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…
No comments:
Post a Comment