Francine had knowledge of a couple of gardens in the near vicinity that she fancied visiting. She flipped a mental coin and it came up [or is that down?] L’Albarda Jardin Mediterráneo. L’Albarda’s little leaflet says: L’Albarda is a benchmark…

On Monday we’d joined our walking group to ascend a mountain called El Cau, which overlooks the Jalón valley. It’s a long, more or less continuous climb going up about 525m. There are several false summits – you think you’ve…

A quickie, somewhat late to press. We embarked on a trip down towards Torrevieja, about 150km south. Torrevieja has an “interesting” reputation, or so we believe, but the draw was two lakes, one of which is pink and the other…

The winter doldrums, that is. So far this season, the weather in Spain has been terrific, better than last year, so it has been great to escape the British winter. There have always been some butterflies around – more than…

On an earlier trip up the mountain road to the Bernia basecamp, we’d spotted a rough track through some almond trees that created an avenue of sorts. Being a mountain road it’s narrow, i.e. almost wide enough for two vehicles,…

Today would have been my mother’s 101st birthday. I’m not given to noting birthdays of the deceased but I couldn’t help but think about mother’s today. She absolutely hated having her birthday in February because it’s usually the worst month…

Cities are not my natural habitat. [Ed: Quelle surprise!] Much of my feelings about cities have naturally been shaped by London which is an over-priced, over-populated metropolis with no architectural integrity that I’d rather avoid. Crowds aside, I am not…

And so to the driving force for our trip to Madrid, the Van Gogh Alive experience – an audio-visual show. We’d scouted the location yesterday so knew where we were going. Our entry tickets were for the first publicly bookable…

Our first full day in Madrid was forecast to be sunny and so it was; cool, though, topping out at about 8°C. We fortified ourselves at a local café with chocolate y churros – cups of hot chocolate accompanied by…

Well, it was too close to Ave Maria to resist. I’ll explain in a minute. Francine has been playing tour organizer again; we’re off on a trip to Madrid [big city, scary spiders] for three days. There’s safety in numbers…