Today I am super-excited ---
Why?
Because tomorrow I am giving an interview to the Sunday Mirror of all people about LIVING THE DREAM IN SPAIN !
How lucky am I????!
Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Websites and getting Optimised
The more I read and study on the Internet, the more I begin to understand that there are many forms of getting "noticed". Be it submitting articles (of which I have done several on Moving to Spain and registering a UK vehicle in Spain to name just a couple), but there is also this Bogey Word called Web Site Optimisation!
YIPES! What a MINEFIELD.
I have friends who don't live here in Córdoba, and who DON'T run a Bed & Breakfast (there - a perfect example of optimising - Córdoba and Bed & Breakfast are two really important words for us, but I can't sit here repeating them over and over, and use the example to prove a point) - who do have websites offering services, and who have their website details or connected details filling up page one of Google!
IT'S VERY ANNOYING!
So, I am now spending several hours each day writing articles, and working on this issue of Optimising. I am writing about Pamper Weekends, or the fact that I personally love to be pampered. I am writing about being a single parent, and the pitfalls and joys of such a life. I am joining forums and clubs that have relevant members - others with a bed & breakfast perhaps, or are running their own successful businesses. Needless to say, none of them have ever heard of La Celada, or Iznájar for that matter . But I hope, that with time and my efforts, they SOON WILL!
YIPES! What a MINEFIELD.
I have friends who don't live here in Córdoba, and who DON'T run a Bed & Breakfast (there - a perfect example of optimising - Córdoba and Bed & Breakfast are two really important words for us, but I can't sit here repeating them over and over, and use the example to prove a point) - who do have websites offering services, and who have their website details or connected details filling up page one of Google!
IT'S VERY ANNOYING!
So, I am now spending several hours each day writing articles, and working on this issue of Optimising. I am writing about Pamper Weekends, or the fact that I personally love to be pampered. I am writing about being a single parent, and the pitfalls and joys of such a life. I am joining forums and clubs that have relevant members - others with a bed & breakfast perhaps, or are running their own successful businesses. Needless to say, none of them have ever heard of La Celada, or Iznájar for that matter . But I hope, that with time and my efforts, they SOON WILL!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Christmas and Matansas (gory!)
Well, the last couple of days have been one HECK of an experience for us because we were invited to our first ever Matansa …… YIPES!
We got up very early on Friday morning – mostly because my seven year old son came rushing into my bedroom at 6.30am saying “Come on Mummy we´ve got to go to the Matansa!!!” He was so excited and had struggled to sleep the night before AND had got up an hour early ….. but I got up all the same and didn´t bother showering as I figured I was likely to get a bit dirty during the course of the day…. Ho ho ho, little did she know … !
We arrived at the house of Solidad and her husband Antonio just before 8am. For them, the Matansa is an ancient tradition, a necessary and utterly unemotional process – having needed to do it over and over during their lifetimes in order to eat meat. For me, having never in my life done more than wring a pheasant´s neck, I really didn´t know if I would be able to handle it or not, but knew that I felt it my duty to go, to be there for a small boy who wanted hugely to be there, and to help where I could.
We followed seven seriously big men and another five women out the back of the barn and down into the olive groves where, under a big tree, was a pen about 5m x 3m, within which were 2 huge pigs and four smaller ones. We stayed well out of the way armed with the camera as I was official photographer for the day. I then watched as these seven men worked VERY hard to get one pig sectioned off from the others in order to bring it out of the pen. They do it by looping a rope around the upper jaw – which the pig doesn´t like, and so starts to squeal very loudly. I then saw a glint out of the corner of my eye, and realised that one of the women was holding a very substantial double bladed diamond shaped knife at the ready. My heart was quite literally leaping inside my chest but I knew I couldn´t run at this stage – we had committed and so I switched my focus from how nervous I felt to the pig and what was about to happen – and so I prayed for her and profoundly thanked her ……..
It took seven men and two women a difficult struggling minute to get the immense, squealing pig from all fours onto its side on the pig bench, at which point and not a second wasted very swiftly the knife did it´s job at the base of the front of the neck. A woman was at the feet of the pig with a large plastic bucket to catch the blood that surprisingly rapidly spent itself, beating it vigorously with her hands to prevent it from coagulating --- this blood is essential to the Andalucians who turn it into the most delicious Morcilla – black pudding effectively but mixed with onion, special pork fat from around the intestinal tract, a dozen or more different spices, red, black and sweet pepper and a LOT of garlic. So the kill, the way the animal is sacrificed, is of immense importance, even if it is, for the newcomer, a pretty vivid and “in your face” experience.
Within an hour the men had brought this pig into the shed, scraped the 4 inch long fur off by pouring boiling water over every millimetre of the beast prior to scraping and scraping with knives bringing them out in a muck sweat it was such vigorous work; removed the head cleanly and strung the beast up on a large double sided ladder ready for butchering. At which point, we all went back out to the pig pen for sacrifice number two – which went smoothly other than the fact that this pig clearly realised what was coming having listened to its sister live, and die, that morning and so made even more noise.
Once the kill was over, it was absolutely non stop for the rest of the day. The next most important job is to remove the intestines, completely intact, in order that the women can set about emptying them (including the stomach) and rigorously cleaning them in order that they become the “skin” of the morcilla, salchichón and chorizo. The morcilla (made with blood) is the most crucial of all the jobs as they have to be made the same day as the kill, otherwise the blood turns and is completely wasted. And when I found out that we were making 67 kilos of morcilla (enough for a year for this small family), I realised they had their work cut out for them. It took about 4 hours to simply clean the guts to the satisfaction of the women working – turned inside out, they are washed three times in home made soap and then five times in a mixture of salt, vinegar, lemon slices and flour (for whitening) with a small amount of hot water for making it easier to move them around. Over and over rinsing and scrubbing until they are white, clear and clean. Then they are turned the other way around and the same process is applied but four times on the basis that no poo has touched this side.
Once clean, the process of tying the ends of probably two hundred lengths of intestines is begun, while on another table the fat that has been saved from the process of unravelling the intestines is then minced ready for the morcilla mixture. By the time we were finally ready to start filling the immaculately clean intestines, it was about 4pm and we had breakfasted and lunched in that time (a STAGGERING quantity of food I would never normally eat due to the sheer quantity of FAT involved!) We had used several hundred gallons of water to clean, clean and re-clean the shed where it was all taking place – water that was being boiled in two vast metal vats over fires in the corner of the room.
The process of filling the tubes was no less simple – a woman stood on a breeze block and, with a vast wooden plunger inside a metal tube with a narrowed end, spent the next three hours forcing the thick bloody goo into the tied tubes – over and over and over again, only stopping for a glass of water. Once started, they simply do not stop until the job is done. It was absolutely exhausting to watch, let alone get in there, up to the elbows, in bloody entrails.
Even as the official photographer, I put myself to either sweeping up or carrying hot or cold water as required in order to earn at least half of my lunch – and the whole time, watching these women work for no pay, but for the knowledge that when it comes to their Matansa, these same women will come and support them in their immense load of work – I cannot tell you how much respect and humility I felt. It is no wonder to me that these women laugh raucously about love, sex, bodies, medical conditions – there are no subjects about which they behave shyly – because when you have, every year for 20, 30 or 40 years, gone through this process which starts at the end of November and goes on until early January by the time that each family has made sure that their children, cousins, aunts and uncles have all successfully prepared their year´s supply of meat, you really have shared MAJOR exhaustion, every aspect of your life over the past year, and the sheer extraordinarily hard work that is involved in preparing for, cooking for, and seeing through the annual Matansa …..
I have also learned that this tradition is becoming less and less frequent now. The young here have no interest in seeing through this tradition because although they all realise that the meat is without doubt better, purer, cleaner etc, it is an absolutely MONSTER job for which you need to have a large space, facilities, to say nothing for about 30 different and very large metal and plastic buckets for working with the dozens of different parts of the pigs, of which quite literally the bits thrown are the hair, eyes, poo and bones after being boiled. NO waste at all.
Having spent Friday and Saturday (afternoon only) with Soledad´s Matansa, we spent today up the mountain at friends helping with day 2 of their Matansa. And today I was far less precious. I got in there turning the mincers and pressers that force the goo down a tube onto which the other women had rolled the tubes of cleaned intestines, and I even handled the intestines which felt positively vile! But I know that I really did pull my weight for which they were immensely grateful – Paqui’s work won’t be done for several days yet, but another pair of hands is ALWAYS so very welcome.
So there it is – and now what is left for me to do is take my disk filled with photos to the printers where I am going to print loads off and put together a collage for Soledad and her family – Matansa 2007! I will save you all the shock of seeing them - they are not Sunday family viewing .....
We got up very early on Friday morning – mostly because my seven year old son came rushing into my bedroom at 6.30am saying “Come on Mummy we´ve got to go to the Matansa!!!” He was so excited and had struggled to sleep the night before AND had got up an hour early ….. but I got up all the same and didn´t bother showering as I figured I was likely to get a bit dirty during the course of the day…. Ho ho ho, little did she know … !
We arrived at the house of Solidad and her husband Antonio just before 8am. For them, the Matansa is an ancient tradition, a necessary and utterly unemotional process – having needed to do it over and over during their lifetimes in order to eat meat. For me, having never in my life done more than wring a pheasant´s neck, I really didn´t know if I would be able to handle it or not, but knew that I felt it my duty to go, to be there for a small boy who wanted hugely to be there, and to help where I could.
We followed seven seriously big men and another five women out the back of the barn and down into the olive groves where, under a big tree, was a pen about 5m x 3m, within which were 2 huge pigs and four smaller ones. We stayed well out of the way armed with the camera as I was official photographer for the day. I then watched as these seven men worked VERY hard to get one pig sectioned off from the others in order to bring it out of the pen. They do it by looping a rope around the upper jaw – which the pig doesn´t like, and so starts to squeal very loudly. I then saw a glint out of the corner of my eye, and realised that one of the women was holding a very substantial double bladed diamond shaped knife at the ready. My heart was quite literally leaping inside my chest but I knew I couldn´t run at this stage – we had committed and so I switched my focus from how nervous I felt to the pig and what was about to happen – and so I prayed for her and profoundly thanked her ……..
It took seven men and two women a difficult struggling minute to get the immense, squealing pig from all fours onto its side on the pig bench, at which point and not a second wasted very swiftly the knife did it´s job at the base of the front of the neck. A woman was at the feet of the pig with a large plastic bucket to catch the blood that surprisingly rapidly spent itself, beating it vigorously with her hands to prevent it from coagulating --- this blood is essential to the Andalucians who turn it into the most delicious Morcilla – black pudding effectively but mixed with onion, special pork fat from around the intestinal tract, a dozen or more different spices, red, black and sweet pepper and a LOT of garlic. So the kill, the way the animal is sacrificed, is of immense importance, even if it is, for the newcomer, a pretty vivid and “in your face” experience.
Within an hour the men had brought this pig into the shed, scraped the 4 inch long fur off by pouring boiling water over every millimetre of the beast prior to scraping and scraping with knives bringing them out in a muck sweat it was such vigorous work; removed the head cleanly and strung the beast up on a large double sided ladder ready for butchering. At which point, we all went back out to the pig pen for sacrifice number two – which went smoothly other than the fact that this pig clearly realised what was coming having listened to its sister live, and die, that morning and so made even more noise.
Once the kill was over, it was absolutely non stop for the rest of the day. The next most important job is to remove the intestines, completely intact, in order that the women can set about emptying them (including the stomach) and rigorously cleaning them in order that they become the “skin” of the morcilla, salchichón and chorizo. The morcilla (made with blood) is the most crucial of all the jobs as they have to be made the same day as the kill, otherwise the blood turns and is completely wasted. And when I found out that we were making 67 kilos of morcilla (enough for a year for this small family), I realised they had their work cut out for them. It took about 4 hours to simply clean the guts to the satisfaction of the women working – turned inside out, they are washed three times in home made soap and then five times in a mixture of salt, vinegar, lemon slices and flour (for whitening) with a small amount of hot water for making it easier to move them around. Over and over rinsing and scrubbing until they are white, clear and clean. Then they are turned the other way around and the same process is applied but four times on the basis that no poo has touched this side.
Once clean, the process of tying the ends of probably two hundred lengths of intestines is begun, while on another table the fat that has been saved from the process of unravelling the intestines is then minced ready for the morcilla mixture. By the time we were finally ready to start filling the immaculately clean intestines, it was about 4pm and we had breakfasted and lunched in that time (a STAGGERING quantity of food I would never normally eat due to the sheer quantity of FAT involved!) We had used several hundred gallons of water to clean, clean and re-clean the shed where it was all taking place – water that was being boiled in two vast metal vats over fires in the corner of the room.
The process of filling the tubes was no less simple – a woman stood on a breeze block and, with a vast wooden plunger inside a metal tube with a narrowed end, spent the next three hours forcing the thick bloody goo into the tied tubes – over and over and over again, only stopping for a glass of water. Once started, they simply do not stop until the job is done. It was absolutely exhausting to watch, let alone get in there, up to the elbows, in bloody entrails.
Even as the official photographer, I put myself to either sweeping up or carrying hot or cold water as required in order to earn at least half of my lunch – and the whole time, watching these women work for no pay, but for the knowledge that when it comes to their Matansa, these same women will come and support them in their immense load of work – I cannot tell you how much respect and humility I felt. It is no wonder to me that these women laugh raucously about love, sex, bodies, medical conditions – there are no subjects about which they behave shyly – because when you have, every year for 20, 30 or 40 years, gone through this process which starts at the end of November and goes on until early January by the time that each family has made sure that their children, cousins, aunts and uncles have all successfully prepared their year´s supply of meat, you really have shared MAJOR exhaustion, every aspect of your life over the past year, and the sheer extraordinarily hard work that is involved in preparing for, cooking for, and seeing through the annual Matansa …..
I have also learned that this tradition is becoming less and less frequent now. The young here have no interest in seeing through this tradition because although they all realise that the meat is without doubt better, purer, cleaner etc, it is an absolutely MONSTER job for which you need to have a large space, facilities, to say nothing for about 30 different and very large metal and plastic buckets for working with the dozens of different parts of the pigs, of which quite literally the bits thrown are the hair, eyes, poo and bones after being boiled. NO waste at all.
Having spent Friday and Saturday (afternoon only) with Soledad´s Matansa, we spent today up the mountain at friends helping with day 2 of their Matansa. And today I was far less precious. I got in there turning the mincers and pressers that force the goo down a tube onto which the other women had rolled the tubes of cleaned intestines, and I even handled the intestines which felt positively vile! But I know that I really did pull my weight for which they were immensely grateful – Paqui’s work won’t be done for several days yet, but another pair of hands is ALWAYS so very welcome.
So there it is – and now what is left for me to do is take my disk filled with photos to the printers where I am going to print loads off and put together a collage for Soledad and her family – Matansa 2007! I will save you all the shock of seeing them - they are not Sunday family viewing .....
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Explosion Called TIM
Location - Granada
I had followed my fab friend Giles who has his own ski school and accomodation company here (www.sierraessence.com) from the pretty valley village of Pinos Genil just off the Sierra Nevada road down into Granada with the rough plan of going to an Arabian spa after briefly meeting an ex ski instructor employee of his called Tim first. Tim had travelled down from Nice via Barcelona by train and bus with his pot-head brother and sister in law, and by all accounts has a bit of a scatty reputation. As we started along the road that joins El Corte Inglés with the Plaza Reál, Tim rang as agreed to say he was “organised” and was told by Giles where we were and “to head along the pedestrian road and we´ll bump into each other”.
Well, Giles and I were deep in conversation about I have no idea what when I suddenly registered a man belting towards us at such a pace that you would imagine him being chased by the Terminator. He shot past us arms and legs flailing in all directions like a spastic octopus before Giles abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and turning around shouted “TIM!”. The whirling dervish cannoned against the wall, bouncing off it, spinning round in a circle, taking a martial arts stance wildly glared at us with the most shockingly blue bolting eyes set in the reddest eyelids making me immediately think he was absolutely out of his head on drugs …… But instead he dragged his totally shattered reputation for being “cool” back into harness, raked his fingers through his wiry unkempt hair and stammered out “It´s okay Man, it´s just I´ve been sitting down a lot these past couple of days and wanted to loosen myself up a bit ….” I burst out laughing and barely stopped for the rest of “the Tim Encounter”…….. !
I had followed my fab friend Giles who has his own ski school and accomodation company here (www.sierraessence.com) from the pretty valley village of Pinos Genil just off the Sierra Nevada road down into Granada with the rough plan of going to an Arabian spa after briefly meeting an ex ski instructor employee of his called Tim first. Tim had travelled down from Nice via Barcelona by train and bus with his pot-head brother and sister in law, and by all accounts has a bit of a scatty reputation. As we started along the road that joins El Corte Inglés with the Plaza Reál, Tim rang as agreed to say he was “organised” and was told by Giles where we were and “to head along the pedestrian road and we´ll bump into each other”.
Well, Giles and I were deep in conversation about I have no idea what when I suddenly registered a man belting towards us at such a pace that you would imagine him being chased by the Terminator. He shot past us arms and legs flailing in all directions like a spastic octopus before Giles abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and turning around shouted “TIM!”. The whirling dervish cannoned against the wall, bouncing off it, spinning round in a circle, taking a martial arts stance wildly glared at us with the most shockingly blue bolting eyes set in the reddest eyelids making me immediately think he was absolutely out of his head on drugs …… But instead he dragged his totally shattered reputation for being “cool” back into harness, raked his fingers through his wiry unkempt hair and stammered out “It´s okay Man, it´s just I´ve been sitting down a lot these past couple of days and wanted to loosen myself up a bit ….” I burst out laughing and barely stopped for the rest of “the Tim Encounter”…….. !
Las Alpujarras
5th August 2007 still staying at Pinos Genil in Granada .....
Well, today being Sunday, and my muscles protesting if anything rather more than they did yesterday, I decided to go easy on my body and instead be demanding of my car. I packed my sponge bag, bathers and a clean pair of knickers and headed off on what turned out to be an absolute marathon of everything!
For map enthusiasts, I took the A44 Granada-MotrSil road as far as Lanjarón which took me over a fantastic bridge with a ravine gaping beneath it and then through the Lecrin valley which I had heard of but didn´t think much of until I saw it – it gets a WOW! And then I was off the motorway and heading up into La Alpujarra – the range of Sierra Nevada mountain that cuts right across the southern side and where the famous Pueblos Blancos reside.
I think I started saying WOW after about the first half second, and carried on saying WOW for a very very very long time. I went through Lanjarón, Órgiva, Carataunas, Pampaneira. Then I diverted and visited Bubión and Capileira – these three last mentioned villages are the “famous” ones – and I think I understand why now ….. Rather than turning round, I carried on after a bit of a walk in Capileira searching for the Barranco (Ravine) where they do organised descents like I did the other day, but apparently every year, on the 5th August, all tourism offices close in the Sierra Nevada as they open the passes at the top – and trust me to pick that very day to go and find out information!!!
Not to be deterred, I continued – all the while I should add snaking around every single crevice of mountainside, because these villages are quite literally clinging for their very LIVES onto the sides of these mountains – and you drive for what seems like forever and then round a bend and WHAM there´s another one even more remote than the last, but still totally painted white with pots and pots of geraniums, ivies etc adorning the place (that`´s if you get out and have a look around). Well, I detoured for a little while at Mecina and walked down to Fondales and back up where I stumbled across what must have been a God-Arranged Appointment for me – because there, on the side of the road, were a bunch of bestomached Spaniards cooking a paella – but not just any ordinary paella – because this one was being cooked in a paella pan three metres wide!!! And being the quiet, retiring type, I asked if I could have a go cooking it – and they LET ME!! So I spent about half an hour or so shovelling red and green peppers and squid around with a very long handled giant paella spade as the several gallons of olive oil gently did their bit! It was AMAZING! Apparently, they were cooking enough paella to serve eight HUNDRED PEOPLE!!
The chief cook did invite me, on behalf of the village, to stay and eat with them, but I graciously declined mostly because I felt conspicuously alone and didn´t want to have the hassle of trying to “make friends” in order to change that …. I had already long since decided that these mountains, having always been my idea of heaven knowing nothing about them, were simply WAY TOO REMOTE for me to even think of living – and that actually I wanted to get on and get OUT OF THEM!!!
So I went through : Pitres – another blindingly white mountain hugging valley, then
Portugos ditto
Busquistar ditto
Trevélez ditto
Bérchules ditto
And by now, I was humming to myself the music from The Eagles song “Hotel California”, and, wondering why, I imagined myself singing the words – and I kept on humming the bit where he sings “You can check out any time you like but, you can NEVER LEAVE!!!”!!!!
I started to get claustrophobia !! GET ME OUT OF HERE!
So I changed cars – in my imagination, and swapped my Citröen C2 for a convertible Lambourghini, slammed it into second gear and drove like Schumacher on his last lap –through Narila, Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, alor, then Mecina, Marirena, and FINALLY to Laroles, where I started to feel less like a starved dog chained three inches away from a decent meal. The hysteria subsided KNOWING that I was now only (ha ha) 26 km from Puerto de la Ragua, where I had decided to make my escape from the interminable beauty of the Alpujarras. On and on … and then WOW! Going DOWNHILL!! It HAD to be a good sign!! I was, thankfully, still gloating with the achievement of cooking (some of the) paella for 800 people and so my hysteria melted quickly as La Calahorra came into view, with its beautiful renaissance castle high up on the hill – although my hysteria soon welled again as I saw the rain in the distance sheeting down beneath black clouds – and knowing how it rains here when it rains, I decided to get on to Guadix so that I could stop and either sleep through it or at least let it pass.
5 km the wrong side of Guadix, the rain and I met each other! It was fast, furious, torrential and utterly blinding. The droplets were bouncing 6 inches off the motorway and through the haze of it all I realised I was driving through scenery that I wanted to SEE! So I pulled off at Guadix, and instead of going into the city, followed my hunch and went to Benalúa – where I met the cave people! Benalúa is, visually speaking, hard to even believe. It is a lunar landscape of mountain and hill with nothing growing on or around, but with the hills having been made into houses – but CAVE HOUSES! It was like being on Wimbledon Common with the Wombles all coming out to play. The facades were beautiful – white, tiled, utterly “normal”, but then there was no “house” behind, just a monster great big hill with the house being inside it! I stopped for a coffee at the Cuevas La Granja – a sort of Cave Hotel – just to take a moment to take it all in.
I carried on off the beaten track and went down a road I will never forget to a village called Belerda de Guadix and that has to be a MUST DO drive for anyone anywhere near Granada – it is literally like driving along the moon with these amazing mountains with the strangest stringy structure – I tried to think of an analogy to help people visualise it and the best thing I can think of is from Pirates of the Carribean - Davy Jones´ beard!!
Well, after all that, I decided to get back here – I had been driving since 8.40am and it was by now about 6pm. So I headed down the A92 – another TOTAL WOW of a motorway right through the Sierra Nevada on the left and the Sierra Huétor on my right – on and on the last 50kms back to Granada, driving through the centre down “No Entry” roads trying to find something I recognised before finally making it back here at about 7pm!
The Upshot? Well, all I can say is I am glad that I didn´t move to the Alpujarras 10 years ago – the number of houses for sale there is just amazing – the word remote just simply doesn´t begin to conjure up the absolute isolation of the deepest villages – and to live there you would really have to think twice about whether you EVER wanted to come out and have contact with the real world because it was such a JOB to get either in or out!
Next stop : Córdoba!
Well, today being Sunday, and my muscles protesting if anything rather more than they did yesterday, I decided to go easy on my body and instead be demanding of my car. I packed my sponge bag, bathers and a clean pair of knickers and headed off on what turned out to be an absolute marathon of everything!
For map enthusiasts, I took the A44 Granada-MotrSil road as far as Lanjarón which took me over a fantastic bridge with a ravine gaping beneath it and then through the Lecrin valley which I had heard of but didn´t think much of until I saw it – it gets a WOW! And then I was off the motorway and heading up into La Alpujarra – the range of Sierra Nevada mountain that cuts right across the southern side and where the famous Pueblos Blancos reside.
I think I started saying WOW after about the first half second, and carried on saying WOW for a very very very long time. I went through Lanjarón, Órgiva, Carataunas, Pampaneira. Then I diverted and visited Bubión and Capileira – these three last mentioned villages are the “famous” ones – and I think I understand why now ….. Rather than turning round, I carried on after a bit of a walk in Capileira searching for the Barranco (Ravine) where they do organised descents like I did the other day, but apparently every year, on the 5th August, all tourism offices close in the Sierra Nevada as they open the passes at the top – and trust me to pick that very day to go and find out information!!!
Not to be deterred, I continued – all the while I should add snaking around every single crevice of mountainside, because these villages are quite literally clinging for their very LIVES onto the sides of these mountains – and you drive for what seems like forever and then round a bend and WHAM there´s another one even more remote than the last, but still totally painted white with pots and pots of geraniums, ivies etc adorning the place (that`´s if you get out and have a look around). Well, I detoured for a little while at Mecina and walked down to Fondales and back up where I stumbled across what must have been a God-Arranged Appointment for me – because there, on the side of the road, were a bunch of bestomached Spaniards cooking a paella – but not just any ordinary paella – because this one was being cooked in a paella pan three metres wide!!! And being the quiet, retiring type, I asked if I could have a go cooking it – and they LET ME!! So I spent about half an hour or so shovelling red and green peppers and squid around with a very long handled giant paella spade as the several gallons of olive oil gently did their bit! It was AMAZING! Apparently, they were cooking enough paella to serve eight HUNDRED PEOPLE!!
The chief cook did invite me, on behalf of the village, to stay and eat with them, but I graciously declined mostly because I felt conspicuously alone and didn´t want to have the hassle of trying to “make friends” in order to change that …. I had already long since decided that these mountains, having always been my idea of heaven knowing nothing about them, were simply WAY TOO REMOTE for me to even think of living – and that actually I wanted to get on and get OUT OF THEM!!!
So I went through : Pitres – another blindingly white mountain hugging valley, then
Portugos ditto
Busquistar ditto
Trevélez ditto
Bérchules ditto
And by now, I was humming to myself the music from The Eagles song “Hotel California”, and, wondering why, I imagined myself singing the words – and I kept on humming the bit where he sings “You can check out any time you like but, you can NEVER LEAVE!!!”!!!!
I started to get claustrophobia !! GET ME OUT OF HERE!
So I changed cars – in my imagination, and swapped my Citröen C2 for a convertible Lambourghini, slammed it into second gear and drove like Schumacher on his last lap –through Narila, Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, alor, then Mecina, Marirena, and FINALLY to Laroles, where I started to feel less like a starved dog chained three inches away from a decent meal. The hysteria subsided KNOWING that I was now only (ha ha) 26 km from Puerto de la Ragua, where I had decided to make my escape from the interminable beauty of the Alpujarras. On and on … and then WOW! Going DOWNHILL!! It HAD to be a good sign!! I was, thankfully, still gloating with the achievement of cooking (some of the) paella for 800 people and so my hysteria melted quickly as La Calahorra came into view, with its beautiful renaissance castle high up on the hill – although my hysteria soon welled again as I saw the rain in the distance sheeting down beneath black clouds – and knowing how it rains here when it rains, I decided to get on to Guadix so that I could stop and either sleep through it or at least let it pass.
5 km the wrong side of Guadix, the rain and I met each other! It was fast, furious, torrential and utterly blinding. The droplets were bouncing 6 inches off the motorway and through the haze of it all I realised I was driving through scenery that I wanted to SEE! So I pulled off at Guadix, and instead of going into the city, followed my hunch and went to Benalúa – where I met the cave people! Benalúa is, visually speaking, hard to even believe. It is a lunar landscape of mountain and hill with nothing growing on or around, but with the hills having been made into houses – but CAVE HOUSES! It was like being on Wimbledon Common with the Wombles all coming out to play. The facades were beautiful – white, tiled, utterly “normal”, but then there was no “house” behind, just a monster great big hill with the house being inside it! I stopped for a coffee at the Cuevas La Granja – a sort of Cave Hotel – just to take a moment to take it all in.
I carried on off the beaten track and went down a road I will never forget to a village called Belerda de Guadix and that has to be a MUST DO drive for anyone anywhere near Granada – it is literally like driving along the moon with these amazing mountains with the strangest stringy structure – I tried to think of an analogy to help people visualise it and the best thing I can think of is from Pirates of the Carribean - Davy Jones´ beard!!
Well, after all that, I decided to get back here – I had been driving since 8.40am and it was by now about 6pm. So I headed down the A92 – another TOTAL WOW of a motorway right through the Sierra Nevada on the left and the Sierra Huétor on my right – on and on the last 50kms back to Granada, driving through the centre down “No Entry” roads trying to find something I recognised before finally making it back here at about 7pm!
The Upshot? Well, all I can say is I am glad that I didn´t move to the Alpujarras 10 years ago – the number of houses for sale there is just amazing – the word remote just simply doesn´t begin to conjure up the absolute isolation of the deepest villages – and to live there you would really have to think twice about whether you EVER wanted to come out and have contact with the real world because it was such a JOB to get either in or out!
Next stop : Córdoba!
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Blues Cazorla !
WOW! What an AMAZING music festival that was! 40 degree temperatures and the likes of Muddy Waters & Eric Clapton devotees playing the most brilliant blues music all day deep into the night and out the other side! During the day there was an endless haze of cigarette smoke (and heaven knows what other kinds of smoke too for that matter) together with Heineken cans and bodies being thrown into the fountains to cool off from the blistering mountain mid-day heat while the bands took their turns and their lives in their hands playing on the rather eccentrically wired up stage in the Plaza de Santa Maria.
The musicians were brilliant, although I have to say that I think that Jerry Portnoy´s facial expressions were rather lost on the Spanish devotees from what was being muttered around us. He was talking to Bob Margolin (they did a duo set in the crippling heat) effectively saying it was the longest day of his life - but he looked immaculate even if he was sweating buckets on the inside. To be fair to him, the electrics did explode during his and Bob Margolin´s act on Friday after having been giving them low grade electric shocks throughout their number, so perhaps by then he was a bit cheesed off with it all, but it cracked me up when he was speaking through the mike to the sound techs about needing less reverb and simply said in his strong american drawl "pocito reverb" !! I guess reverb must be a universal word! When the system finally blew, he muttered something under his breath and started packing away his harmonica while Bob, ever the utter professional, came to the front of the stage and finished the number miming all of Jerry´s harmonica bits which everyone found hilarious.
The show stoppers for me though, had to be the Barcelona band Txus Blues & J Bluesfingers - their song called Tango which turned into an Ode to the Tanga (yes ladies, Thongs), had the crowd eating out of their hands, but the finale to end all, was their song called "Soy harMonica Lewinsky" - I have never in my life seen anyone play a harmonica as pornographically as that and it was sidesplittingly funny!
So put it in your diary - Blues Cazorla - you can find their website always at www.bluescazorla.com and book your accommodation VERY early - it is a Cult Show and apparently one of the largest blues festivals in the whole of Spain!
The musicians were brilliant, although I have to say that I think that Jerry Portnoy´s facial expressions were rather lost on the Spanish devotees from what was being muttered around us. He was talking to Bob Margolin (they did a duo set in the crippling heat) effectively saying it was the longest day of his life - but he looked immaculate even if he was sweating buckets on the inside. To be fair to him, the electrics did explode during his and Bob Margolin´s act on Friday after having been giving them low grade electric shocks throughout their number, so perhaps by then he was a bit cheesed off with it all, but it cracked me up when he was speaking through the mike to the sound techs about needing less reverb and simply said in his strong american drawl "pocito reverb" !! I guess reverb must be a universal word! When the system finally blew, he muttered something under his breath and started packing away his harmonica while Bob, ever the utter professional, came to the front of the stage and finished the number miming all of Jerry´s harmonica bits which everyone found hilarious.
The show stoppers for me though, had to be the Barcelona band Txus Blues & J Bluesfingers - their song called Tango which turned into an Ode to the Tanga (yes ladies, Thongs), had the crowd eating out of their hands, but the finale to end all, was their song called "Soy harMonica Lewinsky" - I have never in my life seen anyone play a harmonica as pornographically as that and it was sidesplittingly funny!
So put it in your diary - Blues Cazorla - you can find their website always at www.bluescazorla.com and book your accommodation VERY early - it is a Cult Show and apparently one of the largest blues festivals in the whole of Spain!
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
When Cricket simply isn´t Cricket
I screamed today - a proper, genuine, head turning, embarrassing scream at the top of my voice. Where? Cazorla - the MOST beautiful whitewashed pueblo to the south west of the Sierra de Seguro, Cazorla y Las Villas mountains in Jaén, one of the unknown provinces of the huge and beautiful Andalusían area of Spain. And Why? Well, I was deep in conversation with a NOT especially nice or forthcoming Spaniard while my son was crawling around on the floor doing what he does when he spies a cricket - and that is being intent on catching the critter and bringing it to me for due inspection in great and fascinating detail before the thing leaps off to live another day.
However my son is now seven and understands that interrupting is NOT cool, especially when Mum is trying to get to grips with pretty complicated Spanish facts, which I was. Replaying the tape now, I remember him tapping me gently on the arm saying Mama, but I rather ignored him as I am working at gently but constantly suggesting that he DOESN'T BLITHERING WELL INTERRUPT UNLESS THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE ....
Mistake ....
Because he finally said "Mum I have to interrupt because I think there´s a huge cricket going up your trouser leg ............."
That did it. I threw my papers onto the floor (not surfaced, an ocean of dust in fact), and started to undo the zip to my white trousers oblivious to the fact that the man I had been talking to started to snort back the giggles. THAT made the cricket move, and THAT drew my attention to where it was - WELL ABOVE MY KNEE - at which point I SCREAMED! Trousers were down in a second (man decent enough to pull a door past me so that I could strip off in some semblance of dignity) and find this 3-4inch monster of a cricket inside my left trouser leg!
HELL there are times when you realise the advantage of living in Tiny Critter Country!!
However my son is now seven and understands that interrupting is NOT cool, especially when Mum is trying to get to grips with pretty complicated Spanish facts, which I was. Replaying the tape now, I remember him tapping me gently on the arm saying Mama, but I rather ignored him as I am working at gently but constantly suggesting that he DOESN'T BLITHERING WELL INTERRUPT UNLESS THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE ....
Mistake ....
Because he finally said "Mum I have to interrupt because I think there´s a huge cricket going up your trouser leg ............."
That did it. I threw my papers onto the floor (not surfaced, an ocean of dust in fact), and started to undo the zip to my white trousers oblivious to the fact that the man I had been talking to started to snort back the giggles. THAT made the cricket move, and THAT drew my attention to where it was - WELL ABOVE MY KNEE - at which point I SCREAMED! Trousers were down in a second (man decent enough to pull a door past me so that I could strip off in some semblance of dignity) and find this 3-4inch monster of a cricket inside my left trouser leg!
HELL there are times when you realise the advantage of living in Tiny Critter Country!!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Shooting Stars
The adventure continues! My son and I have escaped the humdrum of our school term life for a few weeks with our wonderful although less than reliable campervan! Bless her she is 12 years old after all so I can´t complain, but it is a little tiring when we have no means whatsoever of cooling our fridge! So we have stayed put in one place for 3 weeks, and I have to say I am loving it. Loving it for a zillion reasons, but most of all because it is the first time since I met my ex husband thirteen years ago that I have been truly having a holiday doing what I want to do, rather than going along with someone else´s idea.....
So here we are, on the most beautiful campsite in Jaén, Andalucia, on the outskirts of a very typically southern spanish village called Cazorla (Cathorla). Cazorla is a gateway to the immense, breathtaking and HUMUMGOUS national park that spreads up and all around Cazorla. It offers something for everyone, from hang gliding, to 4x4 mountain trails, to horse riding, to river swimming, to rock climbing, to natural health holiday retreats (visit my lovely friends Diana & Roger Birch´s website http://www.losabedules-cazorla.com/ for the MOST magical location for a holiday out here with everything available that you could possibly want including the most gorgeous salt water swimming pool ....).
We have been enchanted by this village / town with its lanes that are only JUST wide enough to get a car through with an inch or two to spare on either side (used only for donkeys laden with their baskets on either side), with the balconies overhead heaving with geraniums and asparagus plants to name a few of the leaves I recognise!
It is a painter and artist paradise here with the nearby beautiful cities of Úbeda and Baeza, and we haven´t as yet got much further! But what I have done, after lights out, is quietly creep out of our lovely wagon up the terraces of the campsite to where the sky opens above your head - and on my first night here, the sky honoured me with FOUR shooting stars ..... Beautiful.
More to come .....
So here we are, on the most beautiful campsite in Jaén, Andalucia, on the outskirts of a very typically southern spanish village called Cazorla (Cathorla). Cazorla is a gateway to the immense, breathtaking and HUMUMGOUS national park that spreads up and all around Cazorla. It offers something for everyone, from hang gliding, to 4x4 mountain trails, to horse riding, to river swimming, to rock climbing, to natural health holiday retreats (visit my lovely friends Diana & Roger Birch´s website http://www.losabedules-cazorla.com/ for the MOST magical location for a holiday out here with everything available that you could possibly want including the most gorgeous salt water swimming pool ....).
We have been enchanted by this village / town with its lanes that are only JUST wide enough to get a car through with an inch or two to spare on either side (used only for donkeys laden with their baskets on either side), with the balconies overhead heaving with geraniums and asparagus plants to name a few of the leaves I recognise!
It is a painter and artist paradise here with the nearby beautiful cities of Úbeda and Baeza, and we haven´t as yet got much further! But what I have done, after lights out, is quietly creep out of our lovely wagon up the terraces of the campsite to where the sky opens above your head - and on my first night here, the sky honoured me with FOUR shooting stars ..... Beautiful.
More to come .....
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
MY CASTLE IN SPAIN, AKA THE RUIN!
This is a photo of my kitchen stove ............ The house was owned by a very elderly man who, on his death, requested that the house be given to a Sisterhood of Nuns in Teruel. Clearly on his death his body was simply dealt with, and nothing else has happened since that day ... as you will see as the blogs progress!
The kitchen still has his flagon by the fire, and his old coat over a chair. the blackened back of the fire place shows where he would have cooked. There is an old cupboard with greasy stained old cooking implements ... and how he washed things up I will never know as the house has never had a water supply .....
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Changing Clocks, Cats Eyes and Winter Weather
Am I the only person I know who LOATHES with a deep and vengeful passion the fact that, like lemmings to the cliff, the whole world changes their clocks with religious monotony twice a year without ever fighting against the reality that this ritual freaks out thousands of families every year, twice a year, for life?
I HATE it. More children get killed immediately after the Winter clock change than at any other time because people don't see them, and what would be wrong with enjoying the last of the afternoon sun after school .... WHY DO WE DO IT????? And don't tell me it's about the farmers, every farmer I have ever met gets up when he or she NEEDS to get up, not because GMT or British Summer Time said so.
As we drove yesterday afternoon in the dark rainy gloam to Teruel, I really FELT Winter here for the first time. It is a proper drive - 45 minutes of which 30 are along VERY Spanish mountain roads - beautiful in the Summer, when you can see, and rather HAIRY in the dark, when you can't see three metres infront of your nose because there are no Cats Eyes on hairpin bends! What a wonderful invention Cats Eyes are, but I guess in a country as enormous as Spain, the idea of putting them on really dangerous roads would mean millions of the things and there isn't the wealth to do it (arguably because, some people say, that the Government, Officials and the Estate Agents pocket it all - but I wouldn't DARE be so contentious)!.
And we went all that way so I could buy knitting wool - rather cotton - to knit my son some sweaters to keep him from freezing solid in the imminent sub zero temperatures - BUT....... ALL THE SHOPS WERE SHUT! WHY?? A perfectly normal Saturday evening in Spain, and every single bleedin' shop was shut! I was SO frustrated - all the diesel, sweaty hairpin bend palms and promises, and we couldn't even buy a hot chocolate! HOW FRUSTRATING!
We then had to drive the 45 minutes back in pitch darkness and I actually found myself feeling really grateful - because I am being gently eased into the reality that in about 2 months I will be facing some of my worst fears - driving in snow and ice consistently for 6-7 weeks! So the moral for me?
Get USED TO IT GIRL!!!
Have you visited my website yet? www.amanda-hamilton.com
I HATE it. More children get killed immediately after the Winter clock change than at any other time because people don't see them, and what would be wrong with enjoying the last of the afternoon sun after school .... WHY DO WE DO IT????? And don't tell me it's about the farmers, every farmer I have ever met gets up when he or she NEEDS to get up, not because GMT or British Summer Time said so.
As we drove yesterday afternoon in the dark rainy gloam to Teruel, I really FELT Winter here for the first time. It is a proper drive - 45 minutes of which 30 are along VERY Spanish mountain roads - beautiful in the Summer, when you can see, and rather HAIRY in the dark, when you can't see three metres infront of your nose because there are no Cats Eyes on hairpin bends! What a wonderful invention Cats Eyes are, but I guess in a country as enormous as Spain, the idea of putting them on really dangerous roads would mean millions of the things and there isn't the wealth to do it (arguably because, some people say, that the Government, Officials and the Estate Agents pocket it all - but I wouldn't DARE be so contentious)!.
And we went all that way so I could buy knitting wool - rather cotton - to knit my son some sweaters to keep him from freezing solid in the imminent sub zero temperatures - BUT....... ALL THE SHOPS WERE SHUT! WHY?? A perfectly normal Saturday evening in Spain, and every single bleedin' shop was shut! I was SO frustrated - all the diesel, sweaty hairpin bend palms and promises, and we couldn't even buy a hot chocolate! HOW FRUSTRATING!
We then had to drive the 45 minutes back in pitch darkness and I actually found myself feeling really grateful - because I am being gently eased into the reality that in about 2 months I will be facing some of my worst fears - driving in snow and ice consistently for 6-7 weeks! So the moral for me?
Get USED TO IT GIRL!!!
Have you visited my website yet? www.amanda-hamilton.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
