Tuesday 22 January 2013

A bery bery fine country indeed


For a part of the trip that we had not at first given much of a thought to; this was supposed to be where we sat out the winter after we’d had all our fun already; we were completely taken aback at this little pocket of Spain we found ourselves in.  Sitting out the rains of early November and generally getting used to the extra stretching space out of the van (we’ve gone from hovering over a portable toilet with our knees round our ears, to each having our own bathrooms – what luxury!), we used the time to get settled in, and put in our order for some firewood from a local guy in the village – called Pepe of course.  Anyway, the next morning we waited with a couple of sacks in hand, expecting Pepe to trot up the road with a wheelbarrow at any minute.  Instead the distant putter of a tractor approached, and there was Pepe, towing a huge trailor piled high as the sky with our firewood.   Errrr we need some more sacks.  To make matters worse, as Pepe dropped the wood from the trailor he pointed to the sky, and even with limited Spanish I understood him to say “you better move this lot damn fast cos it’s gonna piss it down in a minute”.  Which it did of course, but thankfully after we had heaved in and covered up our heating source with some tarpaulin or thrown it into sacks.  We eventually got some pallets to stack a proper woodpile, but for a few days everywhere we went in the house there were logs, logs and more logs.

Part of settling in also included venturing out to the local stores to stock up on Spanish food, which didn’t disappoint.  The food here is really good quality; rosy red peppers as big as your head, and what’s more it’s an enjoyable shopping experience – the ‘fruterias’ are a bit like walking into the British greengrocers we had before supermarket domination removed much of them.  Someone actually selects and weighs your vegetables for you, and there are buckets of nuts and lentils and beans piled high with scoops propped in the top.  It’s like some vegan pick ‘n’ mix utopia.  What’s even better is that the food is really cheap, the cheapest we’ve found in all the countries we’ve travelled to in Europe.  And at last, we have an oven.  After 6 months of limited cooking facilities, we are now churning out pies and gratins and cakes, thankful of all the walking to do or this could be a weighty winter.
By now we were getting to grips with the woodburner.  It’s a bit sink or swim frankly as these Spanish village houses don’t have central heating; they don’t need to since most the time they’re sweltering in 30C+.  But unless you master the art of fire, you’re going to have a very cold winter, and actually it’s not as easy as you think unless you were lucky enough to have an open fire to hone your skills on at some point in your life.   Which we clearly had not, but we nailed it eventually. 

At last, after a couple of weeks of rain, the sun re-appeared in the sky and we started to get some of the weather we had expected of a southern Spanish winter.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not sunbathing weather, although we did go to the beach in November, but the days are bright and warm in the sun and best of all the sun stays in the sky for a good couple of hours longer than at home.  We got our hikers on and started to get out into the snow-capped mountains that surround us here.  The closest peak however, Corbello, still evades us.  In our naivety we had looked and thought we’d do it in a couple of hours, but have subsequently heard that it’s a 12 hour round trip…it will take a bit more planning, a 6am start and…goddamit – where’s the Kendal mint cake when you need it?  We’ve also had the running trainers out again, and against both our expectations, have actually been enjoying doing some hill running.

After all this healthy frolicking about we decided it was fine time we headed out for the night, which we anticipated being a rather tricky affair since there isn’t even a bar in the village we live in.  However, we read about a Sunday jazz jam session in a bar in the next village over, Niguelas, which was only a 25 minute walk away so we headed for it.  Not many walks to the pub include a stumble across the side of a valley in pitch black darkness, but it’s one of the eccentricities that makes living here so enjoyable.  Anyway, after a half hour of wandering around Niguelas we couldn’t find the place and had damn near given up when we thought we could distinguish the sound of jazz guitar far off in the distance.  Following our ears, at last we arrived at our destination, and walked into a great little bar, which oddly happened to be owned by a girl from our village who had been wanting to ask us along but had been too shy.  It was an awesome night, spent knocking back mojito’s and listening to great music.  Best of all, we got chatting to an American guy called Andrew and his Spanish girlfriend, Eva, who are right up our street (metaphorically not literally) and who we have spent a great deal of time with since, mostly playing the fantastically named game ‘Cornhole’, which I wont tell you anymore about as we think there’s a big market for it in England and shortly plan to make our millions….oh ah hah hah hah.

Through Andrew and Eva we’ve met some other people and it’s great actually hanging out with Spanish people.  Actually, it’s great to have friends again, as due to the rate at which we’ve moved around in the van, we haven’t had the chance to get to know anyone well enough.  Obviously it isn’t the greatest time for lots of Spanish people, many we meet are highly trained and smart people out of work.  It’s getting to be a common theme in Europe, but the economic crisis has definitely hit Spain hard.  Not that you would tell by the amazing generosity of the locals – we have been brought gifts of food from nearly every Spanish mama in our village – bread, membrillo, caqui fruits, coconut cake – all delicious and wonderfully kind.  The only sign of hard times in our little village are the quantity of stray cats and dogs around.  Spain has a reputation for strays of course, but the economic crisis has left so many more pet owners dumping their animals onto the streets.  It’s heartbreaking, and along with the rest of the English people in the area, we find ourselves separating our scraps (and even buying food, suckers that we are) for the poor blighters nearby.  There is one dog in particular that has charmed the pants off us, who gets a regular feed whenever we see him.  We’ve nicknamed him Buddy and if we could take any with us it would be him. 

So, as you can probably tell, we have fallen in love with our little valley in Spain.  Mostly, we are very grateful for the experience of actually living amongst Spanish people in a traditional village and being part of the community, which is not something you get to do on a conventional holiday.  It’s incredible, and we both like to think that perhaps we’ll live around here more permanently at some point in the future.  And now, we have visits from friends at home over Christmas and New Year coming up and many many more games of cornhole I’m sure…life is good, viva Espana…

a-walking we go