La Cena

I make a pretty outstanding Tortilla de Patatas for a foreigner, and they turn out even better when I make them with an authentic view. I put the changes down to the local cooking oil, having a proper Tortilla plate, different potatoes and more time. The big shops do sell bags of potatoes specially selected for Tortilla making, and they do make a difference.

Having stuffed half of this Tortilla these two adults were like well fed Pythons, content and pretty well unable to move. The following day, we ate the left overs in a baguette and were so full we could barely walk. Seemed criminal to waste it!

Relax

It's Fiesta time, so a great opportunity to kick back and relax. Time to enjoy the late summer sun and soak up the views. There was one small technical hitch with the  plan.

Never mind, normal service was soon restored and we headed to a bar beside the Bufador in the old town. When the sea swell comes up a hole in the rocks, it sounds like a bull snorting - honest!

Next morning, sunrise was pretty spectacular, but there was clearly something stuck on my camera lens, just on the horizon out at sea. I checked with my neighbour and it's apparently a gas rig, spoiling the view.

Doing nothing is an art form, and I do need to practise. Pool time, followed by long periods of staring out to sea, more eating, drinking and snoozing.

 I had made a vow to stay away from Chufi as it's easy to drink lots and quite fattening. However on spotting a new blend in the supermarket, I soon convinced myself that I really should try some. It's wonderful, very creamy and I'm doomed!

We settled down into our Fiesta fortnight routine, with evenings spent on the seafront, or in the old town, soaking up the vibes.

Spain is in recession, and unemployment is high, though folks are still coming to the town in big numbers for Fiesta, with South Beach being turned into an impromptu carpark on Saturday night.

The Valencian Summer

This week, I have read that Valencia had it's third hottest summer on record this year. The sunshine brought record numbers of tourists to the beaches, and Peniscola was declared Spain's 4th most popular resort. May was not especially warm, and we had rain, but I can confirm that July was a scorcher.

The tourists utilised every possible place to park, including traffic islands and roundabouts, and the town, opened South Beach for parking. I imagine that this tourist did not arrive on Ryanair.


Here are the cars on the beach in the evening. Also in the image is frame for the Beach Cinema, which generally starts at 10.30pm.

Here is a queue of folks waiting for a table at a popular restaurant. It's about 10.30pm and they are queueing around the cars which are parked on the roundabout. The road was also open for traffic!

I took the time to go and explore nearby Benicarlo, which is not a tourist destination and has some great buildings, and the centre is quite smart.



I did my best to try some local specialities, and eat like a local. Some foods promised much and delivered very little!


I managed to see the beach early one morning, freshly raked and almost empty, so strange for high season.

There are always street performers on the promenade in the evenings. Some are more sophisticated than others.



Each September as part of the Fiesta, young bulls are set loose to run up the beach. The view here is of the safety fencing set up on the beach with the old town in the background. This was a very still, warm evening and it's about 10pm when I took this photo.

The weather was more humid than usual, and I've heard that this was typical throughout the region. We were not too badly affected, as the estate is on a hill and we always get a breeze. I did suffer my first local mosquito bite ever! Typically the insects blow past at such a rapid pace, we need no screens or spray.

Summer ended with the usual Gota Fria downpour, and nearby Vinaros achieved 20 litres per square metre of rainfall one day.

The Battle of The Beers

We were quite surprised to find our favourite Chimay beer in a supermarket 2 towns away. We made the decision to check out the flavour with the Med as a backdrop instead of the usual Swiss mountain. As it's 9.0% vol, it's potent stuff.

The next day our nearest Spanish neighbours called round and surprised us by presenting us with a case of a specialist Spanish beer called Ambar 1900, plus 4 Spanish wines.


These two beers were vastly different. The Chimay is a dark heavy beer, incredibly tangy and strong, when compared to the Ambar, which is exactly as described on the bottle, a Pale Ale! It's made only in Zaragoza, by one company, so is just as unique as the Chimay, with the exception of Chimay being made by Trappist monks!

The Chimay was a different beer to the one we'd been drinking earlier in the year, but brewed along the same lines. However it still does produce the same buzz. It's best not to even consider going out after a Chimay or two.

Ambar is a light refreshing drink, serve it chilled and it's perfect for a hot climate. Good job we were presented with a case!

El Noche del Fuego

The town has quite a few festivals throughout the year. We'd missed a Jazz Festival by one day on our arrival and I was around, for the series of concerts of Baroque Classical Music taking place in the castle each evening, at 10.30pm. Each night a large brazier was lit on the roof of the castle at the start of each concert.



To announce the start of the concerts, a large Firework Display was set to music, organised by the local experts Pirotecnia Tomas. I'd seen the guys setting up the fireworks on the beach over a couple of days. Lots of folks drove in from other towns and villages as this was quite a spectacle.

Everything in a plastic bag is explosive!



I headed up to the castle ramparts for a good view, and as they began at midnight, stopped at a shop to buy some water. My diversion meant that I passed by one of the speakers, which was powered up, and I wondered if the folks sitting nearby really understood just how much sound would come out of the tower, as it was huge.

Think rock concert.



The local police kept chasing me from each ledge I sat on, for being too close, and I eventually sat on one of the walls within the citadel, along with quite a few others.

When the fireworks began, I practically fell off my ledge, which would have been a bit serious. I thought I was used to the level of explosives in Spain, but these were bigger and better than any I had seen before.

I never did hear any of the music, and covered in the remains of fireworks and soot, I cycled back through the town at 1am, to see the temperature on an outside digital thermometer showing 25c. Perhaps I should have made it an all-nighter, there were still folks heading into the old town, instead I wove through the large traffic jam and headed back. My ears were ringing and I'm really not surprised!

More Grey Hair and a few Chubasco's

We have had the builders at work on our house in Spain doing some alterations. They are local, so exchange of information has been quite tough as we don't share much language. For months they have been telling us in emails that there was no water on at the house, and most recently that there was no meter. This could not be correct, since we have had a water connection and a metered supply paid by standing order, for over 3 years. We thought that they must be looking in the wrong meter cupboard.

So when we arrive to view the finished works, we open up the meter cupboard, and find that the meter is gone. No water supply and no meter. The house is also deep in concrete dust, all over the hard and soft surfaces. Lets just say I was a little unhappy!

After a bit of digging around in official offices in town we end up in the office of a local developer. This company are responsible for supplying the water to the estate, we show the woman at the desk the photo above, explain the situation and show her my bank statement indicating that we have paid for a water supply.

Her expression was priceless. She clearly knew what was going on, got on the phone straightaway, and we were sent back to our house to meet the meter man. A short debate followed as, for some reason he was not keen on fitting our meter, however we pointed out that from our perspective the meter had been stolen and we had paid for a meter and supply. His response was that the meter had not been stolen, so....... he knew too!

Our new meter was fitted early that same evening, and just in case the company is thinking of doing the same again, here it is, image captured for the whole world to see.

We were pretty relieved to get the water on, but that was a bit short lived when we soon had a water outage lasting 15 hours. This was followed by a pretty serious rainstorm, and it was then that we discovered that our builder had failed to consider the need for a doorstep downstairs in the conversion. Our new room was flooded.

After lots of mopping up we headed to the DIY store where Andy purchased a doorstep and some concrete to fit it with. This concrete powder has a setting time of 3-6 minutes, so he had to work quite quickly!

He also discovered that the electrical work that had been undertaken was, well, really odd. Along the lines of, the electrical plugs being wired through the ceiling light fittings.

Still, the builder is coming back to fix that, he called round to give us back our house keys, so we were able to show him the problem. I got the impression that he's seen it before!

The weather continued to be pretty cold and dismal, but it gave us chance to clean the place up and visit the Town Hall to get the Council Tax put on direct debit. The official says "si automatico!" we shall see what happens when it's due for payment.

Here we are driving past the famous Floating Orange Groves of Valencia. Well, the irrigation was afloat, as was the main road. Don't blame us if your oranges are full of muddy water.

Here's the beach view, the Med is normally like a millpond, we have never seen it like this in May.

The stormy weather meant that I could take longer in the shops and try out some different food. Found these tomatoes, called Cebra, very tasty. They don't photograph too well, but are mainly black and red stripes.

The local supermarket seem to have realised that women can never have too many hambags, as these were all over the store.

I have to say that we are both pretty tired after our trip. Hopefully the next time we are there will be much more tranquil.

There was a cloud, just the one though.....

We were feeling rather fed up of living under a blanket of uniform grey sky, so we headed off to Spain to get some sunshine and, well, daylight really. There was a cloud one morning, the only one we saw, so I grabbed my camera! Our resort town was in full summer swing and on Saturday night we headed down to the beachfront.

This photo was taken about 10pm, and the locals are just coming into town, there are still a few folks on the beach, and we were a little surprised to see no-one in the sea.

We had already walked up the North Beach promenade where the resident sand sculptors were doing their best to remind us northern europeans, of the cold weather we had left behind, and that the same weather was waiting for our return.

We had originally planned to do some more walking, but the weather seemed quite hot, and as there had been some fires in the countryside north of us in Tarragona. We agreed to chill out by the pool instead!

Flying back over the Pyrenees and Andorra, we saw lots more snow than is usually visible in July, and it made me think about getting away for some summer skiing.

One Careful Owner

The Sale notice says it all " Perfecto Estado"!!

I Love My Hiking Boots

Not just because they are comfortable either!. They are Goretex lined and I never realised just how valuable that would turn out to be when I got stuck in a malfunctioning Spanish "Superloo".
If you have ever wondered what happens when the superloo you wanted to use goes into a cleaning cycle I can now tell you.
Of course they are meant to lock automatically to clean when the last person leaves. However in my case, the door locked after I entered.
Pumps and machinery started.....
The seat lifted up by itself.......
The dim light got even dimmer......
The floor became awash, and water started spraying in the general direction of the toilet bowl and me.....

All this happened in a few seconds, so naturally I wanted out and hit the emergency exit button, hoping that it too was'nt having a bad day!

The door opened and I must have looked quite shocked, and I was quite damp as I stumbled out onto the promenade. I do know that my boots outers were pretty wet, though inside my feet were nice and dry!

Serra d'Irta

Just completed several days of hiking in the Valencian Regional Park. May is probably perfect hiking weather for coastal Spain, with warm weather and a steady breeze. We hiked mostly on the coastal path, the route is easy going, with one cliff to climb, El Volante.

At the top of the cliff is the ancient watchtower of Torre Badum, and beyond that we walked on to Pebret.

As summer approaches, the routes become hotter and drier, and we saw the Fire Marshal driving round, as well as the park wardens riding trail bikes several times a day. On the longest climb we kept being passed by endurance racers, running uphill, numbers on their hydration belts and desert hats on. Made me feel quite fat, old and unfit to watch them.

We stopped off at Pebret Beach, the sea was very refreshing!

The park is quite unspoiled, and very quiet to walk around. It's one of the few places of natural beauty in coastal Valencia, where the developers have not covered the hillside in concrete and built holiday homes. However the Regional Government plan to build 3000 homes here. If you want to visit, make it soon.

It's good that we completed our hikes, as the weather went very warm on the last day, so we did a bit of housework...and lay by our pool, while the temperature rose to the low 30's. Flew into the UK to be met by 13c and rain!

I could not help myself

When is Spain, I do try to eat local food and drink. Took a quick night time trip across to Barcelona, followed by a two hour drive to our house. Next morning up and away to Southern Valencia to visit my Mother who has broken her leg. She seemed to be fine, so set off to return to our place, and realised that we had no food in the house and would arrive after the shops close. The Costa Blanca is a very popular destination for British holidaymakers and home buyers. Consequently, in the first supermarket I entered, I was drawn to buying English bread. I felt guilty and a bit embarrassed afterwards. To be fair, it was very tasty, and the remainder of the loaf flew home with us.

While I write this blog, I am eating Spanish Chocolate, so there is hope for me!

The weather had been fair up until the day before we arrived, broke for our stay, and resumed blue sky normality a day after we returned home.

My Mother is still complaining about the rubbish collection waking her up. She is so lucky.