November 1st - 7th 2006
Written by Geoff Forster
We're up early. It's a Bank Holiday in Spain.
It's a beautiful sunny day. Perfect for a walk so we're taking the dogs out into the campo.
This is the view North up the Genal Valley.
I've been looking forward to getting out today to play around with the camera with manual settings.
Jane's taken her camera as well so lots of photo's today!
Jane spotted a large grasshopper flying across the path. It landed in the leaf litter.
I'm not sure if Grasshoppers can change colour, but I've never seen one this brown before. As you can see it is well camouflaged.
We stood under some Holm Oak trees watching some Chaffinches. The acorns were dropping all around us, one was hitting the ground every two or three seconds. It was only a question of time before we got hit so we moved on. Jane took the next few photographs of the trees, toad, the dogs and myself.
The branches of this Holm Oak remind me of a lightning bolt.
Also of the park in Margate where Jane and I met almost exactly six years ago. There was a large Holm Oak in the middle of Hawley Square where I used to walk Ferdy and Sally. Romantic or what!
There's a small water deposit near the path. We'd spotted a large toad there the other day. Jane got a good photograph of it today.
Border Collies Jake and his mother Sally. They are inseparable. They even bring sticks back as a team.
Here's one of my bald patch ... cheers Jane.
The village in the photograph below is Jubrique on the other side of the Genal Valley.
I was sitting practicing changing aperture and shutter speeds keeping the exposure metre perfect.
A better angle.
Jane took this of some Cork Oaks on a ridge.
The sky to the North was a gorgeous blue.
As we were sitting we could hear some birds calling. I guessed it was a member of the Crow family from the caw.
We looked up and high in the sky. Two Ravens were being chased off by a pair of Eagles. The only Eagles around at the moment to my knowledge are Bonelli's. They were too high to see any markings and the sun was bright. Five minutes later the Ravens flew back across to the South.
Here's Jane trying to organise the dogs for a group photograph.
Not easy when all the dogs want her to do is to throw their stick.
Here's Jake our youngest Border Collie.
I took a few photographs across the valley. This is Genalguacil.
This is Jubrique.
We took the Ruta Azul in reverse back to Benarrabá.
This is a short circular walk that takes you down a single file track to the arroyo Infiernillo and then up a rock strewn path to the bottom of Benarrabá coming out near Bar Andrés Sánchez.
We hadn't gone far when a recently fallen tree blocked the track.
A slight detour around the obstacle and we carried on down.
This is the view down the arroyo Infiernillo across the Genal Valley to Genalguacil.
Down in the bottom of the arroyo where the track crosses the stream, there are a series of small Border Collie sized pools. The dogs love them. Here are some photo's of them having fun.
There's an old molino in the arroyo, a ruin, but the land around it is still maintained. Terraced with orange trees.
This wild Morning Glory was growing up through a fig tree.
Near the village there are more ruins.
Back home we left the dogs outside to dry off before Jane brushed them.
I fed the donkeys and gave them some straw.
Cristóbal and Carmen invited me in to their house to try some hongos. A local name for mushrooms. They were parasol mushrooms, latin name lepiota procera which we'd had last year (kindly identified for us by neighbours Peter and Clarissa). One of them had been picked before it spread open and it looked like the one we photographed on Monday. They have a small ring of papery skin around the stalk which you can use to identify them.
Now we know we'll try to find some ourselves.
We cooked a stir fry of onions, garlic, peppers, bacon, and a frozen rice mix.
Later we watched a film on the True movie channel.
A grey start to the day. A light shower or two during the night but nothing significant.
We've got a busy day planned with trips to San Luis de Sabinillas and then Los Barrios.
I spent the morning walking the dogs and some time with the donkeys.
I've always liked donkeys but after owning two for a few months now, I realise what truly beautiful animals they really are.
We set off for Sabinillas, the skies were grey but no rain.
We called into the 'English Bookshop' a well established shop run by Alma and her husband. We put a 'Spanish Spider' advertisement in the shop window. We enjoyed a chat with Alma and then headed to the beach.
We parked in the sea front car park, got out of the car and at that second it started to rain. Again nothing too bad.
The smell of the sea was very strong, really salty.
We walked to Burger King and had a Big King ... mmmm we're lovin' it! Oops wrong junk food chain ;-) . BK is far better than McD!
We had a quick look on the beach I took this photograph of the grey sea and grey skies. It is a colour photo, honest.
The seagulls and sea reminded me of a beautiful photograph our friend Marilyn has just sent us from Jersey. She's just got a new DSLR camera! She's a very good photographer. So is her husband Michael who actually took this photo'.
Jersey Sunset by Michael O'Loughlin.
The deserted beach at San Luis de Sabinillas.
People were sitting under awnings enjoying cakes and coffee at a popular sea front restaurante.
We walked along the promenade and then turned around and headed back to the car.
We drove to Los Barrios. We got a lot of digital photo's processed to send to Jane's parents in London. It's very cheap here 24centimos/16p a print if you get 50-100 done, plus a free enlargement.
A quick coffee in one of the bars in the store (one of Spain's best points ... bars in Supermarkets, great idea!) before doing a shop.
Over to Lidl's for their excellent and very cheap dairy products and chicken breasts.
A White Stork flew overhead as we walked across the car park, they are magnificent birds.
We passed more on the way up to the mountains.
We phoned our friend Julie Stanton who is staying in Gaucín for a few weeks. She's just arrived and we haven't seen her since her last visit.
We arranged to meet in Venta El Socorro.
It was good to see her again and we caught up on what she's been doing in beautiful Harrogate. She reads the blog so she knows what we've been doing. This is one drawback to blogging. When we meet people who read the blog and haven't got anything new to tell them.
Julie Stanton.
We had a good chat for an hour or so before we headed back to Benarrabá.
I fed the donkeys by torchlight. They get spoiled with carrots when we come back from shopping on the coast.
Our neighbour Carmen called over with some beautifully cooked hongos for us. The mushrooms are cooked in a small amount of olive oil and lightly seasoned with salt. They tasted fantastic.
We cooked a curry whilst I listened to a magnificent performance by Newcastle United in the UEFA cup. We won 0-1 in Palermo.
We've just taken on Nigel Pearson as a defensive coach. It sounds like he's having an instant effect with the boys at the back actually playing as a unit. Krul our young debutante Dutch goalkeeper had a great game. I'm a happy man. Howay the Lads.
We had an average of 966 visitors a day to the website in October.
Just under 30,000 in total for the month.
Thanks to everyone who has passed our address on to their family and friends.
We've already had bookings for 2007.
We have a special offer on at the moment.
Book for 2007 ay 2006 prices. Only £25 deposit secures your holiday.
You can pay by Credit Card through PayPal.
We also have a few weeks left in 2006. So if you fancy escaping the freeze in the UK and coming to Andalucía, it's a great time for walking and sightseeing.
We're up early and I've started a major overhaul of the Blog pages. Which I guess regular visitors will already have noticed.
It has been two years since we started the 'Blog' and times have moved on ...
We wanted to add XML RSS Feed to our websites.
Also we wanted to increase the size of the photographs.
I'd previously been doing the Blog pages in fortnightly chunks, which had been increasing in length. Either due to my ramblings or because of the large numbers of photographs.
Bloglite was created to help with this, but if we wanted to increase the photo size and add RSS Feed we needed to go to a daily format which you see here.
I am planning an explanation page about what RSS Feed is.
Basically it means you don't have to visit our website to check if we've updated any pages, because Firefox 2.0, Internet Explorer 7 and Thunderbird mail plus a lot of Aggregators - My Yahoo etc can now quite easily be set up to inform you of any new pages/updates we make on our website. It's clever stuff!!
So I've been beavering away to come up with the new look page and working out the 'geeky' computer stuff to make this possible.
Of course the dogs, cats and donkeys have been fed and watered. We went for a bale of hay for the donkeys, but because it looked as if it might rain we left it in the back of the car.
We've been invited to Chris and Gilly Band's house down in El Chopo - Estación Cortes.
We met Chris at 17:00h. and followed him up, round and then back down a series of increasingly twisty unsurfaced tracks including crossing an unmanned railway crossing, to their house.
We had a lovely evening dining 'El Fresco' in early November. Chris and Gilly Have two sons Dom and Josh. They had also invited David and Jane who live directly opposite Chris and Gilly.
David and Jane have a lovely little dog and a number of cats. We all had a lovely evening.
This is David.
David's wife Jane.
Here's Jane with her new friend Jessie.
It was a lovely mild evening and we enjoyed good conversation, beer, wine, tapas and no alcohol beer for those on health kicks!
Jessie, a beautiful little dog.
Our host, Chris Band enjoying an excellent glass of Gran Reserva Rioja,
Chris's wife and our hostess Gilly, serving us with a delicious Spag Bol.
Their son's Dom and Josh.
Another photo of Jane.
A lovely evening, a big thanks to Chris and Gilly.
It was lovely to meet their two sons.
We hope to meet David and Jane again soon. They are true animal lovers and we hope to introduce them to our dogs, cats and donkeys at some point.
We crossed the railway track and wound our way down to Estación Cortes.
We decided to have a quick coffee, so we called into the Bar La Parra.
It has been a year or so since we were last there.
Sarah was still working behind the bar, it was good to see her again, she was looking really well.
We met Robin in there. Robin used to run the 'La Casita' Bar - Restaurante in Gaucín.
This is Lucy.
We had a good chat for twenty minutes before heading up out of Estación Cortes to Benarrabá.
We fed the donkeys by torchlight. There was a full moon but there was 90% cloud cover.
We'd had a really good day.
A good day, we've been working on the website. Jane's also been preparing the apartment.
The donkeys have another bale of straw (not all at once!) and a good helping of seed.
We drive to Algatocín to the Super Genal for supplies.
There are lots of Griffin Vultures on the limestone outcrops above the village. Twenty plus of the huge birds were circling in the sky. Some of the larger Vultures have a huge 3 metre / nine foot wingspan. They don't like beating their wings and wasting energy. They fly on huge rectangular wings, soaring on the thermals. On a day like today thermals were hard to find. Certainly any that would give them any significant gain in altitude. A few had given up. They were sitting it out on an nearby crag. The rest we're just cruising across the mountainside. Using the up draught to allow them to soar effortlessly around the circular El Porón.
Unfortunately the skies were a gloomy grey. Light levels poor. Any bird I could have got in the frame would have appeared as just a silhouette
I mentioned yesterday that we'd left a bale of straw in the car to keep it dry.
We we're driving out of the village when a lizard appeared on Jane's arm. We guess from in the straw. She calmly pulled over and we got it out ... Okay, she screamed "Geoff get it off me" we stopped suddenly, flicked the lizard out in a panic, and then went shopping.
Most of the day was spent researching on the web about XML, and RSS.
I began to work out some graphics for the larger width of the blog column.
I listened to the Five Live radio commentary of the football building up to the tea time kick off at St James' Park.
Life's a series of ups and downs and Newcastle United are having a small bad patch (38 years) and we're a resilient bunch so no problemas about losing 0-1 at home to the team bottom of the Premiership. The result puts us second from bottom. It should make the season interesting to say the least. I do get pretty down for a few hours after a loss, and this was a bad one.
We cooked a great Chicken casserole with chicken quarters cooked in oil with a handful of cumin seeds, coriander powder, cinnamon, cloves and a small amount of chilli. After five minutes we added 1½ litres of red wine, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes Fifteen minutes before serving we added a sprinkling of paella rice. Five minutes from serving we added 2 dollops of local honey, a squeezed lemon, plus a small amount of salt.
It was a taste sensation and well be doing this one again.
We buy carton red wine for cooking it costs 45 centimos a litre that's around 30p. Which makes cooking with red or white wine in this amount feasible.
We started to watch Taxi Driver but were too tired to get to the end, so we gave up after a few minutes.
Another busy day working on the new look blog.
I've been resizing photographs and doing some graphics.
Jane got restless about 16:00h. and we went for a walk.
We called in to Bar Andrés Sánchez and then Pub Bar Dami's.
We had a photograph we'd had printed out for Simon the flamenco singer, which we wanted to give to him.
We found him in Café Bar Guayacán.
Yolanda was pleased to see us, we hadn't been in for a week.
Antonio was in the bar, he took us outside to see three pups his daughter's dog has had.
The mother is white, these pups were all different colours and sizes.
Antonio also had an old accordion, he brought it in to let Juan Jesús try it.
After a few minutes practice he was playing it quite well.
A bit more practice and Yolanda danced a passe double with Antonio.
It's a family bar. The kids always come out with their parents. They are well behaved and were having fun.
This is our neighbour Anabel with her beautiful daughter.
This is Lyn and Felix from Connecticut. They enjoyed some of Yolanda's fine cuisine.
This is Otto just after he hit the jackpot on the fruit machine.
Probably the biggest group photograph Jane has arranged so far.
Antonio cooked us a Serranito which is pork fillet, a fried green pepper, a piece of jamón in a toasted bun. All cooked in garlic oil.
Here's Jane with Antonio.
Finally all the fellows. We had a good time and ate some great tapas.
We were planning a trip to Ronda we have some new blinds (persianas) to pick up for the balcony door of the apartment. The weather forecast and skies are saying it is going to rain, so we'll wait for a better day.
I went round to spend some time with the donkeys. I brushed them both and fed them some carobs. They look in great condition.
There was rain in the air, but just a fine mist that wets you without you really realising that it's raining.
I worked in the afternoon on the website. Jane has been cleaning and tidying around me, poor girl. living with me, three Border Collies and four cats. Cleaning never ends!
No photo's today so I'm posting some sent to us by friends Marilyn and Michael O'Loughlin.
This is Marilyn eating tapas straight from the tree ... not advisable as Olives are bitter unless soaked to let the acids out.
A bit of a photo quiz today - answers by email please. Winner gets a sin alcohol beer if they come to Benarrabá to collect it!
Where's this roundabout? Quite a spectacular water feature.
Where's this church?
This is actually a different church ... a bit tricky this one !! But a little nearer home.
Another church bell tower, any ideas where this was taken?
Marilyn and Michael are currently living in Jersey. This is a lovely view of a bay and lighthouse.
The rains came later than expected. By 22:00h it was very heavy.
We lost our satellite connection and it was the final of Jane's favourite 'Hells Kitchen'. Fortunately ITV2 is now also on channel 211 (Sky) with an hour delay. The rain eased off long enough for us to watch it.
We're up early. It's been raining all night. Quite heavy at times. Excellent news!
The campo needs regular soakings. The grass is already around ten to fifteen centimetres long ... great news for donkey owners!
Jane has been washing, ironing and cleaning.
I've been adding an XML Atom feed to the website. The link is at the bottom of the page if you want to subscribe to our Atom 1.0 Feed.
We stayed in most of the day, dashing out to check on the donkeys in dry spells.
This is another 'Guest' photographer. Friend Chris Band who strangely also lives in Jersey but has a holiday home in Estación de Cortes.
Cortes de la Frontera, Plaza de Toros. Great photo Chris .. my favourite.
Olive Grove.
Benaoján.
Igualeja at fiesta time.
A house near Faraján.
White Dove. Another great photo.
Finally the best village in Spain ... the beautiful fountain and Ermita in the plaza of Benarrabá.
Thanks to Chris Band for the photographs. Do you have any great photo's of Andalucía you can send us? We can't promise to publish them ... but perhaps one rainy day ... you never know!
Newcastle United won 5-4 on penalties in the Carling Cup at Watford. 2-2 AET.
We didn't listen to the commentary, but watched the 'Last Emperor' on DVD.