to twelve months.
Our friends John and Christine Young from Bradford are ‘passing by’ en route to Benerraba in early October and we look forward to them calling in so that we can show them Taberno and the house site.
Today Thursday we visited an internet café in Huecal Overa (about 20k SE of here and at the other side of the Med Motorway) but could only make the computer machines accept the pictures that we wanted to post on the blog. Therefore this text will now be posted as soon as we can get a machine that understands Microsoft Works from our laptop. More soon as we get even better organised. Thanks you for your comments, it really feels good that we are being read.
Note for our dear friends Mike and Joan. Thanks for suggesting that we put the blog down as a book, if you talk to any publishers you can be on commission (JK Rawlings here we come). Also, yes, the comments and our replies can be read by everyone, so ‘mind your P and Q’s as I do have the veto option on this blog.

20-9-2006 If a picture speaks a thousand words, here´s 8000 words to be going on with until I sort out a small technical problem. TTFN. Pictures are also in reverce order.:-)))))

Tuesday 12-9-2006

We had a big storm , which started in the early hours of this morning, and lasted until about 8-30ish,and it RAINED, the real wet stuff. Quite like the UK really :-))
We went to do the blog, and had a phone call from Gill to say that the rambla up at Taberno was in full flood, she didn’t think that we would be able to go up. (it wasn’t!!), but not only did Juan not deliver the vans, but Javier hadn’t widened the bases, as promised. P.F. was in a fury :-(( , best laid plans and all that.
All is now sorted, and we hope to get the vans up on Thursday. It will be a busy day.
With nothing to do for the rest of the day, we decided to drive up to the monastery at Saliente. It is a beautiful place right up in the mountains, see photo’s. It also has a well known restaurant, which we hope to visit.
Well that was our day, a bit traumatic really, and a lot of disappointment, but we Fellowes will soldier on:-))

PS from the editor. We are hoping to move upto Taberno tomorrow and may not be able to get internet connected for a few days, don't worry we have not deserted you all, we will be back soon TTFN.

Monday 11-9-2006

Elayne and I walked up the hill on the other side of El Pinar last night in almost pitch black conditions. We nearly died when a black cat leaped out towards our feet. It was coming over to be friendly because it has met us before but we were not expecting it so it was quite a shock especially as there was no noise of it approaching. After we got our breath back and played with the cat we continued our walk up to the top of the hill and back again, mainly with the torch on.
It started off rather cloudy today, but by eleven it had burnt off and we are back to the sunshine although a little cooler now. We understand that the UK weather has improved recently, enjoy. We heard from Eric and Isobel that we missed a partial eclipse of the moon last week, someone could have told us it was going to happen L
From Elayne (with the editors censorship).
We went shopping for “Boy’s Toy’s” this morning. Paul bought a very large petrol strimmer, (almost as tall as himself, I don’t know how he will carry it around the land). He has just unpacked it and it comes with a bright yellow visor, with a mesh protective front to it, and a harness to take the weight of it in use. This should be worth a few photo’s :0). Hope he leaves the Almond trees in an upright positionJ )
We had a phone call from Pam to let us know that Javier was going up to redefine the caravan bases this afternoon. Which is a great relief, now we won’t have to put Juan off delivering the van’s tomorrow. We are getting ready for the great move on Thursday. We shall both be glad to get on with the next stage, although being here in El Pinar has been good for us, and we have met some very nice people. We are seriously going to miss the pool tho’ :0(
The pictures are of the sunset last night, Eric and Isobel’s house across the road , and the cats’ on our bedroom patio, they had just noticed that I was above them.
Paul is having a ‘senior moment’, trying to get the strimmer and all it’s components back into the box that they came out of, but all is well.

Sunday 11-9-2006

A slow quiet day today.
We did the blog, bought some hard ware for up at the site, plugs, chains, oil etc. We filled the car with petrol again. We have done over 5000km since we arrived but this should slow down a bit soon. Also the price of petrol here has been steadily dropping from €1.12/ltr, it is now down at €1.019/ltr ( £0.70/ltr).
We succumbed to temptation at lunch time and had an English brunch, the whole works washed down with a really nice cup of tea. We are fully repentant now and have said ten thousand Hail Tony Blair’s, in penance, but ‘O’ was it good, just for a change?
Siesta time at El Pinar and later we will start to tidy up the rental and packing a few things In readiness for the move. It is just like going on another holiday, exciting and a little scary.
Pictures are of a couple of American Indians playing some great traditional music in Mojacar this morning.

Saturday 10-9-2006

It rained incessantly today from about six o’clock this evening to about twenty eight minutes to seven. There was three or four very mean looking rain drops on nearly every large floor tile on the patio. It’s blowing over now so we can sit out with our guests, Eric and Isabel, tonight and quaff a few bottles of red local stuff.
We have had a busy but rewarding day zapping to Vera twice and Albox and Garrucha and Turre.
We saw the immediate aftermath of two separate but very serious road accidents whilst we were driving about today. We feel that both accidents probably had fatalities. Some people over here (of all nationalities) seem to switch off their brains as soon as it’s Saturday and drive like lunatics on the quite bad road surfaces.
We now have gas bottles, pipes and regulators, a Portaloo and various other bits and bats that will make our next six to nine months in the mountains more civilised.
We had a lovely evening with Eric and Isobel and went to bed very tired, after a good day, at about half past twelve.

Friday 8-9-2006

The other big problem in paying for things in cash is the time it takes to count it out.
Today we went down to the bank and withdrew €19000 in 50’s and 20’s. It took ten minutes at the bank before the safe will open by staff request (this is a safety system devised to deter would be bank robbers, who obviously have only a short concentration span and by the time the vaults have opened the would be robber has got tired and gone off to rob the ice cream van) to allow the money to be taken out. It then takes one minute for the machine to count this five inch pile of notes, but as the machine is ‘occasionally wrong‘, it has to be then recounted again by hand. This can take nearly fifteen minutes by which time the bank lady has repetitive strain syndrome from counting 500 notes and we are sat like the nodding dogs in the back of a car on a bumpy road trying to ensure that the bank lady has counted it all correctly. Even after she has finished and stretched her weary arms etc., we are still nodding like a couple of gnomes to anyone who happens to be passing. Then feeling like a Securicor guard, but not trying to look like them we take the money to the car in Elayne’s handbag which is tucked under her arm and now looks for all the world as if it might have €19000 in it. We lock the car doors as soon as we are both in and set off up the motorway to the caravan mans’ place looking in the mirror every six second to ensure that we are not going to be ‘this weeks heist’ for the El Pinar Mafia.
When we arrive at the caravan mans’ place, Juan is in his office and he is such a nice guy that he talks incessantly about everything under the sun before he also then gets round to counting the heap of money that has now been sat on his desk naked for twenty five minutes. We have not as yet got the ‘change of ownership documents’ saying that the vans are ours so it‘s sort of ‘in limbo and venerable us‘ time. All the while he is receiving phone calls, which one could be forgiven for imagining might be tip off’s to the Puerto Lumbreras Mafia now to say that a lot of dosh is sat in front of this English couple if they would care to send the lads round quickly it should be an easy and swift payday.
Well none of this happened but we did all sit there like nodding dogs for another ten minutes whilst he also counts the money. Juan counts a lot faster than the bank girl, well, he is a trader. It’s all correct and we have our ownership documents.
Juan will deliver both vans to us at Taberno on Tuesday, that’s if Javier, as requested, has extended the caravan bases and firmed up the ground by then, to stop the delivery lorry from slipping off the soft soil and ending up down in one of our fig trees.
We have a ‘drink of relief ‘drink and lunch time snack and then head up to site. Not much change, the hebe is nearly finished and has it’s top on and the square manhole is taking shape. We did comment that logic had not been used , as the square manhole, where one presumes it will be filled from, should really have been next to the track where the water man can easier reach it. But we just hope that the water man carries a really long pipe with him, because probably he will just ‘know how it’s going to be’.
Today’s pictures: The yellow rock denotes one of our plot boundaries. Looking down the ramble, the grey river bed, half of which is ours. Your truly surveying the rambla from above, it must be about 50 metres deep and we have not as yet been down into the bottom of it.

Thursday 7-9-2006

We are now the proud owners of , what in camping fraternity circles is know as, ‘a genny‘, or generator to our more urban and less agricultural readers. It’s a really nice little thing in bright yellow livery. It weighs in at 42kgs and will produce 2000watts of power for us when we are in the caravan. It has two socket outlets and an overload trip out and I think that one can even charge a car type battery from it. Compared to what we have seen in builders merchants etc so far, it is such good value that we are thinking of buying a second one as a back up and an additional power unit. It will be quite interesting seeing what will and what will not run together from them. For instance it will be verboten for Elayne to want to make a cup of tea whilst the iron is on and the hair dryer is blowing it‘s head off. We paid by card for this genny today so one supposes that the Spanish government will have 16.5% of the value. I almost feel as resentful as the locals about that although I did not offer to pay in cash. It has a two year guarantee and it has a 12 litre tank so it should run for quite a while between fills of petrol. I remarked to Elayne that had we bought this in the UK one would have got a sixty seven page manual but only three pages would have been in English. The manual for this machine has twenty eight pages and not a single word of English. Fortunately we have owned a little Honda compressor before so we know something about them.
We paddled and had tapas with a drink and then we came back to El Pinar for a siesta, a swim and chill out an hour or two. It is still quite hot here (28-30) and has threatened to rain for about three days now but within a few hours of the clouds starting to form it all reverses and the sun comes back again. We are told that it can take a week or so to work it’s way up to a frenzy and have a good bout of rain. On Tuesday evening it turned really nasty and we thought we were in for a real bucket full, but by morning it was back to sunny normal once more.
If all goes well we are aiming to leave El Pinar on Thursday next week. The cats are delighted at the news.
We hope to have the caravans on site on Tuesday so there is nothing stopping us after that.

PS: Pictures now recovered for Tuesday.

Snakeday 6-9-2006

1st Major event of today:
Today we met our first wild, out in the open, eye ball to eye ball, SNAKE (can anyone identify it, it‘s not in our books?) . It was at least 250 long and nearly 10 wide (only mm’s to be fair). It caused such a rumpus, because it was on the veranda of the taverna at Taberno and not out on the wild tundra. See picture. One English couple said that because it was not green it was probably poisonous. The bar tender came out and encarserated it with his bare hands. We have shown this picture to the cats so that if they ever see one like it they will not think that it is a Woolworth toy.
2nd Major event of the day:
They have tarmaced the track from the rambler to within half a mile of our plot today. It’s OK but with lights, crash barriers, white lines, big blue signs and SOS boxes every half a mile it could quickly become another bloody M62. See pictures of this also. I’m so cross that I have a good mind to get a petition up. However because my Spanish as not yet quite honed to perfection I may come across a few problems whilst drumming up the support from the locals. On the good side it has already pleased the caravan man after we told him that it was a safari from Taberno to our plot, and it will please the removal men when they return our bits and pieces to us after we have moved from El Pinar.
We think that as things stand today we might move up to site mid next week. Then we will be into ‘The rough guide of Taberno’
I’m exhausted so that’s all folks , for today.

PS. From Elayne
He hasn’t mentioned that we went to see Angel, our architect, first thing this morning, to see the plan of the house which we have designed. It is really impressive.
We had also arranged to meet Juan, the caravan man, at Taberno at 12 o’clock to see if the site met with his approval. He didn’t arrive until 3pm, full of apologies, but at least he had kept in touch with us so that we knew what was going on. The site passed the test, thank goodness. Delivery should be next Tuesday, with any luck. Then Paul can get down to some real work, building decking, and laying pipes, instead of the usual round of blog, shopping, tapas and pool, which he has been enjoying for the last six weeks.J
More from me later……. If the editor lets her?

Tuesday 5-9-2006

I did the blog and visited Currency Direct to transfer more cash from pounds to euros. I then went to Cajasur (our Spanish bank) to ask them to have loads of ‘readies’ ready for us for Friday, to pay for the caravans. I got in bother by saying Elayne stayed at El Pinar doing women’s things the other day, so Elayne stayed at El Pinar and……………., eh and………………got her self ready for when I came home so that we could go to our solicitors in Vera. Now I’ll be in further bother for not noticing that she had scrubbed the top of the television with domestos, or something.
We arrived at Vera about quarter past twelve. We then went with Karen (she speaks the best English in the solicitors office, mother comes from Liverpool and she lives on Vera Playa) to the notary’s office in the centre of Vera and arrived about ten to one. We then sat and waited in this frenetic and hot office/waiting room, which was full of animated noisy excited mainly Spanish people all waiting to see the notary for something or other. There must have been some sort of a system but it took us an hour and a half to get to the front of the queue so the notary could read our wills, check every detail against our passports etc and then for us all to sign the documents. Karen said that this was a quiet day and the Fridays are three times more busy and even more wild than today. Anyway our wills are now made and are going to be sent to Madrid for registration and then will be returned to us at some stage in the next three or four or five or six to eight weeks as complete (this is normal). One has to retain a sense of humour with these things but people like Karen must spend an awful lot of time just waiting around in offices like this. Hey ho.
We then said goodbye and thank you to Karen and then Elayne and I bought some lunch and went down to Garrucha beach area and ate fresh baked crusty rolls broken open and filled with sliced cheese and ham, all washed down with pure orange juice, magic. We paddled of course. Garrucha beach is quite strange in that it has very good sand and clean clear sea water but it is directly opposite the large shipping port. The very large ships bring stone and gravel into Garrucha to satisfy the infrastructure demand of the building and development in the Almeria area. A ship that we saw set sail was under a Panamanian flag bound for somewhere to repeat the whole process again. From previous pictures you may have seen that there are always two or three ships waiting offshore to dock and unload. From a bystanders point of view it was interesting watching the ship put to sea with the attendant tugs and pilot boats fussing around until it was clear of the harbour.
As we were making our way back to the car we noticed that some fishing boats had just landed their catch so we went to the fish market to see what they had caught, we took pictures of marlin, sardines, crabs and many other types of fish. We arrived back at El Pinar about half past seven after agreeing that it was not really a bad way to spend a nice Tuesday in September, we could think of worse thing to do.
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