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Friday 1st April 2005

It's Sally our lovely Border Collie's birthday. She's five.
I got her on October 1st 2000 and was told she was six months old.
She was very nervous and not house trained when she came to us. Now she's a lovely affectionate dog.

It's not so sunny at the moment but it might break through later.
No plans for today, perhaps a walk later.

Great News ... SHEARER to play on next season!!!! Isn't life wonderful!!! Or is it a sick April Fools day joke??
No it wasn't a really bad April Fools day joke! The great man plays on ... as player/coach.

We decided to take Sally to the Río Genal for her birthday treat.
Here she is with her scarf on. Her son Jake, is as usual by her side.They found a friend to play with. They had a great time. Sally loves water. Looking back to the River Genal. This is the narrow steep track up from the Rio, it's hard, hot work. The birthday girl! She's a lovely dog. She's asleep now under the computer desk.Here's Jane with Ferdy, Sally and Jake.It was a beautiful walk. Lots of wild flowers around and the trees bursting into life. This Cistus (Rock Rose) was one of many flowering along the track. Pink & white.We got back and had a cold beer ...
We watched lots of gardening programmes on TV.

Saturday April 2nd 2005

The sky is grey and has been raining steadily all day.
Jane's upstairs washing towels and linen for our next guests.
I'm listening to the Newcastle United v Aston Villa game. It's 0-1 to Villa but it's very early in the match.
Disaster has struck. It's 0-3 we've had three players sent off. They'll miss some important games. Dyer & Bowyer for fighting with each other!!
I took Ferdy our oldest Border Collie to play football. He's really good. The other two tend to get in his way. We had a good run around and then we went to the Restaurant Kábilas for a beer.
We took Ferdy home and changed. Then we went to Bar Andrés Sánchez for tapas, which is always excellent. He's added hamburger to his menu so we tried this non-traditional tapas. I guess we'll have to call it Bar Mc Sánchez from now on.
We called into Dami's bar, the town was very quiet.
We went back to the Restaurant Kábilas for another beer, we had a good chat with friends Jesús and Mercedes.
We walked home through the village, it was a very mild evening.
I watched half a film before getting bored and too tired.
Jane had the sense to sleep through all of it.

Sunday April 3rd 2005

Its a grey but mild day. Nothing too exciting is planned. Certainly nothing to compare with last Sunday's excitement.

I have a few small jobs in the apartment to do, putting up a mirror, a couple of paintings and coat hangers.
Got most of the jobs done. Jane has been washing again. I think it's becoming compulsive!
We watched 'Calendar Girls' DVD about the WI. This was kindly left for us by our first guests Jolette and Paul. When the East Kent WI visit for their art course later in the year, Jerusalem will now always bring a smile to my face!
Jane's upstairs drinking sangria, a reward for doing all that washing earlier?? I'm downstairs with the dogs, blogging! A reward for keeping out of her way!?

Monday April 4th 2005

I hope it's a better day than Sunday April 3rd 2005!
... Well it has been a lot better. Yesterday seemed to really drag, the grey skies didn't help.
Today the sun is shining and the birds are singing.
Jane's ironing the mountains of washing she did yesterday.
I've done a little bit of painting.
I've been for a walk up into the campo and it is beautiful.
I've also been working on the website.

I'm going to go and sit in the sun near the 'Entrada'. We were supposed to be detoxing this week but I don't fancy lettuce and water. I think I'll cook a curry and have a bottle of wine with it!
In fact I might have a bottle while I sit in the sun! I wonder if Jane fancies a glass ... it's a tough life!
We were just about to start cooking when Cristóbal and Adrian knocked on the door. They were off into the campo to pick some Hinojo (Fennel), (I'll have to check the spelling). This is one of the two plants that you can collect at this time of year to stew together in a local specialty dish.
Here's Adrian with some.A little later and we had a sackful.
Cristóbal stopped in the entrance of the village to show me a house he was plastering and tiling. We went on the sun terrace and I took a few shots of the village. I'd never seen Benarrabá from this part of the village before.Next we headed back home. Cristóbal' horse has been moved into the campo for the summer. He has to visit it every night to give it food and water. He asked if we wanted to come.

We headed out to some land near our friends John and Chris's finca.
It was getting dark. Some sheep came out of the Cork Oak wood to say hello.We fed and watered the horses. Here's a photo looking across the valley to Benarrabá.There were owls hooting all around us as darkness fell.
We headed back to Benarrabá. We called into check on their hens and see if they'd laid. We buy our eggs from Carmen's family. They are beautiful true campo eggs.They'd laid nine eggs. We went home and cooked our curry. Watched TV until late. I only had one bottle of wine. Jane drank water we got from the spring on the way home. She's such a good girl!


Tuesday April 5th 2005

Up early before dawn. We're off to Gibraltar to do some shopping. Then to Los Barrios to Leroy Merlin's DIY shop (like B&Q). Jane says we're also going to McDonalds to get a junk food fix.
We set off at 9:30am The sun was shining and the sky was blue as we left Benarrabá. We traveled through Gaucín and headed down to the coast on the A369 road. every time we go to Gibraltar it seems the weather is better in the mountains.
The hillsides are covered in bright yellow Broom which seems to be everywhere. We stopped to photograph a vulture in a tree but it had flown by the time I walked back to where we'd passed it.
A herd of large deer ran across a field near Jimena de la Frontera but they were too far away to photograph. We also saw a flock of Black Kites hovering near a railway bridge. The White Storks near Estación de San Roque are always great to watch. We must go to Tarifa soon for the migrations.
We got to La Linea, there was a huge traffic jam of cars trying to cross the border, we always park in Spain and walk across. It was 10:50am it had taken us 1 hour 20 minutes from the house to Gibraltar which included two stops to watch birds and the deer.The sky was grey and it was quite windy, we kept our fleeces on.
We walked straight across the border without delay or problems.
We caught the number 3 bus. We usually get the number 9 and get off at the bottom of the high street.
This time we tried the number 3 . We had no idea where it went but Gibraltar's a very small place and you can't go too far wrong.
It took us to the southern end of the rock and we got off near the cable car. The cable car costs £8 return. We didn't have time and it's best on a good clear day. A taxi to the top is the same price, it saves a lot of walking at the top. However ... if you like scaring yourself silly by traveling in a flimsy box suspended by a thin bit of wire .... Near the cable car we found the Botanical Gardens.A display of Cacti near the gates.A bust of George Augustus Eliott. (1st Baron Heathfield of Gibraltar)
1717-90, British general. Appointed (1775) governor of Gibraltar, he was forced to defend it against a combined Spanish and French siege that lasted three and a half years (1779-83). For this memorable defence he was raised to the peerage in 1787. The shell of an old BT red phone box.
A beautiful Wisteria was in flower, it smelt wonderful.The gardens were lovely and will be worth visiting again later in the year when the summer flowers are out.
This is a view from the gardens towards Algeciras. We got more bedding and pillows from 'The Store' and went to Safeway - Morrisons and bought our Yorkshire Tea Bags and curry spices, thanks to Paul and Jolette for the information.
We caught the number 9 bus back to the border using our return ticket (90p each) Always use £'s in Gibraltar - shopkeepers will rip you off with extortionate exchange rates otherwise.
We crossed the border again without problem and got in the car and headed to Leroy Merlin' DIY store and Carrefour's at the Palmones Poligono Industrial in Los Barrios.
We had our burgers in McDonalds, bought more plants in Leroy's and bought meat in Carrefours.
We headed home at around 4:30pm. We called into the nursery at San Pablo de Buceite and bought some plants and pots.
We got home, unpacked the car and sat in the evening sun. It had been a good day out. The weather around Gibraltar always seems poorer than here. Windy, grey, hazy. It's not a pretty place the apartment blocks with washing hanging out of the windows are awful, the grey/white stone fortifications everywhere have a dirty, scruffy look, with water stains and weeds growing in the cracks. The port and sea lanes are full of huge oil tankers.
It's fantastic for a day trip, or two at the most, how you could spend a week on Gibraltar without getting seriously bored I don't know.
We had a curry and watched Liverpool v Juventus. Followed by Silence of the Lambs. A great film.

Wednesday April 6th 2005

Jane's not feeling too well. Flu like symptoms.
I'm up early because the guys from the metal workshop are finally coming this morning to sort out our railings on the 'Entrada' steps.

I stayed in all morning, I spoke to Antonio from the ironworks yesterday evening. They were definitely coming today, in the morning! No show! I'll have to walk down to the workshop and get them to come later.
Jane's a feeling a little better, she's up and about.
We got a lovely e-mail from a family of Stoke City fans who have a holiday home in Montejaque, they enjoy my daily ramblings and our photographs. We like getting e-mails from visitors to the website.
We watched 'The Cube' a very strange film. Later we watched Die Hard 2.

Thursday April 7th 2005

Jane's feeling a little better.
I'm going to take the dogs for a walk, then I have to do a few jobs in the apartment.
The walk up the track into the campo was really good. It's a beautiful day made even better by this flock of migrating Bee Eaters. We're lucky to be on the main migration route from Africa.I did getter a better photograph last autumn when they were heading south.

Also today I spotted the first House Martin of the year. Swallows arrived three weeks ago. Still no sign of the Swifts or any Eagles. Last year there were quite a number of Eagles resident in the area, we watched them every day from the sun terrace.
The apartment is a great base for Bird Watchers coming to Andalucía.

The first House Martins arrived in Benarrabá today here a pair has a well deserved rest after their long journey.Antonio arrived and took final measurements for the 'Entrada' railings, hopefully they'll be made and fitted today or tomorrow.
Antonio did turn up! He fitted not only the 'Entrada' railings but put the frame for the grape vine up on the sun terrace. The down side of this is that I've got a lot of painting to do tomorrow, before our next guests arrive on Saturday.
I'm watching the UEFA Cup game between Newcastle United and Sporting Lisbon. It's half time and 1-0 to the Toon, Sheeeeeeearer!!!!
Well it ended 1-0, it should have been 2-0 at least. We'll win in Portugal, so 1-0 is no problema.
Jane's having an early night. A busy day tomorrow, probably not much time for blogging.

Friday 8th April 2005

I'm writing this in advance! Lots of boring painting and cleaning to do, plus we're going to buy blinds in Ronda. I doubt if I'll get any blogging done today.

Well lots of painting and cleaning has been accomplished.
I started to paint the new rail on the sun terrace just as the Andalucian Rain Gods threatened to take vengeance on our efforts. a few drops of rain and a very black sky, but no rain came!!
Carmen and Cristóbal invited us over for lunch. Carmen had cooked the Onoho plants we had picked the other day in the campo. Very tasty!!
We also had fish, salad, bread, fruit and Cristóbal special wine made from 5 parts white wine and one part Málaga Dulce. He mixes it in an eight litre wooden barrel with a brass tap.
Invigorated I painted the new frame for the grape vine and then the 'Entrada' railings. Jane cleaned the Apartment ready for our guests tomorrow. A late finish but lots accomplished. We didn't get to Ronda but went to Gaucín and Algatocín.
Lot's of great e-mails recently.
Mike, Maria and family. also to David Sue and family. Thanks for reading this!

Saturday 9th April 2005


Up early before the dawn, which was very beautiful. Our guests, Anne and family have arrived, they seem to like the apartment and hopefully will have a great holiday.
We've been watching vultures circling the valley all day, often quite low.
One of the local lads, I think he's called Francisco, has a new donkey 'Bartholo'.Jane and I both want a donkey. Perhaps sometime in the future??
We walked the dogs through the village and out down a track for a run.
Cooked a curry, Jane had an early night. I watched a film 'March in the Windy City' starring David Jason, then MOTD.

Sunday April 10th 2005

It's a lovely sunny day, I was up fairly early, let the dogs out and wrote some e-mails. We should clean our living room and kitchen but it's a really beautiful day too nice to be inside cleaning!We decided to go to friends John and Chris's finca to check on their two sheep Dolly and Molly. We hadn't been walking long when a huge shadow fell over the track we both looked up to see a huge Griffon Vulture had passed over us, just a few feet above the tree tops.
There were quite a few circling higher up but this one was the lowest we'd seen one. We watched it for a few minutes as it circled gaining altitude.
The sky was so blue and the temperature was rising it was just after 11:30am as we headed along the pretty track.We hadn't been walking long when we met Anne's parents who are guests in our apartment. They were enjoying a Sunday morning stroll, looking at the wild flowers, shrubs and trees.
Ten minutes later we met Anne who was also out walking with her husband he was some way behind photographing trees.
We saw him just before we turned off the main track.
They were all enjoying the fantastic weather and the countryside.

This is Jane with the village of Algatocín behind her.We headed down the steep hill towards John and Chris's place, a little fearful that we had to climb back up the same hill later in the day.
We got to the gates and Dolly and Molly were there to greet us. We went down the hill and they followed about ten yards behind.We sat in the sun, had some bread, cheese and jamon. Washed down by a very nice bottle of wine.
We picked some oranges and mandarins. Cheers John & Chris!
We left feed out for the sheep and after a couple of hours headed back up the hill.
This is a white cistus with Jubrique in the background. The killer hill behind us and our heart rate dropping from near critical levels we stopped to take photographs of each other in our T-shirts and shorts on this scorching hot early April day. (Just to annoy people in the UK!) The dogs are happy and enjoy their new Spanish life.
They get long walks more often here.
This is Benarrabá from the track.This is possibly my favourite photograph of the day.
The diversity of the trees and shrubs is splendid. The fantastic Spring colours make walking here at this time of year a wonderful experience.The final hill and we're nearly home after five and a half hours.It was a fantastic day for walking and photography.

Newcastle United lost 1-0. I knew we would so not too disappointed, I had hoped he'd rest Shearer for Thursdays big game.
I was watering the plants when Anne's father came out and invited us for dinner in the apartment on Tuesday evening, which was a really nice thing for them to do.

Monday April 11th 2005

Another cloudless day, quite a strong wind though. Hopefully it will die down. We're going to Gaucín to the Post Office. Jane has letters and a parcel to post. It contains CD's of the big Spanish chart hits since we got here. It's for her sister Carol. So she's ready for the disco/bar when she comes out to see us in May!
From Gaucín we'll be able to see the cloud conditions on the coast and if it's reasonably clear we're off to near Tarifa to watch the bird migrations from Africa (hopefully).
We arrived in Gaucín and this was the view of Gibraltar (10x zoom)!It was a very clear day, so we headed to a vantage point near Tarifa opposite the African coastline.We sat amongst some fragrant broom which is everywhere at the moment. Our first spot was a group of Bee Eaters that had come across just down the coast. They seemed to be swirling in a spiral calling to each other. Bee eaters have a unique once heard unmistakable call often described as 'liquid'.
This is the African coastline.We sat for two hours in the hot sun scanning the coastline opposite. We did see a group of thirty raptors in the distance but they were unidentifiable. It really is hit and miss with Bird Watching and today we missed. However we did enjoy sitting on our wonderful vantage point in the sun with a splendid view.This lovely white flower was growing on the hill top.We headed back towards the shops at Los Barrios.
On the way we passed Algeciras and took a few photographs.
This is Gibraltar.Algeciras is a large sprawling town, it has a large Moroccan population.
There are a lot of huge apartment buildings and also a lot of flat roofed houses.
These were taken from the car as we passed by. We went to Carrefours and Leroy Merlin's. Had burgers in McDonalds and then headed back up the A369.

Disappointed with the lack of birds at Tarifa, we stopped off just after Estación de San Roque and watched the White Storks.
They nest on the top of electricity pilons.We then turned off to Castellar de la Frontera, it is also signposted as Castillo de Castellar. We were there last month and thought it was very beautiful but the skies were grey then and the photo's not as good as they might have been.
The road goes through a lovely cork oak wood then twist up though hills covered in Broom and hundreds of thousands of white flowers a little larger than the Rock roses which are also flowering now.
There is a lovely lake/reservoir surrounded by wooded hills.The castle at the top of the hill.This is looking across the campo de Gibraltar from the Castillo de Castellar. This is the view North/North East from Castillo de Castellar up towards the Alcornocales National Parque.We took a lot more pictures of the castle and the pretty streets but they are for a Castellar de la Frontera page in the Places to Visit section.

We drove home and got back around 6pm.
We watched Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin and then Inspector Morse on TV.
A really good day.

Tuesday April 12th 2005

We got a lovely e-mail from Washington DC this morning. Doug, Nasreen and Sofia have a holiday home in Ronda and have found our blog. They have given me information on a newly opened Indian Restaurant in Ronda. Has anyone tried it?
The weather is still amazing. It's really hot.
We're staying in and around the village today.
Lots to do downstairs in our house.
We passed 5,000 visitors to the homepage of the website yesterday, which is fantastic.

Who was the 5,000th visitor? If it was you, book the apartment and we will promise you a night in Pepa's disco that you will never forget ... there again perhaps you will!
Never Again!

The counter on our Home page counts only visitors to the home page which was great at first, but as the search engines started to index the other pages, a lot of people started to visit the site through pages other than the homepage.
Here is a graphic showing the hits & visits to the site over the last year.
We had 2,650 visits in March, hits were 75,963. April is set to even higher with visits close to 3,000 which averages at 100 visits per day.The most visits per day is 177 last week. It seems the blog is the most popular page.
We'd prefer this to be the apartment booking page but ...
At first all visits via search engines were by Yahoo and MSN but recently we've shot up the rankings with Google and visits have soared. MSN visits have however dropped.
Thanks to visitors who have e-mailed us here in Andalucía.
We have had quite a few recently. If you read the blog/visit the website and haven't dropped us a line, please feel welcome to contact us.


Wednesday April 13th 2005

Today's even hotter than yesterday, another fantastic day.
We've been to see the vet in Gaucín to buy flea and tick prevention drops for the dogs and cats.
I'm a bit hung over after last nights meal with Anne's family in the apartment. It was a lovely evening, good company, great food and excellent wines. Jane drank the same amount as me and as usual is hangover free. Never Again!
We sat in the sun just up the track that runs up next to the house. The dogs enjoyed themselves playing around.
Later we went out with Cristóbal, Sebastián and Adrian to feed and water their horse and also a yearling of a friend. We collected Adrian's dog Tula on the way.
Here the horses get their feed underneath an olive tree.Here's Jane with Cristóbal's three year old mare.The sun was just setting, we explored the land looking at the wild flowers. We found a stunted red sweet pea and a pink lupin, the wild pea is usually mauve/purple and the wild lupin blue.
Cristóbal told us that there was a very large Cork Oak tree nearby so we set off to find it.As you can see it is very impressive.
I asked Cristóbal where the track we'd driven down went to. We'd heard there was a route down to the River Genal from this area.
He told us to get in the car and off we went exploring.
The track twists and turns and we ended up on the road near Raphael's Molina down in the Rio. We now know how to do a long circular walk right around the valley. We headed home. Cristóbal dropped us off and took Tula back to the campo to guard the chickens.

Thursday April 14th 2005

Up early, the airs cool at the moment, but the sky looks quite clear, a few strands of thin high cloud but that will be burnt away fairly rapidly as soon as the sun rises higher.
We're off to Gaucín this morning .. on foot!
It's signposted to take three hours, so there and back should be a good days walking.

Later.
Well we made it!
The walk is the hardest walk that we've done so far, it has a 'Alto' (high) difficulty rating.
We set off at 9:40am and followed the signposts for the Gaucín walk.
We found ourselves heading through some wonderful countryside with wild flowers and butterflies everywhere. This one is quite common at the moment but very eye catching with the orange wingtips. I have no idea what species it is.The path headed down into the Arroyo (stream) south of Benarrabá, it was very green. New ferns and brackens were unfurling along the edges of the path. We'd been walking around an hour and you could still see Benarrabá across the valley. The path turned and we started ascending.
Half an hour later and we could still see Benarrabá across the valley!
The hill was a killer, now we know why it had an 'alto' rating. It went up and up. we stopped to eat an orange and catch our breath.
We carried on up until the path leveled off near a derelict building full of pigs. We were pleased to see the yellow and white stripes on this tree indicating we were on the right path.We'd now been walking for two hours and guess where we ended up!
A few hundred yards from the turn off to Benarrabá, on the A369 road.
This shot of Mount Porón and part of Benarrabá was taken just before we reached the road.A little disappointed that we had to walk along the edge of the main road for 4km (half the distance of the walk) we reached Gaucín.We headed to the castle. We'd climbed up to the castle before in scheduled opening hours and found it locked. Anne and her family had gone there yesterday and reported it was open. So we decided to see if it was third time lucky. As you can see the sky isn't blue, my earlier attempt at weather forecasting wasn't entirely accurate. The sun was out most of the day but some big fluffy cumulus appeared out of nowhere and we had sunny intervals. Which was good for walking.Here's one of Jane at the top of the castle. We had a picnic just below the tower. It was interrupted by the girl wanting to lock up for lunch.
We carried on eating our lunch on a seat just outside the gates.
I'm not sure why they open and close the castle all the time. There's not a lot there except the tower, bell and a great view.
Refreshed we headed down to the road and the walk home.
We spotted this donkey and couldn't resist photographing it.We walked along the A369 road to Benarrabá. Then instead of following the signpost back into the campo we headed down the 3km tarmac road to the village. It was something we'd wanted to do for a while. This is the village from the road. We got back home and took the dogs out for a walk! We'd had to leave them behind as we hadn't done the walk before and we weren't sure it would be suitable for them.

A few beers and we'll be okay.
Newcastle United play Sporting Lisbon tonight in the 2nd leg of the UEFA Cup quarter final. The Mighty Magpies hold a 1-0 advantage. An away goal may do it for us.
Well we blew it. Shearer didn't touch the ball, Laurent Robert mouthed off before the game and was dropped. Jane's censored me from putting my true feelings about our French winger on the blog.

Friday April 15th 2005

Up early again and saw the sunrise. The skies are clear and it's going to be a beautiful sunny day again.
We are saying goodbye to Anne and her family today. They have had some glorious weather during their stay and I think they have had a really good time.
We have a few hours to clean the apartment as new guests arrive this afternoon.

The apartment was left spotless so our task was easy.
We have new guests. Val and her husband John. Tomorrow they are being joined by their son and his wife.
We walked to the Restaurant Kábilas and had a beer. Val and John had been exploring the village and found their way to the restaurant. We had a drink together as the sun dropped below Mount Porón.
I cooked a meal of Wild Asparagus (a gift from Isabel an old lady who walks miles everyday to the next valley and back. It takes her around one hour and a half everyday and it's a steep walk), pork pieces, fresh parsley, bottled tomatoes from last summer a gift from Carmen, chick peas, white beans and olive puree a gift from Anne. It was beautiful.
A quiet night is planned, watching gardening programmes and perhaps a film.