Castile - Day 1, La Mancha

After a couple of hours we reluctantly left the attractive little town of Chinchón with its beautiful square basking in the afternoon sun and after threading our way through the narrow streets twice by some miraculous stroke of good fortune found ourselves on the right road and heading south to the town of Belmonte in the province of Cuenca where we were due to stay for three nights. After a short while the scenery began to change and it became much flatter but still with olive trees and vines and fields of pretty pastel colours and at some point we passed out of the region of Madrid and into Castilla-La Mancha and we were in the land of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza but the first windmills that we saw soon after arriving were not the charming corn grinding mills of Cervantes but modern wind turbines instead.

It was about a hundred kilometres to Belmonte and the road passed through several villages and it was busy, full of lorries and very slow. The navigator fell asleep and I became frustrated by the lack of progress and when an opportunity presented itself left the regional road and joined the motorway instead. This was much easier because for many Spaniards, driving on motorways is too expensive and the traffic density is gloriously low. This is in contrast to the main trunk roads running parallel to the motorways, which are jammed by drivers who are reluctant, or simply cannot afford, to pay the high motorway tolls. Toll motorways in Spain are a luxury for the wealthy and the high charges discourage most Spaniards, particularly truckers, from using them and add to the irritating congestion on other roads.

Two junctions of the motorway cost €5.20 but it was worth it and we left it at Mota del Cuerva fifteen kilometres from Belmonte. So far we had done ever so well but with the navigator still drowsy and disorientated this was where we managed to get confused and lost for the first time and had to double back and make several detours before emerging on the right side of the town next to a hill with a row of whitewashed Castilian windmills. We stopped to see and take photographs and visited the little museum and admired the views over the flat plains on either side of the elevated ridge above the town.

Leaving the windmills we drove to Belmonte and arrived at about six o’clock in a curiously quiet and deserted little town. After a little bit of uncertainty we found the hotel Palacio Buenavista Hospedestra and checked in. It was one of those ‘have I made the right choice’ moments that you can sometimes get on arrival but it turned out to be a delightful and ours was a big room with traditional furniture, a red tiled floor and a good view over the hotel garden and the church next door. Very quickly the moment of doubt passed and I went out to find a shop for a bottle of screw top wine and some beer. This took some finding but eventually I came across a mini-market tucked down a side street and the purchases were made. It was a nice town and I have to say that I have a preference for hotels in smaller towns rather than staying in the big cities because on the whole they are friendlier and almost always cheaper!

Later we walked out to find somewhere to eat but this was a sleepy little place and there wasn’t a great deal to do so we found a local bar and went inside for a drink. There were some local customers gathered around the bar and a family at an adjacent table. There was a sign on the wall that said "No está permitido fumar" but it was next to a cigarette machine and the rule obviously didn’t apply here because the air was thick with acrid smoke. Anti-smoking legislation became law in Spain on 1st January 2006 but for small bars and restaurants the legislation offers the owner the choice of going smoke free or not but if it doesn’t it means that customers under eighteen years old are allowed in that bar. This regulation was being flagrantly ignored as well. Compared to other European countries, where smoking in the workplace is banned altogether, the Spanish legislation is weak and confusing and it is estimated that smoking continues in 90% of all small Spanish bars.

It was a very traditional sort of place where the customers had that curious Spanish habit of throwing their litter on the floor just underneath the bar where there was a collection of papers, cigarette ends and other waste that made the place seem most untidy. Imagine doing that in the village pub and you’d be asked to leave I’m sure! They weren’t that used to foreign tourists either and the little girl with the family kept edging closer towards us driven on by curiosity but she kept a safe distance just in case we were visitors from another planet, and I suppose, to her, we might just as well have been.

With eating options in the town seriously limited (i.e. non-existent) we returned to the hotel and enjoyed a simple but enjoyable meal in the restaurant together with a bottle of local wine and then after an early start and a long day went back to the room and a good night’s sleep.

Castile - Day 1, Chinchón

Spain is currently the world’s second largest tourist destination after France, with the population of forty-five million being increased every year by as many as sixty million foreign visitors, 80% of whom make straight to the excellent beaches along the coasts. But I am keeping away from the tourist hot spots and in the continuing search for real Spain have now visited Galicia and Cantabria in the north and old Moorish Andalusia in the south and this time, still staying well away from the crowds and the busy Costas had plans to visit inland Spain, to Castile and the provincial towns and cities around the capital of Madrid.

Already in the space of less than a year I have discovered that Spain is a country of immense diversity. In respect of cultural development pre-revisionist historians traditionally identified two Spain’s, with the conventional view that the peninsula was an ideological battleground between the liberal heirs of the Enlightenment and the Republic and those who sought to preserve the Catholic ethos of traditional Spain and the Monarchy. This was a battleground that reached its bitter conclusion in the civil war in the 1930s.

Geographically Spain is quite magnificent with green forests in the rainy north, mountains and vast plains in the central regions and deserts in the extreme south east. With an area of just over five hundred thousand square kilometers Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe after France and with an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres it is the second highest country in Europe after Switzerland.

Spain is also a country of different people and the description ‘Spaniard’ is just a convenient way of bundling them all together. Richard Ford was an English traveler in Spain in the nineteenth century and in his ‘Handbook for Travelers in Spain’, published in 1845, acknowledged now as one of the very first travel guides, was one of the first to identify that ‘Spain is a bundle of local units tied together by a rope of sand’, and Gerald Breenan in ‘The Spanish Labyrinth’ similarly observed ‘In what we may call its normal condition Spain is a collection of small, mutually hostile or indifferent republics held together in a loose federation’.

It was an early morning Ryanair flight and in razor sharp clear skies the plane crossed the Atlantic Spanish coast somewhere close to the city of Santander and below us we recognised the two thousand five hundred metre high peaks of the Picos de Europa that we had visited last December, which were snow capped and glistening brightly in the mid morning sun. And then we crossed the massive northern mountainous regions of northern Spain. It was brown and rocky with huge pine forests and blue shimmering lakes, long straight roads snaking between towns and villages and from above it was possible to begin to appreciate the immense size of the country.

Closer to Madrid the predominant browns gave way to vibrant greens and then into a mosaic of colours and contrasts as the aircraft made its final descent and landed at the airport. It was a bit disorganised but the customs were brilliant and the United Kingdom immigrations control could learn a thing or two about getting passengers through an airport quickly from these guys. Then collecting the car was gloriously simple as well and within forty minutes we were heading out of the city on the A3 motorway and on our way to the region of Castilla-La Mancha and our first destination, the town of Chinchón, about fifty kilometres south of Madrid.

Not far out of the city the scenery became very attractive with acres of olive trees and stumpy vines slumbering in the fields and waiting for the right conditions to stimulate spring growth. In the trees and on top of pylons there were stork nests and in the sky buzzards hung above us on the thermals looking for lunch in the fields below.

We arrived in Chinchón at about half past one and ignoring the edge of town tourist car parks steered the car towards the Plaza Mayor at the very centre of the town. Parking has rarely been easier and there was a perfect spot right in the Plaza and I was sure it wouldn’t be this easy in a few weeks time. There was a glorious blue sky and big sun and it was hot enough to change into summer holiday linens although this did take some of the locals by surprise as they were still wrapped up in woollies and coats.

It was a marvellous location with a big irregular shaped square that today was a car park but at other times is used for town festivals and the occasional bullfight; it is surrounded by houses of two and three floors with running balconies and shops, bars and restaurants on the ground floor. We spent a few minutes soaking up the atmosphere and then we compared menu prices in the bars and selected the cheapest on the sunny side of the square and settled down for lunch. We enjoyed salad, calamari and tortilla and after a couple of glasses of Spanish beer set off to explore some of the tiny streets running off of the square.

We walked first through narrow streets of whitewashed houses to the top of the town and to a castle with excellent views over the houses and the surrounding villages and countryside but the castle was in a state of disrepair and closed so we left and after calling in at the Parador hotel to see how wealthy people spend their holidays we walked to the other side of town and climbed again this time to the church which had equally good views over the tiled roofs of the houses which in some way reminded me of Tuscany.

News from the Nests

Dad’s Bird Journal, Blackbird page

The two nests at the bottom of the garden are now full of parental activity. The Blackbird eggs hatched at the end of last weekend and there are now three chicks in the bottom of the nest all growing quickly and even beginning to develop little feathers. The adults don’t seem to mind if I go and have a look within a few paces but the male will let me know if I get to close and will warn me off by performing a theatrical and noisy diversion in the garden.

The nest has been there for a while because Blackbirds can actually start breeding as early as February if the weather is favourable and it is normal for a pair to have up to three broods in a season but they don’t always use the same nest again. The nest is a rather untidy open cup built by the female from vegetation such as grass and twigs, and bound together with mud and finer grasses. I am surprised how low down it is and this probably accounts for the high percentage of Blackbird nesting failures. In fact, it is estimated that as many as nine out of ten nesting attempts end in failure and that 89% of these are caused by predatory birds such as magpies and crows and other garden killers such as cats. The Blackbirds have been successful in this location for the past two years however and I am optimistic about their chances again this year.

Other species like the Robin, Thrush, Dunnock and Wren are other common hedge nesting birds but based on the colour of the eggs I have now positively identified the second nest as belonging to a Dunnock and not a Sparrow as I first thought. In the bottom are four bright blue eggs that the female rarely leaves except when she is disturbed. The nest is built in dense shrubs and hedges and is lined with moss and hair, and built from twigs and grass. It is much smaller than the Blackbird nest and a lot neater too. The female sits dead still in the nest with just the top of her head and her eyes above the top as she sits ever vigilent and alert to danger. I mentioned before that Dunnock nests are favourites for Cuckoo squatters but I haven’t heard a Cuckoo around here for a couple of years now so I think they should be safe from this sort of intrusion.

Earlier this week I was driving through the fields near to where I live and I saw some birds in a freshly ploughed fields that I had never seen before (or perhaps I had but have never been sufficiently interested to take any notice). They were about the size of a Crow or a Rook but they were a striking contrast of black and white plummage and a long orange beak which they were using to prod the friable soil presumably looking for worms and other grubs. They looked out of place in the middle of a field and I guessed that they were shoreline waders but I couldn’t identify them from my book of common British garden birds because they are obviousl not common British garden birds. Later in the week I mentioned this to Nigel at work (http://nigel-nigelburch.blogspot.com/) and he demonstrated impressive avian recognition skills and from my description immediately and correctly identified it as an Oystercatcher.

Oystercatcher’s as you might guess live by the sea on mud flats or on estuaries and live mainly on a diet of mussels and other small crustaceans but interestingly not oysters because their shells are much too difficult to break into and anyone who has tried to open live oyster shells will understand this only too well. Apparently they will sometimes come inland to feed and as the field is only about five miles (as the Oystercatcher flies) from the Wash then I suppose although I have never seen one before then it was not all that surprising to find them here and I was quite right, they were looking for worms.

The Oystercatcher by the way is the national bird of the Faroe Islands where it is known as the Tjaldur and their annual arrival on about 12th March each year is celebrated by the Faroese people as the beginning of spring.

The tooth will out

I was on a babysitting day again this week and this one turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I had imagined it was going to be when the shift began at eight o’clock. My plan was to look after Molly and at the same time get a few outstanding jobs done in the garden and then later read a few chapters of my Rory McGrath book (http://www.beardedtit.co.uk/index.html) but these plans turned out to be hopelessly optimistic because I had forgotten just how demanding a six month old child can sometimes be.

The first thing that creates certain difficulties is that she can move about now and is not content to just lie around on the floor or sit in a baby chair for more than two minutes at a time. This requires almost constant vigilance because she can roll about and is beginning to make decisions about where she is going to go. Without full co-ordination of movement however this can still go wrong at times and on one occasion I had to rescue her from a tight spot under the coffee table where she had manoeuvred herself as though she were a car mechanic.

She can’t crawl yet but she can manage to get herself into that on all fours launch position and she won’t be long before she is away. The house isn’t yet fully baby proofed and there are still some things at floor level that will soon after be moved to safety so it is clearly not a good idea to leave her alone like this for much longer than it takes to put the kettle on. I feel a playpen purchase may be coming along soon!

She is also in the habit of wanting to stand up all of the time and as she can’t stand up of course this means that she needs to be constantly supported which can be a bit of a chore but it makes her happy so that makes it all worthwhile. To satisfy the standing up urge I imagined that the perfect solution was to put her in the baby walker and as the weather was so good stand her at the front door so that we could see each other while I attended to the neglected and rather overgrown hedge. This worked for a minute or two but the doorway is narrow and she soon became frustrated at the restricted options for movement so we had to abandon that idea very quickly.

After watching two episodes of the Night Garden together a walk to the shops seemed to be a good idea so I changed her into her going out clothes, applied the factor fifty sun lotion, assembled the pushchair and we set off for little Tesco in the village. Part way there she fell asleep and as the sun was shining and I had my book with me this was a good opportunity to stop off at the local pub and sit in the garden for half an hour for a couple of chapters. On the way back we stopped at the shop to pick up groceries and she was awake again by this time and she did her usual trick of looking cute for the customers and fishing for ‘isn’t she lovely’ compliments.
Back home she had a Caribbean chicken lunch and then we went back into the garden again to do a couple of little jobs and to provide Jonathan with some basic gardening instructions so that he could help out here and there over the summer. All afternoon she was intermittently grumpy which demanded constant attention and change of distraction activities and this didn’t seem like her at all. On the next day it was reported that a first tooth had pushed through her bottom gum at the front so I guess that might have been the reason for her uncharacteristic mood.

I had an excellent day. Molly is lovely to be with, she is really good company and I enjoyed my day chatting away with her and I am already looking forward to next week already when I will get the opportunity to do it all over again.

Iggle Piggle, Molly and the Tombliboo Eee...

Spain - Golf 3, La Finca (r)

For our third and final round of golf we were due to return to La Finca where Richard and I had had such an enjoyable round the year before. We were determined to return because it was a lovely golf course, quite new and designed to be the venue of the Spanish Open in 2009 so we were playing on a very high quality course indeed.

Today we had a slightly later tee time at half past nine but the course was a good thirty minutes drive away and there was no time for slacking so Richard pulled the burger trick again on Scott and I have to say that it worked a treat, just like applying a dose of smelling salts. After breakfast we drove through San Miguel towards the town of Algolfa and this year we found the place without any of the traumas that we had experienced in 2007.

The approach to the course is absolutely spectacular as the road rises to the top of a hill and then descends to a plain and laid out to the right of the road is the magnificent spectacle of the golf course, all lush green fairways, close clipped greens and lots of blue water. It is marvellous how they construct these courses because to the left of the road, in complete and total contrast, is a vast expanse of dry scrubby brown land and La Finca must surely have been the same before someone had the bright idea to build the golf course there.

We checked in and to my disappointment no one asked to see the handicap certificates that I had gone to the trouble to forge a week or two before and after booking in we made our way to the first tee and worried about anybody watching us tee off. We needn’t have however because at €70 for a round of golf the course wasn’t busy at all and after we played our first shots the four ball in front was almost out of sight and with no-one in front to slow us down and no-one behind to give us hurry-up tee shot nerves we enjoyed ourselves playing golf at our own pace and finding time to take pleasure in the stunning views of the mountains in the distance and the fantastic features of the golf course including all of the water.

We all started steadily enough, although Richard recreated his second shot from last year and after negotiating the first two shots without incident managed at last to stick a shot in the middle of the brook that ran through the middle of the fairway. Jon and I picked up pars on the par three third and then we reached the fifth with its intimidating moat and we both lost balls in a watery grave while Richard and Scott played immaculate shots over the water and onto the island green. We carried on and finished the front nine and at the half way stage Jon had a three shot advantage over me and Richard and Scott were neck and neck.

La Finca is an excellent course but there is no need to be frightened of it. I don’t know why we worry so much about our golfing skills, it’s as though we are convinced that everyone else out there is a Tiger Woods or an Ernie Els and the reality is of course that they are just not. One of the things that I am very good at on a golf course is finding other peoples lost balls, I have got thousands of them, more than enough to see me through my golfing days without ever having to buy another one, and here is the point I am making, if everyone else is so good why is it that I have got so many of their balls? And you find them in the strangest places as well and it feels so good to find one in a position that you just know that you couldn’t possibly have played such an awful shot. This is how I know that I am no worse than anyone else out there on the course.

The sun was out and it was getting very hot by now as we progressed on to the tenth tee to begin the back nine. I got a par but just to outdo me Jon went one better and recorded a birdie and after that we went on to the eleventh where Scott had a disaster and had another of those ‘Lets pack up and go to the bar’ moments but he got over it soon enough when he posted decent scores on the twelfth and the thirteenth. It was getting hotter and being a new course there is a real lack of shade but we persevered through the eleventh and twelfth, through the short thirteenth and on to the fourteenth with a curious saucer shaped green and then down the fifteenth with some impressive new houses all along the left hand side and looking dangerously adjacent to the course and vulnerable to a wayward Richard tee shot. Jon scored a par after hitting a green keepers buggy with his approach shot and I matched him seconds later with a neat little chip in. Next was the short par three over water and I got a second par in two holes. Richard wasn’t doing so well at this point and after two successive nines blamed this on a knotting muscle problem in his back. Scott was improving rapidly and by the middle of the back nine was posting a string of respectable scores.

Next was the fiercesome seventeenth with over three hundred yards of water from the tee to the green but lots of adjacent fairway for the faint hearted. Richard, Scott and me went the long way round but to my surprise Jon squared up to take on the challenge. I didn’t think that he could do it and I offered him two steaks for dinner if he could. He looked at me as if to say ‘of course I can’, went through his tedious five minute tee shot set up routine and then launched a shot that sailed over the water and landed safely on the fringe. It was an immaculate shot and then Scott tried it and only came up short by about twenty yards or so. Richard and I didn’t try it by the way. Jon got his par and then we finished the round up the long energy sapping eighteenth and we were glad to finish and get to the bar. As for the scores, well, the boys got their revenge and Jon beat me by five shots and Scott thrashed Richard by eleven. For some reason the winners paid for the beer at Campoamor and the losers paid for the beer at La Finca. That’s life!

La Finca is a course that gets my full recommendation. Although it is clearly designed for better players it is only as tough as you want to make it and it is brilliantly designed not to penalise the high handicappers, and golfers like us are well accommodated so that with a little thought and careful route planning it is possible to negotiate the course and a high scoring round but without getting into too much difficulty.

After a beer and a cool down under the golf club umbrellas we drove back to the apartment for another balcony lunch and then spent the afternoon at the beach, well, not at the beach exactly but at a beach bar, which I find is so much nicer. Later we returned to San Miguel de Salinas and at the same restaurant met our sister and her husband who are owners and have a property nearby but didn’t mind dining with us on account of the fact that we were owners guests but I’m not sure that they would have been quite so keen if we had been renters.

Bird Watch - Rory McGrath & Bill Oddie

There is an enormous amount of activity in the garden at the moment and this is one of the times in the year when it is important to feed the birds because this is when feeding requirements are at their highest as the birds prepare for the breeding season. All of the regulars are here but there have been a lot more Chaffinch this year and the Dunnocks are back in force.

The Dunnock is a small bird that doesn’t draw a lot of attention to itself and is commonly mistaken for the sparrow. After a period of decline its numbers are increasing and the bird is now up to amber on the RSPB worry list. I was interested to see two Dunnocks flirting in the garden this weekend with lots of chasing each other about, wing flapping and tail flicking in a sort of courtship ritual. And that was exactly what it was because an interesting fact about the Dunnock is that it is really randy and turns out to be the swinger of all birds, quite fond of a bit of wife swapping. Females are polyandrous, breeding with two or more males at once and DNA testing has shown that chicks within broods often have different fathers. This sort of behaviour is quite rare and only found in about 2% of birds because the majority are monogamous, where one male and one female breed and stay together year after year.

Not being absolutely certain who the father of the chicks might be may also account for the fact that It is a common host of the cuckoo and whilst the eggs bear no resemblence to each other the cuckoo eggs are commonly accepted. I have read that this may be a recent thing because other birds have got better at spotting the cuckoo’s egg but I don’t think it can be so because Shakespeare refers to it in King Lear when the Fool (who was not nearly as daft as he looked) provides an interesting assessment of the betrayal of the King by his daughter Goneril with these lines:

“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long

That had it’s head bit off by it’s young." [I, 4]

I have been keeping a sharp lookout for nests and was delighted last week to find two down in the secret garden. One belongs to the Blackbird’s who have now nested in this spot for three years running and last night when I checked there were two speckled blue eggs in the bottom. The parents take it in turns to guard the nest and watch the eggs and the male in particular spends long periods standing sentinel on top of the garden shed roof. The other nest is much smaller and I wasn’t certain what it was until yesterday when I saw a sparrow sitting perfectly still trying hard not to be seen. I can’t see inside but I am certain there must be eggs in there too. I am certain there are more Blackbirds in the laurel bush but it is so dense that I can’t see inside but I can hear activity whenever I am in the garden.

I have been reading a book by Rory McGrath who is a keen bird watcher, it is called ‘Great Bearded Tit’ and I recommend it for both information and for humour. The term birdwatching was introduced in 1901 while ‘bird’ was first used as a verb in 1918. The term birding was also used for the practice of fowling or hunting with firearms as in Shakespeare's ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor ‘, ‘She laments sir... her husband goes this morning a-birding’. The terms 'birding' and 'birdwatching' are today used interchangeably, although 'birding' is preferred by many since this includes listening for birds as well as spotting them.

The term 'twitcher', is sometimes misapplied as a description of a birder but is strictly for those spotterswho travel long distances to see a rare bird that would then be ticked off on a list. The aim of twitching is often to add species to the list and some birders engage in competition with one another to accumulate the longest species list. The act of the pursuit itself is referred to as a twitch or a chase and a rare bird that stays put long enough for people to see it is called twitchable or chaseable.

Lots of famous people like to watch birds and the list includes the American Presidents, Jimmy Carter, Araham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevet; Fidel Castro, the President of Cuba; the authors Ian Fleming and Agatha Christie, TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson (not absolutely sure about that one) and of course Bill Oddie. There was a time (before I became a bird watcher)when I would have chosen to boil my own head rather than watch Bill Oddie on the TV but now I can’t wait for the new season of Spring Watch even though he won’t be hosting this year.

STOP PRESS

I have just returned home from an afternoon of golf and I have great news. The Blackbird eggs have hatched and there are little baby birds in the bottom of the nest. They are not especially attractive I have to confess but I am so proud I just don’t care. If they live then they will be independent and leaving the nest in only three weeks and I think that is amazing. If the Sparrow eggs hatch and live they will be away from the nest in just one week but most astounding of all is the Swift, which is independent and can fly in less than a week after it has hatched.

Leicester City - Promotion

I don’t really regard myself as an ardent football fan anymore but I do keep an eye on the results and today was a special day because Leicester City were promoted back to the Championship.

About this time last year it was all a bit upsetting because then they were relegated to the third division for the first time in their one hundred and twenty four year history. Although they call it League One these days there is no getting away from the fact that it is really division three. Every day since dad passed away I have wished that he had still been here but I was actually pleased when he wasn’t around that day to see his beloved Leicester City being relegated to the third division. He would have been very happy today though when they went back up!

In the past he must have seen some football ups and downs because Leicester were always a club who were not quite good enough to stay in the first division (the Priemiership) and just a bit too good for the second division (the Championship) so they were up and down like a yo-yo. The year that I was born, 1954, was a good year, he must have been happy when City were promoted as second division champions in May just beating Everton to the title by .3 on goal difference. Their biggest win was 9-2 against Lincoln and their biggest crowd was 51,811, against Everton and I have often wondered if he was there?

The FA cup was always disappointing and I can remember how disappointed he was in 1961 when Leicester reached the FA cup final for the second time and were beaten 2-0 by Tottenham Hotspurs who did the league and cup double that year. Full back Len Chalmers broke his leg early on and they had to play most of the match with ten men because they didn’t have substitutes in those days. They reached the cup final again in 1963 and lost to Manchester United and again in 1969 and lost to Manchester City. They had been there before in 1949 and lost to Wolves and this means that they have the unenviable record of being the only team to reach four FA cup finals and lose them all.

There were some good times though, especially when they won the League Cup twice in the 1990s and the best moment of all when they beat Derby County at Wembley in 1994 with two Steve Walsh goals to get promotion to the Premiership. We went to Wembley for the match and he was really happy that day.

Football was always important to dad and from about the time I was seven years old he to take me to Filbert Street to watch Leicester City. The first game I saw was against Blackburn Rovers. I can recall quite clearly going to the matches because this always involved a long walk of about three miles there and three miles back. Very close to my grandparents house there was a bus stop with a direct service into the city but dad rather cunningly always started out for the match at a time that was certain not to coincide with the bus timetable. I never caught on to this little trick of course and he had a very brisk walking pace that required me to run along side him just to keep up as he strode out ahead. It turns out that dad just didn’t like paying bus fares which he considered to be an unnecessary item of expenditure.

Football grounds were totally different to the all seater stadiums that we are used to now and were predominantly standing affairs. I was only a little lad so it was important to go early to get a good spot on the wall just behind the goal. This required an early arrival and although matches didn’t start until three o’clock dad used to get us there for the opening of the gates at about one. This must have required massive amounts of patience on his part because two hours is a long time to wait for a football match to start standing on cold concrete terracing and I really didn’t appreciate at the time that all of this was done just for me. In the 1960s of course it was common to have pre-match entertainment when local marching bands would give a thirty minute medley of tunes up until kick off time so at least there was something to watch.

Spain - Benidorm (r)

Because we like to watch the TV comedy series ‘Benidorm’ we all agreed that being only a hundred kilometres away was an excellent opportunity to visit the notorious place and see it for ourselves. Actually I have to confess to having been to Benidorm before because I spent a fortnight there in 1977 at the Don Juan Hotel, which has been renamed now but was somewhere along the Avenida del Mediterráneo at the back of the Levante beach. Two weeks in Benidorm was a very long time as I remember so I was happy that this time it was going to be restricted to a couple of hours or so.

We set off early after breakfast on what started out in the best morning weather of the whole week and we travelled the sixty kilometres to Alicante under big blue skies. This part of the journey took a bit longer than was strictly necessary because we were determined to by-pass the motorway tolls and early on in the trip we got snagged up in market day traffic in the nearby town of Saint Miguel, the very same place that we had encountered road work chaos the year before. Once safely past the tolls we picked up speed and motored effortlessly along the A7 Autopista del Mediterráneo travelling north-east through what has to be said is not the best part of Spain in respect of scenery. The land is flat and unattractive with hectares of dusty and barren scrubby land running down to the coast and disappearing into massive salt lakes that obviously aren’t terribly conducive to supporting fertile arable fields.

Around about Alicante as the motorway sweeps past the city the landscape changes dramatically however almost as soon as soon as it passes from the Province of Murcia to the Province of Valencia and the scrub gives way to large dark grey deep fissured mountains that rise dramatically from the flat plains. Sadly we discovered that there is a price to pay for better scenery and there was no way of avoiding a toll that appeared from nowhere and cost us €5.15 for the second leg of the journey to Benidorm. We were annoyed about that but on reflection it was much easier than using the congested old coast road.

As we passed Villajoysa on the coast and the one thousand four hundred metre high Puig Campana Mountain to the west we suddenly got our first view of Benidorm and the unique skyline formed by its numerous tall hotels and apartment buildings, which is quite unlike anything else on the Costa Blanca, to such an extent that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘Manhattan of Spain’ or ‘Beniyork’ and I have to confess to being struck by the first sight of Benidorm which was quite a surprise. I didn’t remember it like this and one moment we were driving through brown barren hills when suddenly there it was looking like Kuala Lumpur or Monaco on the Costa Blanca with columns of concrete and glass all shining bright and looking impressive in the bright sunshine.

According to the 2004 census Benidorm has a permanent population of sixty-five thousand inhabitants but the population grows by almost ten times to half a million in the summer. It therefore needs a lot of hotel rooms to cater for all the additional people because it is one of the most important holiday resorts in all of Spain. One million three hundred thousand holidaymakers annually visit Benidorm from Britain alone.

The city enjoys a unique geographical position on the east coast of Spain because it faces due south and has two stunningly beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean Sea that stretch for about four kilometres either side of the old town, on the east the Levante, or sunrise, and to the west the Poniente, the sunset, and it enjoys glorious sunshine all day long. In 1954, the Mayor, Pedro Zaragoza Orts saw the potential of the place and created the Plan General de Ordenación, or city building plan to you and me, that ensured that every building would have an area of leisure land, guaranteeing a future free of the excesses of cramped construction seen in other areas of Spain and it is the only city in the country that still adheres to this rigid rule. This vision for the future sparked the building boom that followed and the flying start that Benidorm achieved in the package tour boom of the 1960’s and 70s.

Until the tourist industry began in the 1960s, Benidorm was a small fishing village that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years. In the early 1960s my grandparents visited Benidorm several times in the first days of package holidays and came home with exotic stories and suitcases full of unusual souvenirs, flamenco dancing girls, matador dolls and velour covered bulls that decorated their living room and collected dust for the next twenty years or so. I bet they would have found Benidorm a totally different place to what it is today.

We left the motorway and found a free parking place with ridiculous ease and with the anticipation of severe culture shock rising to boiling point we made straight for the western end of the Poniente beach. Almost immediately it was a huge let down. We had been expecting tat shops and British pubs, the distinctive smell of Hawaiian tropic, fat bellied lager louts with tattoos and peroxide Essex blondes with fake designer sunglasses but there was none of that sort of thing at all. Instead the beach was a very civilised affair with predominantly elderly Spanish people sedately enjoying the sun and a few British left overs from the winter Saga tours where the length of stay could be measured directly in degrees of orange tan, and there were some very carroty people here indeed! One man had so much tanning oil on his body as he laid out in the sun that if we had had a few rashers of bacon and some eggs then we could have cooked ourselves a full English on his chest.

I have to say that Benidorm was nothing like what I was anticipating at all but was really quite pleasant and the beaches were immense and spectacular with beautiful clean sand and blue flags flapping proudly in the breeze. It is an interesting fact that Spain has more blue flag beaches than any other participating country with four hundred and ninety nine in five thousand kilometres of coastline, the United Kingdom by comparison, has only one hundred and forty-four in nearly eighteen thousand kilometres. Greece has the second most blue flags at four hundred and thirty and France is third with two hundred and thirty-eight. Clearly the United Kingdom needs to get cleaning up!

We walked the entire two-kilometre length of the Poniente and by the time we reached the old town harbour and elevated promontory we had pretty much given up on finding anything to snigger about. In the old town itself there were more Spanish tapas bars than British pubs and there was a notable absence of those awful bars with tacky pictures of the food on the menu. I really hate that! I know what bacon and eggs looks like and I know what spaghetti Bolognese looks like (or what it should look like) and what I also know is that these pictures generally bear absolutely no resemblance to what you are likely to get if you are demented enough to order it. There was not a bit of it and after wandering around the old town searching unsuccessfully for cheap souvenir shops we had to finally admit defeat and sit in a bar on the seafront and have the first beer of the day. Richard surprised us all by announcing that he was drinking water today, which he did, but he followed it up immediately with the first beer.

If Benidorm is a surprisingly nice place then the old town is an especially nice place with a blue domed church, reminiscent of those in the Greek islands, and a pedestrianised area that was positively delightful. I remembered this from my visit thirty years ago but not much else I have to say and with refreshment time over we walked a short way along the Levante in search of what we were sure was the real Benidorm from the television series but without success we called a halt to the expedition and retraced our steps back to the car. Although we were disappointed not to see what we had come for it was a pleasant surprise and we left with the confirmation that despite the tourists that flock in every summer that Benidorm is a very real Spanish town, with Spanish culture and a Spanish history of tuna fishermen and merchant sailors that was actually quite plain to see. I wished that I had grasped that in 1977 because if I had then I am sure that I would have enjoyed it more on that occasion.

All along the sea front there was a programme of environmental improvements that when completed will make Benidorm a place worth visiting and I might even consider it myself in the future in my Saga years. Back at the car we drove back to the motorway, paid the toll and left the mountains of Valencia and motored south back to the scrub of Murcia. We tried to be a bit clever on the way back and see if we could get closer to home before leaving the motorway close to the toll but this went spectacularly wrong when we ran out of exits and ended up paying another €3.70 in road tolls which may not sound a lot but to put things into perspective was the equivilent of about ten bottles of San Miguel at the Mercadona!

Spain - Golf 2, Campoamor (r)

The Real Club de Golf Campoamor is right next door to the Las Ramblas apartment complex where we were staying but we were unable to play the course last time because it was closed for improvements so we were keen to give it a try this year.

The boys were with us now and we had an early tee time at half past eight so we guessed this might require the use of dynamite to get them out of their beds to get ready for the short journey to the club house. After a short debate we abandoned the dangerous explosives idea and Richard went to plan B instead and prepared Scott a burger bun for his breakfast and after wafting it under his nose this had him out on the balcony in double quick time. The rest of us found this menu choice a bit bizarre and had a more traditional continental style first meal of the day and then we loaded the car and set off.

The weather again looked unpredictable and although there was blue sky all around there were also some nasty looking black clouds in the distance and a big grey lump directly overhead. As we changed into our golf shoes Jon complained that I was wearing the same colour scheme as him, red shirt and cap and dark blue shorts and he seemed to find this embarrassing but how was I to know what he brought to wear, he never consulted with me in advance. Anyway I reassured him that any similarities between us would come to a sudden stop as soon as we stepped up to the tee and played our first shots down the fairway.

After an irritating delay waiting for some late arrivals in front who had no apparent sense of urgency we finally got to tee off respectably down the first. This was a shortish par five and Jon showed the way with a par and I did the same and put this achievement down to the matching golf clothes. Scott wanted to use his driver and got into a bit of trouble and started with a card wrecking 12. Richard began where he left off at Villamartin and played steady safe golf all the way to the green.

After the first Jon scored a second par, Scott abandoned the driver and improved immediately, Richard plodded on using only two clubs in his bag and I tried as best as I could not to let Jon get too far ahead of me. At the turn Jon was on 44 and I was two shots behind on 46. Richard was in front of Scott by 4 shots, which demonstrated the benefit of keeping things simple. Jon had chosen to fly out to Spain with only three balls in his bag and I thought that was a bit optimistic but he only lost one on the front nine so he was able to carry on with us to the back nine.

The weather continued to be disappointing and the black cloud overhead stubbornly refused to move on but we only had a few spots of rain as we teed off at the ninth and that was only a passing shower but the cloud usefully kept us nice and cool and at least we didn’t have to worry about sunscreen or sunstroke. The Campoamor course was very good and was covered in lush green fairways surrounded by beautiful pinewoods and orange trees and at the highest points it overlooked the coast all the way from Torrevieja to the north to La Manga del Mar Menor in the south. It has to be said that the colours and the scents of the pines, cypresses, palm trees, olive trees and jasmines, together with the blue of the sea and the Mediterranean breeze made this course a real pleasure.

And as we played on the weather improved and the sun came out and started to get very, very hot. This seemed to affect the boys most of all and I started to chip away at Jon’s slender lead and Scott declared a preference for giving up and going to the bar after two successive nines on the thirteenth and the fourteenth holes. This course really suited Richard and he was recording some good scores that ultimately resulted in a seven shot improvement on the back nine over the front. Scott was playing well on the par threes and he hit all five on the course with some very impressive six-iron shots. Jon got his fourth par at the twelfth and I got my second at the par three fifteenth, Richard scored thirteen points over the final nine holes and Scott cheered up after his earlier disappointments with some good play on the par threes.

The final three holes were especially good with a long dogleg sixteenth a par three seventeenth that demanded deadly accuracy and a long par five finishing hole back to the clubhouse where Scott provided the most amusing moment of the round. Having played an approach shot and landed on an alternative eighteenth green, not in play, we all agreed that he was entitled to a free drop. In theory this should make things a little easier but Scott decided to do things the hard way and inadvertently dropped the ball in a precarious position with a nasty slope that deposited the ball in a green side bunker. Three of us found that very amusing indeed, I’m sure you can work out which one of us didn’t.

A good game and in the final reckoning I had beaten Jon by a single shot after he had got himself in all sorts of trouble on the par threes and Richard had a comprehensive win over Scott by twelve clear shots. We liked Campoamor and will definitely be going back!

A couple of days earlier Richard and I had gone to the club house to check it out and we agreed that it wasn’t terribly special and a bit expensive so we agreed that after the game that we would return to the apartment and have lunch and beers on the balcony. Scott had another burger and we had bread and cheese and various hams and washed it down with San Miguel. Later we got the lilos out and had an afternoon of poolside rule breaking with drinking, liloing and jumping in and out of the pool. It was still a bit cold in the water and once again this seemed to amuse Pete the neighbour but the sun was full out by now and it was very pleasant indeed sitting in the sun and resting. I took a lot of unjustified stick about wearing speedos (what is wrong with speedos?), the boys had too much to drink and Richard dozed off to sleep in the sun. Later the fat ignorant Pete (not the neighbour) came by and finding Richard asleep and surrounded by empty beer bottles asked if this was the result of excessive drinking. I lied convincingly in a contemptuous sort of way that said ‘mind your own business’ and he moved on with a final disapproving glance at Richard lying prostrate on his lilo but at least he didn’t make any derogatory remarks about my speedos!

After four nights dining at the Villamartin Plaza we were ready for a change tonight so after tidying up and changing we decided that we might visit the nearby town of San Miguel de Salinas, which was a few kilometres inland. Richard and Scott recommended a restaurant that they had used before and Scott demonstrated immaculate navigational skills and guided us through the town and directly to the right street. A very impressive performance indeed! This turned out to be a very nice place and one that I wished we had discovered sooner. For a start it was a lot cheaper and that makes it a winner with me and the food was excellent and was a lot more authentic than the ubiquitous holiday restaurant food served in Villamartin. Don’t get me wrong I liked Villamartin as well but on balance I preferred this place.

San Miguel is an interesting little town and although it is home to a lot of ex-pats it seems to have retained its Spanish identity, for the time being anyway. It has an interesting website that is well worth a visit at http://www.san-miguel-de-salinas.com/uk/default.asp

It had been another excellent day and after we had finished the meal and settled up we negotiated the road back to Las Ramblas and had a final gin and tonic on the balcony and made last minute plans for the trip to Benidorm in the morning.

Molly at Easter

Molly came to stay for a couple of days this Easter weekend and it was good to have her here again. She was a bit unsettled at first because Sally had had a bad Good Friday journey with a major hold up in Grantham and nearly three hours in a baby seat in the car had made Molly a bit grumpy but she soon settled down and after a few tears found her normal placid temperament and was her normal delightful self and we were able to go out for a late lunch at the Thatched Cottage in nearby Sutterton. It’s not my favourite place but it is open all day so we knew that we would get served there. It is an old pub that is owned by an elderly couple who have spent a fortune on the place and obviously don’t want it messing up badly so when we arrived with Molly and asked for a table we had to wait for a while as they checked their insurance policy details and then put down emergency plastic sheeting and covered the furniture to make the dining room baby-safe and to protect against little accidents.

After we returned home it was time to feed Molly and I was staggered at the range of baby food that there is to choose from these days, it is so much more imaginative and diverse than when my children were babies and on the menu was a choice of fisherman’s bake, cottage pie, tomato in basil sauce or spaghetti Bolognese. Spaghetti Bolognese? She is barely six months old and eating Italian food already. Apart from Heinz spaghetti on toast I didn’t really discover the delights of pasta for at least the first twenty years of my life. How things change because when I was born in 1954 there was still wartime rationing in place and choice was a bit limited. My parents were actually issued with a ration card for me but never had to use it because thankfully it all came to an end three weeks after I was born.

After the Bolognese, followed by mango surprise, Molly was completely content and settled down to play with her favourite toys, the hungry caterpillar and one of the Tombliboos from the Night Garden on the BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/inthenightgarden/ which seems to me to be the 2009 equivilent of 1950 Andy Pandy when I was a boy, or Rainbow, which in the 1980s I had to sit through episode after episode of on video with my children. Interestingly Andy Pandy has been brought back this year and a new series started last month with actor Tom Conti doing the narrative.

Molly is very inquisitve now and she seems to be experimenting with the sense of touch as she tests things all the time with her slender little fingers and wants to experience the different textures that she is discovering. It’s great how modern baby toys cater for this and the caterpillar in particular is designed to stimulate her little fingers and her curious mind.

After a long day she was tired and went to bed early but still slept right through and I was up before her next morning. After half an hour or so I heard some sounds from the bedroom and went to investigate. She was awake and was trying to attract attention by kicking her legs in the air and banging her heels on the bottom of the cot to make a sort of ‘come and get me’ banging on the floor sort of noise. Downstairs on the carpet she was a proper little live wire and this was something else I had forgotten in twenty years – just how much babies move and wriggle, how difficult it is to get them dressed and how they always fill their nappy just when you have got all the little press studs fastened up in the right places.

Nappies are something that I have noticed have improved tremendously in twenty years. In the 1980s they were quite new and after the first pee the filling would go all wet and soggy and disintegrate quite quicky but with modern ones the wetness seems to completely disappear and babies skin stays nice and dry. Another improvement is the fastening straps which I am pleased to see seem to be 100% reliable. They did’nt use to be and I can remember getting really cross when they use to tear off or refuse to stick, usually because of a microscopic grain of talculm powder or the tiniest smear of sudocrem. When this happened I was naturally reluctant to waste the nappy and would resort to sticking them together with sellotape or old fashioned nappy pins. You don’t seem to have to do that anymore and despite the fact that 400,000 tonnes of used disposable nappies are sent to landfill every year, which isn’t very good for the environment, they really are a brilliant improvement on the old terry nappies that we used when Sally was first born.

Later we went to Springfields and Molly sat patiently while Sally shopped and I took charge of the push chair. Molly liked being around people and sat looking cute and fishing for compliments and entertaining other shoppers with the occasional smile or odd raspberry. Actually, I got the biggest compliment when a nice old lady asked if I was the father. I really liked that lady especially after I explained that I was the grandad and she said that I didn’t look old enough. Some people are just so nice.

It was typical Easter weather, cold and grey, and that meant that there was little point going out for the afternoon so we spent the rest of the day back at home and Molly sat with us and joined in the conversation and we entertained her with baby games and an episode of the Night Garden. She was tired by seven o’clock and had another early night and then woke early the next morning. After a flurry of breakfast and getting dressed activity she was gone as Sally took her home and I missed her and it took me all of the rest of the day to get used to a return to normal in a house that suddenly seemed abnormly empty and as quiet as an empty cathedral without her.

Looking for España (r)

With an area of just over five hundred thousand square kilometers Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe after France and with an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres it is second highest country in Europe after Switzerland. That is a lot of country to try and see and visit and with so many northern European ex-pats living down the eastern coastal strip then the chances of experiencing the real Spain was always going to be difficult to achieve in this part of the country. And so it was.

On the first morning we woke to worryingly indifferent weather with grey clouds obscuring the sun and we had to spend the first hour or so before the Mercadona opened sitting on the balcony, drinking tea and surveying the skies for signs of change. Luckily it wasn’t cold and with promising signs of improvement our first job was to go shopping and stock up on alcohol and breakfast food, but mostly alcohol! We drove from Las Ramblas to the nearby Villamartin which are both modern urban centres that cater for overseas property owners and golfers and as such they are not especially representative of the real Spain. There are rows and rows of apartments and villas and the occasional unfinished commercial centre with what always seems to me to be far too many Chinese restaurants and Irish pubs and a desperate shortage of anything authentically Spanish. In actual fact it comes as something as a shock to even come across a Spaniard because most of them sensibly live inland well away from the scruffy coastal strip.

Villamartin is an urbanization in the Province of Murcia, which is an Autonomous Community established in accordance to the second article of the Spanish Constitution which recognises the rights of regions and nationalities to self-government whilst also acknowledging the ‘indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation’. Currently, Spain comprises seventeen autonomous communities and two autonomous cities, both of which are on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. As a highly decentralised state Spain has possibly the most modern political and territorial arrangements in Western European. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia are designated historic nationalities and Andalusia, although not a nationality, also has preferential status, Murcia, like the other remaining twelve is a regional Province without nationality.

Most afternoons we made our way to the beaches at La Zenia and Campoamor which are close to Villamartin and reached by crossing the murderous old coast road which has a full range of confusing traffic signs, road works and a high volume of traffic all trying to avoid the motorway tolls. On the first afternoon our holiday almost came to a premature end when I mistook a feeder lane for the main carriageway and came within a split second of being crushed into the roadside barrier by a coach driver who didn’t appreciate me trying to use a piece of highway that, I have to be honest, he had much greater entitlement to than I did. This was close and almost necessitated an unscheduled change of underpants and I took a great deal more care to pay attention to my driving after that.

The coastline here is called the Costa Cálida, which means the warm coast and at La Zenia there is a nice clean sandy beach (not blue flag though) and a convenient restaurant situated in an opportunely elevated position so that we could eat, enjoy a beer and keep an eye on the beach activity below. The lucky-lucky men pedaling their fake designer sunglasses, watches and belts amused us because they appeared to suffer from serious memory deficiency on account of the fact that their sales technique was to offer their goods for sale and after rejection give it about fifteen minutes or so (sometimes less) before trying once again to sell exactly the same merchandise to exactly the same people who had said no thank you only a very short time previously. These boys really could take rejection squarely on the chin!

After a cool beer or two it was normal practice to walk along the beach and Richard brazenly ogled the topless bathers in his usual indiscreet style. Now this is very embarrassing indeed, I can remember it in Gran Canaria in 1986 and his son, Scott, will agree wholeheartedly with me, having been subjected to his dad’s over zealous enthusiasm for finding lady bathers without their tops on, on a number of previous occasions. One day he is sure to get slapped in the face but until that happens I suppose he will just go on enjoying his little beach walks in the sun.

Just a little further south is the blue flag beach at Dehesa de Campoamor which was a nice little place where we found a perfectly acceptable little beach bar selling San Miguel and with a children’s climbing frame that we just had to climb to the top, play Spiderman and make an exhibition of ourselves. Growing up? What’s that all about then? The final beach we visited was even further south at La Torré (not Blue Flag either), which just like the others had marvelous clean sand and a beach bar where we stopped for a beer and listened with interest to a group of Essex ex-pats telling trivial stories to each other at the top of their voices and making each other giggle uncontrollably like something from a Catherine Tate sketch.

North of the Costa Cálida is the Costa Blanca which refers to approximately two hundred kilometres of coastline north and south of Alicante. The name Costa Blanca was allegedly conceived as a promotional name by British European Airways when it first launched its air service between London and Valencia in 1957 at the start of the package holiday boom. At that time the cost of the fare was £38.80p which may not sound a lot now but to put that into some sort of perspective in 1960 my Dad took a job at a salary of £815 a year so that fare would have been about two and a half weeks wages! The average UK weekly wage today is £450 so on that basis a flight to Spain at British European Airline prices would now be £1,100. Thank goodness then for Ryanair because this week I have booked return flights to Seville for just £30 fully inclusive which represents just about three hours work today in comparison with what of been about a hundred hours in 1960.

If we couldn’t find the real Spain or the real Spanish people we thought we might at least find the real Spanish weather. This south-eastern corner of Spain is officially geographically designated as arid whilst north and south it is Mediterranean. This obviously accounts for the absence of any arable farming and not a lot of vegetation either. Surely then this was the place to be to enjoy uninterrupted blue sky and daylight hours full of sun, but this was not to be either. Last year had been gloriously sunny but this year the weather was much more changeable and irregular and we encountered cloud at some point every day. A barman at the beach at Campoamor lamented that until recently weather had always been predictable from March to October and the sun would shine continuously but in the last few years this had not been the case. He blamed this on global warming and I agreed with him. One afternoon it rained so hard that we had to abandon the beach bar in an undignified rush and dash for the car and return to the Apartment along roads that were awash with water and accompanied with rapidly plummeting temperatures. We had to wear pullovers that night and we couldn’t sit under the stars to eat either.

Most nights we ate at Villamartin which is a modern development built in 1972 and has evolved into a pseudo Mediterranean village of apartments, townhouses and villas with a central square with a bank, supermarket, shops, cafes and restaurants. There is nothing very Spanish about this place I can tell you and most of the staff are young Brits who were dragged over here by their parents ten to fifteen years ago and this is the only available employment for them. There is a nice Argentinean steak house in the square however and we enjoyed a few meals and a lot of San Miguel there. Speaking of San Miguel there is a municipality of that name about ten kilometers inland which does have a history going back to Roman times that did seem to be a little more Spanish and we found a nice restaurant there that served what seemed to be traditional Spanish food. San Miguel de Las Salinas is a village based traditionally on agriculture and the salt industry and more recently the citrus industry of orange and lemon groves. On the face of it this seemed a lot more Spanish but hang on because according to official statistics in February 2008 41% of the population is now British and only 35% is Spanish. And there was an Irish pub that would be open in a month’s time. Oh dear!

One day we drove to the city of Cartagena in search of Spain but the weather was poor and when we arrived there a big black cloud rolled in and blotted out the sun. We parked the car in an underground car park that made us feel uneasy and walked for a few minutes along the marina but it was cold and miserable and we weren’t especially impressed so we left without giving the place a fair chance to prove itself and returned to Las Ramblas and the ex-pat world of Pete and Sue.

Make no mistake, this is a nice place to visit and play golf sure enough but it isn’t the real Spain so I resolved to look harder when I returnto the country in July to Santiago de Compostella in Galicia and then again in November to Seville in Andalucia.

Spain - Golf 1, Villamartin (r)

Looking for real España wasn’t of course the real reason for travelling to Spain at this time because this was to be a golfing holiday. Before flying off to the Iberian Peninsula we selected three courses, two that we had played the year before at Villamartin and La Finca and a new one, at nearby Campoamor. Because of the girlfriends and the trouble with permissions the boys couldn’t join us for the first round but they were due to be there for the final two.

On Sunday, the second day of our holiday, we were due to play Villamartin, which we had played last year with Joe the club professional and John the Dutch international footballer and as we were playing alone again this year we wondered if we would get paired up again. When we woke the weather was overcast but dry and after breakfast we prepared for golf and set off for the course and the clubhouse check-in. The place looked good as soon as we wandered through the entrance gardens that were complete with ornamental gardens with fountains and the impressive statue of the athletic naturist lady golfer.

At the office I received the disappointing news that we were in fact due to play with two others and I wondered just how I should break this news to Richard whose first tee nerves might not be able to cope with this arrangement for a second year. This didn’t seem to displease him at all however because he had already met our partners for the day, who were a good pair of chaps from Yorkshire and we all got on immediately. Actually one thing that annoys me a bit is when strangers apologise for being poor golfers before they start and then proceed to crack the ball about three hundred yards down the fairway and both Allan and Stuart did exactly this. Luckily the rest of their game didn’t approach the standard of their tee shots so this didn’t spoil the day for us and we managed to keep up.

Richard started by scratching his way down the first, staying as close to the trees as he could and then finishing with an impressive approach shot that hit a sign attached to a tree and knocked it skew whiff and I wondered if this was going to be the pattern for the day but after that he played a steady game of golf until we reached the fifth when he put a fairway shot out of bounds and through the conservatory roof of an adjoining villa with a spectacular crash of splintering glass. No one came to complain or to demand insurance details so I have to assume that luckily they were not in occupation at this time. If you buy a property next to a golf course you probably have to get used to that sort of thing, what else can you expect?

That was about the end of the amusement really until we reached the ninth where Richard managed to plonk his ball in the water in pretty much exactly the same spot as last year although this was not nearly so difficult as last years achievement when, because we were playing a temporary green, the water was almost directly behind him. It is almost impossible to work out exactly how he did it.

What was interesting about Villamartin was the amount of birds on the course. On every hole there were Swifts that swooped about so close to the action that I was convinced that they wanted to join in. There were also a lot of Hoopoes, which are interesting brightly coloured birds that were grubbing about for insects in the turf and quite oblivious to the golfers. Most interesting of all however was a flock of vivid green Rink Necked Parakeets that were introduced some time ago to the Villamartin commercial centre and have thrived there and spread to the golf course. These birds are indigenous to Africa and South Asia but are becoming more common in Europe as the all year round temperatures become milder. There are even some colonies in the United Kingdom that have thrived due to warmer winters and a lack of predators and a number of colonies have been established in the South East of England. The largest colony of around seven thousand birds is at Esher in Surrey and is said to have established itself after escaping from Ealing film studios whilst filming shots for the movie ‘African Queen’ in 1951.

On the thirteenth we played a short par three, which, it turned out, was next to a villa with a big garden and owned by Terry Wogan. We didn’t see the great man himself of course; I expect he was away somewhere rehearsing for the Eurovision Song Contest later in the month.

We completed the course without incident and I mention this because this is something I am especially proud of. I have been known in the past to be short tempered on the golf course but today I behaved impeccably. We were playing at a brisk rate but behind us was a three ball that seemed determined to try and rush us and in doing so became more and more impatient. They would tee off behind us and then rush up as quickly as they could and wind themselves up while they waited:

“What are they doing naaaawh?”
“Look where he’s left his baaaag!”
“Get on wiv it!”

They were Essex people of course! Much to Richard’s surprise I ignored this blatant provocation and even on the sixteenth when they came across and asked us to hurry up I left all of the negotiations to our playing companion Allan, who pointed out, very diplomatically I thought, that we were right up with the clock and as we had paid £50 for the round we would take as much time as we wanted. I liked his style and to be honest any intervention from me was rendered completely unnecessary but it left Richard wondering if I have been taking ‘anger management’ classes. I haven’t of course; I just must be getting old!

We both had a good round, I finished with an 88, including five pars and Richard had a very creditable 117, including the conservatory shot! At the end of the game we said goodbye to our partners for the day and as the sun was coming out we went to the village of Villamartin for a drink but it remained disappointingly dull and we abandoned the plan and returned to the apartment instead for beer and ham sandwiches which was a much cheaper option of course.

After refreshments we hung about the pool and even though it wasn’t what you would call hot I decide that I had to go for a swim. Pete next door was astounded that anyone would go in the pool in ambient temperatures of less than 40º and declared me raving mad. ‘Northerners’ he said, ‘you’ll even break the ice to go in if you have to!’ We are not true Northerners of course but you have to remember that for anyone from Kent or Sussex anywhere north of Watford is practically within the Arctic Circle! Actually I have to confess that it was a bit cold and as hypothermia began to set in and the blood supply to my fingers slowed down to a trickle as they went white and wrinkly I had to get back to the room and get some warm clothes on quickly. I didn’t however own up to Pete that I was absolutely freezing cold.

The first days golf had been a great success and as we sat on the balcony later that night and shivered away we looked forward to picking the boys up the next day and the two further rounds of golf that we had planned for the rest of the week.

Spain - The start of the search (r)

If it’s the spring it's golf tour time so this year we decided to return for a second visit to Las Ramblas in Spain. We invited the boys along of course but they were unable to get the necessary girlfriend permissions to join us right from the start and it was only after some serious Henry Kissinger style negotiations that they finally got the necessary authorisations on their travel passes that allowed them to join us three days later. This gave us the opportunity in the first couple of days to get settled into the apartment and to reacquaint ourselves with Pete from next door, the vice chairman of the Resident’s Association.

We arrived late in the evening but on the next day we hadn’t been on the balcony very long when he spotted us straight away and came around to investigate, in his Captain Mainwaring sort of way, to establish our residency rights. He immediately recognised us from the year before and having satisfied himself that we were legitimate temporary residents he hung around to have a chat. And believe me Pete can chat! Like many people who spend endless months at a time in an apartment in Spain I suspect he gets a little bit bored so he looks forward to the opportunity to talk to new people. I’m not quite sure why he spends so much time in Spain at all because he explained to us that he doesn’t like beaches or sand, he doesn’t like the grass or the trees in the garden and he doesn’t like the swimming pool very much and all of these seem to me to seriously restrict leisure opportunities in Las Ramblas.

There are an enormous amount of Brits living in this part of Spain; in Torrevieja alone there are about twelve thousand and this accounts for about thirteen per cent of the entire population (the Spanish themselves are in the minority here at only forty-eight per cent). There are similar statistics in Benidorm and by 2010 it is estimated that there will be one million Brits living on the Costa Blanca. The sad thing of course is that they don’t want to seriously integrate and the place is awash with British pubs, British breakfasts and British newspapers and that really is a great shame. In more glorious times the British gave the world great architecture, magnificent civic buildings and culture and now all we have to give is Burger King, Chinese Restaurants of questionable quality, fish and chips and England football shirts.

Sadly conversation amongst overseas property owners is severely limited and there are only three main topics; the first is about property, how much they paid for their place and how much it is worth now, second how it was the best decision that they ever made in their lives and third how they would never ever go back because Britain is such a bad place to live because of the crime. EXCUSE ME! At least I don’t have to worry myself stupid about being burgled and live behind metal grills with more locks and keys than you’d find in a high security prison. They are so boring and they talk constantly about the value of their investment and get together to compare the size of their patios. Some of these people have lost all sense of reality and spend most of their time trying to convince themselves that they made the right decision when they sold up, left their heritage behind and relocated to the sun. Personally I am not convinced.

I mentioned here last year the hierarchy of Spanish property ownership; first of all there are the owners and they of course are top of the pile, and then below them are the guests, these are the people who are occupying the apartments as friends of the owners and this is where we fitted in, and right at the bottom (actually some way down at the bottom) are the renters, who are common people who can’t afford overseas property investments themselves and don’t have friends who can either.

There are also an awful lot of rules to property ownership and this week Richard set about breaking every single one of them. First of all you can’t take lilo beds in the pool and there seems to be no logical explanation for this because that is exactly what they are intended for. Second you can’t take beer around the pool and the residents prefer it that if you must that you go back to the apartment to drink on the balcony out of sight. Actually I can see some sense in not taking bottles to the poolside but we did it anyway. Thirdly, and I think I actually agree with this one, you can’t hang your washing out to dry in the garden or hang towels off of the balcony. This didn’t bother Richard and he did this as well. In addition to these picky poolside rules you are not allowed to jump or dive into the water and we took no notice of that either. Off site you are not allowed to walk around the golf course and we tried that one afternoon but were asked to leave by the marshal after an officious member saw us and reported us to the clubhouse.

Last year we were fortunate enough to witness the AGM of the Resident’s Association but this year we were unlucky and missed it by a few days. That was a shame but at least on one morning there was an impromptu meeting of the Chair and the Vice Chair and Thomas, the gardener. Apparently there was a problem with water leaking from the pool and they were looking for a solution. I couldn’t imagine that they could possibly have taken very long to sort out but the meeting went on for nearly an hour with a full inspection of the garden and lots of gesticulating and nodding of heads. The two men wandered around in their pompous way and Thomas followed behind and tried to pay attention and look interested although it was clear from his body language that he thought they were a pair of wankers who didn’t know what they were talking about.

Actually Pete the neighbour is an ok bloke with a good sense of humour and a sense of reality about Spanish property values who even turned a blind eye to Richard’s rule breaking and at one point invited him to join the committee when he offered a brilliant but blindingly simple solution to their little pool problem. The other Pete, the Chairman, on the other hand is a complete knob and an ignorant one at that who is so far up his own jacksie that he won’t even speak to a guest, even one who has been invited to join the committee. I don’t think he would even stop to wipe his feet on a renter.

Pete, the ok one, has a huge repertoire of fantasy stories and it’s worth recalling a couple of them here. First of all he told us about the wildlife in the area that included some incredulous tale about a three-foot rabbit! “It really took me by surprise he said” I don’t know about being surprised but it would certainly have scared the shit out of me! Next he explained that what made this place so desirable was that it was only a ten-minute walk to the beach. Now unless Pete had discovered time travel the only way that you were going to get to the beach from Las Ramblas in ten minutes is if you are an Olympic sprint champion and I think they might find it a bit of a challenge! And then he told us about his golfing abilities. He doesn’t like golf but apparently he once played an eighteen-hole pitch and putt course and went round in just twenty-six shots. The club pro was apparently so impressed by this achievement that he framed the scorecard and gave him a years complimentary membership. Frankly I think he should have called up Colin Montgomerie to get him a place on the European Ryder cup team. He told this tale with a completely straight face and topped it off by informing us that his wife Sue was even better than him.

This year the weather was a bit unsettled so one of the first jobs was to go to the Supermarket and stock up on alcohol in preparation for a lot of time sitting about on the balcony. The Mercadona provides another interesting ex-pat experience because although it is the largest supermarket chain in Spain this is not what I would call a typical Iberian shopping experience. It is a ubiquitous sort of supermarket that due to the number of people from Essex wandering around the aisles with their permatans and bling that you could quite easily mistake yourself for being in Billericay or Basildon. Generally they are looking for familiar British products and explaining to staff in their annoying accent that always adds a couple of unnecessary aa’s into a word to drag it out into a irritating whine how they want coffee gra-aa-nules.

During the week we spent a lot of time on the balcony drinking beer and passing the time away with interesting conversations about the meaning of life, which was the best Spanish beer, Mahou or San Miguel and the technical points of the of the international scale for the grading of farts. Every visit to the balcony or the pool involved a preposterous conversation with our affable neighbour and we began to look forward to our amusing chats. We did get to go out a bit as well and this included three good rounds of golf and an eye-opening visit to Benidorm.