W e had a slow and late start this morning, due to a late finish last night down in Taberno. I’m not too sure why, but it was a very good evening down there last night, although there was not many people there. Poor old John (JC entertainer) spent quite a long period of time singing on his own before any one started to dance. We are getting to know John quite well and we have noted that apart from being a really super singer and good comedian he has a very good memory, so that when he is chatting to the audience he brings out little things that he has learnt about different people like saying to us last night that it must be cold up at our caravan. When we talk to him, and he is not performing, he and his wife are really a very nice couple. We have bought tickets for the Christmas Party night at Lentisco’s on the 12th December. John has rounded up a few local turns and they have sold out of tickets (120 at €7 each, including a buffet supper). The profits from the evening are going to APSA (Animal Protection Society Albox). APSA is a very strong organisation and they do a lot of very good work to help all animals in this area.
Pictures: John, last night and sunrise on the Med this morning from the caravan.

The last day of November tomorrow, crikey!
When we had settled down at the caravan again last night after driving up to Murcia, to see Barbara and Pete and also organise the caravan move with Juan, we both commented on how really grotty it was to be woken up by the alarm clock at a quarter to eight yesterday morning. Because of the late and very quick sunrise here at about eight o’clock (it’s still dark at half past seven) we don’t surface much before nine these days. If we wake earlier than that it’s usually still dark and cold enough in the caravan, early morning, to roll over for another hour or so before venturing out.
We have had a relatively gentle day today after yesterday and in anticipation of our usual Wednesday evening dancing till twelve o’clock.
We had a forecast of thunder and lightening today but nothing, as yet, has materialised. We could do with a little rain to keep the dust down after the camino surface was disturbed the other day. The back of the car looks as though I have been on the Sahara Rally, and this after putting it through the car wash again this morning.
Pictures: The car wash and Olive collection point still going. We are also collecting pictures from Estate Agents windows for idears on our house, we liked the balcony and porch on this house.

Today we have been up to Murcia, Ikea. We went up there to meet my cousin Barbara and her husband Pete, they are lovely people. They have a holiday house in Torrevieja and come over from Taunton in Somerset for a month or so at a time as the mood takes them. We arranged to meet at a prominent place roughly half way and Ikea suited the bill in all respects. It is rather strange that the last time we saw them was in the Railway Hotel in Bradford about a year or so back. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours chatting with them as though we had met them last week.
Whilst we were travelling up to see them we called in to see Juan (the man we bought the caravan from) at Puerto Lumbreras. He will come up to Taberno to move the caravan and portacabin over to the lay-by on Monday. We are going to have a busy Sunday and Monday. There is a hundred and one things to move about and disconnect. It is amazing how much we have settled into where we are now. We really don’t want to move but as soon as we do we will have a flushing loo (using the potho) and water direct from the hebe, so that we do not have to visit Lentisco’s every morning and we don’t have to carry water up from the village to fill the water butt. On top of this of course we can then concentrate on getting our house built, so that will be exciting.
Pictures: Barbara and Pete with us at Ikea and the sunrise at 08.00hrs this morning (it’s been a cool day for travelling).

What a blooming commotion it’s been today.
As we were driving onto the tarmac we spotted Javier’s lorry going towards our caravan with more building materials on the back. I explained to him in, my very eloquent Spanish that we have ‘no contracto’ yet, but if he wishes to unload it all then that’s OK by me. He unloaded it all and even brought some more this afternoon. We had just returned from Taberno when we heard this loud rumbling further down the camino. We drove down to find that a ruddy great JCB type earth scraper was levelling the camino. We had been told that they do this from time to time and especially after heavy rain. Well we have not seen this happening on any other camino but hey ho. However the old man that was driving out in front to forewarn oncoming vehicles of the oncoming of this machine just happened to be the man we had seen on the next piece of land to ours. When they arrived at our border they stopped, got out of their respective vehicles and spent a long time gesticulating towards his plot of land. The JCB chappie then spent a long time on his mobile phone. At first we thought that they were perhaps council spies and that we had been rumbled already. After a lot of walking around and more phone calls I went down to see what ‘was to do’. They showed me the blade of the scraper on this machine and clearly it was worn right down to it’s rivets. Later a lorry arrives with a compressor and a new blade (it took two men to lift the blade for each half of the machine. After about an hour the lorry withdrew and the JCB driver moved onto the next door piece of land and proceeded to clear some scrub area. I walked down just in time to see them straying over into our plot. When they saw me coming down again they reversed up and got back onto the proper boundary course. I don’t suspect any ill intent with this huge machine but it’s just as well that we were here. They scraped quite a swath of scrub before lunch time and then back to work on the Camino. I think that a ‘quick cash in back pocket job on the side’ made them happen to scrape this camino today. It will be interesting to see if any other Camino’s get a wash and scrape up. I suspect that the owner of the land next door will probably plant more almonds and claim a huge EU subsidy for land reclamation.
Life is peaceful again but it makes us realise what we are in for when the building work starts on the house.

Firstly, today, we went down to the Heurcal Overa municipal sports centre to ‘sus’ out the tennis facilities. There are three outside courts as far as we can see. Guess what, on Sunday when the whole family can enjoy sport together, the municipal sports centre is closed, how Spanish is that then? We took a note of the opening times for future reference. A few people that we already know have said that they would come along and have a game if I was to set it up, so I will.
On the way back to Taberno we called in (by prior arrangement) to see Allen and Mags and then with them to see Chris and Avril next door (without prior arrangement). Both of their houses are really nice with very clever design features inside and outside. They have worked incredibly hard in the very few years that they have been here. I’m going to have my work cut out trying to emulate anything as nice as either of these two places, now that Elayne has a scent for what she wants our place to be like.
We had just got back to the caravan and I noticed that Eric and Isobel from El Pinar had rung. I rang them and Eric said that he is taking his daughter back to Murcia airport and as there was some mail for us he would meet us at the Taberno exit of the motorway on his way back.
It‘s amazing how warm, friendly and hospitable people are in this area, to us newcomers. We do appreciate it very much and thank them all for their friendship.
Picrures. Sunrise today, plane trail in the sky yesterday, tennis courts through the bars and it's raining again over there but not over here. The promissed rain for this week end was three spots this afternoon.

We had our meeting with Chema, and Bob and Pam, last night and the outcome is that we are going to make immediate plans to start building the house straight away.
Straight away meaning:
When Chema has produced the building plans in two weeks time.
When we have made out an itinerary of events, concerning the house building program.
When we have also pinned the builder down to price, time scale, penalty clauses and we and the builder are satisfied with the whole building contract.
When we have made arrangements to move the caravan and the portacabin over to the lay-by. We will call in to see the caravan man when we go up to Murcia to meet my cousin Barbara on Tuesday.
It seems that we have full permission to have a house on this site, but the problem is that we do not have a house on the site right now. If someone came up on an inspection we might be in a sticky position trying then to build a house. If someone comes up to inspect after we have floor, walls and roof then they would expect the house to be there.
This, in the eyes of Chema, Bob and Pam, seems to be the only and very best of otherwise not very good options, such as re-applying to build, starting the whole process again. This could take up to two years with the chaos going on in the Albox planning department at the moment. Because they have up to two thousand illegal homes and developers to cope with right now, little us with our one house on 45000sq mtrs and already permission for a house to be there, will be very low profile.
Any way here we go at last.
We were sat on the patio at Lentisco’s this morning in the very pleasant sunshine and it suddenly dawned on me that all of the trees still have a very healthy coating of leaves. When we got back to the caravan I also saw that most of the almond trees still have a lot of leaves on them ,although they are starting to look a little bit ‘backendish’. We have worked this morning and even with the rain forecast we are sat up here, not being able to see very far, in the lovely sunshine. We understand that the UK (not sure where) is having very high winds and gales at the moment so we hope that all our family and many friends are safe and sound.

We went for supper to Bob and Janet’s house last night. What a super evening we had with them. They have renovated their house and made it into a wonderful and extensive cortijo. We had a lovely curry for supper, this being the very first one that we have had since leaving the UK, boy! did we enjoy it.
We had intended to try to learn, with them, how to play Spanish cards, but time just ran away with us and we realised that it was after one o’clock. We hope to have more opportunities to get to grips with the cards, with them, quite soon. See the photograph of the four of us, taken whilst I was still sober enough to work the camera.
Today we have been shopping to Albox and stocked back up on a few essentials (like American Ginger Ale and Sherry;-).
This afternoon, as it was such a nice afternoon, that after a Tapas etc, lunch at Lentisco’s, we came back to camp. I chopped some more wood and tidied up the ‘sea defences’ in readiness for forecasted rain this weekend. Elayne got to grips with some washing. We are meeting up with our architect this evening at seven. I think that we might be due for an early night for a change tonight.
PS: I have just eaten my first Dime bar (we have found a supplier at last) since we came out here.

Last night we slept very well. Not only were we very tired after our awful windy night on Tuesday, but we danced the Merengue, Machetero and Tango for an hour before retiring to Lentisco’s bar, where we drank and danced with a super crowd of people, to the excellent JC, until half past twelve and then sat talking until after one o’clock. When we finally rolled out of the bar they were putting the chairs on the tables for the clean up. That’s what you call a good basis for a good nights sleep. We surfaced at ten o’clock this morning with the cats hopping about cross legged because they wanted to go out.
It’s funny but I avoided being ‘burnt out’ by the time I was twenty five, but I’m not sure about reaching sixty five if we are having this much fun now.
In the pictures today, is one of the Taberno by-pass nearing completion. They have been building it for nearly three years because they kept running out of money. We feel very privileged to be witnessing the final part of it. It will reduce the traffic flow in Taberno from twelve cars an hour to about six, by diverting traffic coming up from the south, that wants to go to Albox in the south west, without it coming into the heart of the village. It all seems a bit over kill to me, but then I don’t live in the village.
When we arrived back at base today, we saw that the builder (one presumes it is our builder Javier) had deposited a pile of scaffold type girders neatly to one side of the caravan (see picture). Does he know something that we don’t or is he just parking them here for a while? We have not heard anything from anyone in regards to the planning and we only have a vague hope that Chema (architect) might give us some news if we see him tomorrow evening. I suppose it could be classed as progress really.

Strewth. The photographic night sky (per yesterday’s picture) was the harbinger of a very rough night. Before we went to bed the wind got up. It started buffeting the caravan about a little, we were concerned. Towards midnight the wind had died down and we slept. At two o’clock we were both awake feeling as though we were in a wind tunnel that someone had forgotten to turn off. It was quite frightening at times with the caravan shaking around and this movement being accentuated as we lay wide awake in bed. At two thirty we put the battery light on and laid in bed awake. At three o’clock Saffy was sick (this is not uncommon but at night we may not hear him) Elayne decided to make a cup of tea, which always goes down well when you’re in worry mode. After a cup of tea we laid awake playing ’I Spy With My Little Eye’ until finally we felt that the wind had decreased enough for us not to feel concerned and we started to nod off once more, thankfully. We did stir a few more times as the wind rose but nodded straight back off again until blessed daylight came upon us and it was half past eight.
This was by far the worst night that we have spent up here and all the stories that we have heard in the past about caravans tipping over or flying away came into full focus in the dark. We both independently (without telling each other) worked out an evacuation plan for us and the cats, in case we needed it.
On close inspection this morning we seem to be fairly sound and unscathed. The tied down posts, that I thankfully put in last week, are all in good condition this morning as are the ones on the portacabin.
We are tired but very thankful to be in one solid piece. The people who sail in small yachts in this sort of weather deserve my full admiration and sympathy. Just imagine tossing around for twenty four hours or longer in a tiny boat, not being able to eat or sleep, but just sitting below decks, on your own, if you can, riding it all out until the better weather arrives, sometime in the future. Like last night every minutes seems to last ten minutes.
This afternoon the wind is still blowing, but not nearly as bad as overnight, and we have glorious sunshine and an ambient temperature of 15 degrees, and 19 in the sunshine.
We hope that we have enough energy left to dance tonight and that the wind continues to abate.
Our friends Isobel and Eric rang us from El Pinar this morning to see how we faired overnight, which was really nice of them. Good luck on your book finalisation trip to the UK soon Isobel and your drive to the UK in early December Eric.
We have just run outside to watch a golden eagle fly up the valley past us. We need to know where the cats are when we see eagles. They are wondeful to watch though.
PS I think that I have found the reason for the comments not showing up. Because we had a few spurious comments a while back I put on the moderation control for the blog. What I did not realise is that then I have to review each and every comment before it is published. Please forgive me and don't stop writing the comments. Now that I am aware I will read them and publish them pronto, adios.

Did you know, that in both MS Word and the word processor in MS Works, that if you have a lot of text that you save and then add to and save and then add to, you can work in say 12 point, but all the text before now you can reduce down to 1 point (you can’t see it much but it’s all still there) and this saves an enormous amount of space? All of my blog is originally written in 12 point (so I can read it) and I add today’s blog onto the bottom of yesterdays. I started the file on the 5th October and to date it was over nine pages long. I have just reduced all the text before today down to 1 point by highlighting it all (Press Ctrl and A keys together) and then left clicking the down arrow, where you can change text size (it will show up as 12 point or something similar).Then just press the number 1 key and all of the highlighted text will become 1 point. My nine pages of text are now reduced down to just one page.
I’m not sure if you will find this to be useful# but I just wanted to share it with you if you hadn’t thought of it before.
We decided to put the car through the auto car wash at Albox today (lazy ‘bs, but it’s rather windy and quite cold with the wind chill factor, probably down from 11 to about 5 or 6 degrees’). Next to the auto car wash on many occasions we have seen an olive collection point. Until today it has always been deserted. Today it was a hive of activity with cars with their boots full of bags of olives and cars with trailers full of crates with the whole family, young and old, helping out. The process seems to be that you arrive with your load of black ripe (and also green unripe) olives. When you reach the front of the queue you register in the little ticket office and when you are told to, you empty your harvest of olives into a huge hopper with grids across it. Your olives then go up a conveyor a few at a time and any branches or leaves that are still on the olives are removed mechanically. The whole crop is then weighed and the recorded weight is entered onto a computer and you are given your receipt ticket showing your name and this weight. While the olives then go through different stages of crushing to remove the olive oil you take your ticket round to the side door and get either money or olive oil in exchange for your ticket. We stood talking to a Dutchman and his Spanish wife and M in L (he spoke super English with a slight American twang, from watching American TV he told us) who live down near Antas (down near Mojacar). They had been harvesting their three trees (we have fifteen) and had a whole boot full of crates of olives to exchange for olive oil. He told us that they get one sixth of the weight of the whole crop weight, in olive oil. This exchanged olive oil is then more than enough to last them and their family for the whole year and also lets them give some away to friends. We didn’t find out how much money they would have got instead of the oil.
I’m really chuffed to have seen all of this at last. We have puzzled over how the system works for ages. We are considerably higher up in the mountains than Antas so I would suspect that we will be harvesting nearer to Christmas or even in January. Watch this space for more olive news as and when it occurs. You may remember Chris Stewarts funny story about taking his first crop of olives to the crusher in his book Driving over Lemons, or was it Parrot in the Pepper Tree?

Monday 20-11-2006

We have now been in Spain for four months, my how time flies when you’re having fun.
Today we did not start with a plan but as the sun was shining we decided to have a further investigative roam around Heurcal Overa. We called at Lidl but bought nothing and then we said that we would park up about 1km out of the town and walk down into the centre. This is what we normally do. As we were going to do a right at the roundabout that leads down to the high street we saw that the entire road was blocked to traffic and that the area was full of badly parked cars. It soon dawned on us that we had arrived on market day so we parked up equally as badly and walked the full length of the market. It occupies just one road from the roundabout right to the heart of the town centre. We estimate that it stretches about 2km in total and must be one of the longest markets in the whole of Almeria.
As you can imagine in this typical Spanish market you can buy just about anything at all to do with clothing and food.
We stopped at one stall that had tables piled high with brand new jumpers (probably seconds). It was like a jumble sale with all the women pulling out the items that were on the bottom and throwing them on the top (frightened the life out of me). Well this proved too much for Elayne and the next thing I know is she has also got pitched in the morass. We walked away with four thick and colourful winter jumpers, very good quality, for 10€ that’s about £1.65 each. You will already have guessed that it took a long tome to get to the town centre and then back to the car.
We had a pint and a snack on the way back and ended up talking to a couple who have fallen foul of the illegal building disease that is rife over in the town around Albox. They have been fighting for their right to live in their in their homes with a legal habitation licence for nearly four years now. They were originally given a licence by the town hall but then someone, again at the town hall, told them that it was a forgery. Obviously they are very bitter and they and a lot of the residents in the area that are of the same fate are forming an action group to lobby the town hall to sort out the mess once and for all. They have got the TV and newspapers interested in their plight and they are seeking to join forces with the Valencia action group who are successfully fighting the ‘land grab’ farce up there. They are planning a protest march in Albox shortly, I have said to them that I will join them for any peaceful demonstrations that they are organising. They are also hoping to charge a membership fee of €50 and that this will include social and legal support in the event of more illegal ‘goings on‘. We’ve never been in a resistance movement before.
On the way back to camp we saw our only second (live) snake as we were coming up off the Taberno rambla. It was thin, light orange and about half a meter long, making it’s way across the tarmac road, so, after we had taken it’s picture we persuaded it to turn round and head back to the safety of the bushes. Once it got the drift of our intentions, it departed from us very quickly. We later identified this as a Southern Smooth Snake, not sure if it is poisonous.
Today’s mystery object is??? It's nylon/plastic, 300mm long and 75mm in diametre. We found it out on the campo yesterday, we have no idea what it could be except that it is most probably a farming item. Go on have a guess in the comments section.

We have been sunbathing today. Sorry to keep on about the weather, but, we had an overnight temperature of 5 degrees. We were reluctant to arise from our warm and cosy bed. My ears must have been showing because I can remember them being as cold as ice during the night (must tuck them in tonight). By lunch time we had done our essential bits and having returned to base where we ‘chilled out’ outside in our fold-away chairs. I removed my upper attire (no, there are no pictures because it would further upset the UK establishment) and sat in the glorious sunshine for about an hour (it must have been in the mid twenties).
We had a game of frizbee and two sets of boules (one win each from games of twenty one points).
Later we walked down to the southern extremities of our estate with the cats (they like going for walks with us, see pictures) and talked to the almond and olive trees down there whilst picking some more almonds. The husks of these almonds are black and look as though they should be discarded, however they are fine inside the husks and this is why our neighboroughing farmer is spending a lot of his time just now picking these last almonds off the trees and off the ground.
It is nearly half past six now and we have just been for a further ramble (without the cats) down the camino, with drinks in our hands and enjoyed watching yet another glorious sunset. The sky was red so if I remember the saying correctly ’Red sky at night, shepherds pie for dinner tomorrow’ or something like that.
Perhaps tomorrow we should get serious and do some real work like hovering or cleaning the windows and chopping more almond wood from our prunings. Anybody would think that we are only here to enjoy ourselves.