Author: Franco

El Cau

El Cau is one of the mountains siding our Spanish valley. I don’t really know the pronunciation but given the way this walk began, El Cow would be appropriate; it started heading upwards immediately and that’s the way it continued.

Posted in 2018-04 Spain

A Few Bernia Orchids

We had a quick excursion up to the Bernia basecamp which is another one of Francine’s orchid hunting grounds. Cutting a longer story short, our visit was also relatively curtailed because there really wasn’t as much as we had come

Posted in 2018-04 Spain

Els Arcs Nature

During our winter trip to Spain, my right leg suffered from what I believe was an attack of housemaid’s knee. Being an overuse injury, this was likely caused by an over-zealous return to walking in the mountains. A calmer approach

Posted in 2018-04 Spain

Clot de Galvany

I’ve been keeping an eye on the weather forecast to try and time a run down to see hw wildlife is doing at the Parque Natural el Hondo, south of Alicante. Today looked good so we left around 09:00, which

Posted in 2018-04 Spain

Season’s First

The sun was shining in a clear blue sky; my favourite conditions. We thought we could try our usual leg-loosening walk up to the cross above and behind Senija, but we began by calling into a breakfast bar in Jalon

Posted in 2018-04 Spain

Cabin Fever

The last stage of our return journey to the UK having successfully and mostly very enjoyably escaped the worst of the British winter, turned into something of a nightmare. At our northbound overnight stop at the Parador in Calahorra, I

Posted in 2017-2018 Winter

Early Damage

Just to keep the nature blog up to date, after a pleasantly lazy lunch with a couple of our neighbours, we returned to find our first Southern Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides feisthamelii) of the new season flitting about the Red Valerian

Posted in 2017-2018 Winter

Starting Our Last Week

The first day of our last week dawned with an attractively blue sky so we had no qualms joining Helen for one of her Monday walks up into the mountains. I say no qualms but I have been suffering from

Posted in 2017-2018 Winter

Pristine Swallowtails

Having been taunted by fresh Swallowtail butterflies when we walked up to the cross above Murla recently, today being sunny, we attacked the hill and cross behind Senija, which is a more gentle climb that I can manage with a

Posted in 2017-2018 Winter

Las Salinas, Finally

I can’t believe that we’ve been here for almost two months but hadn’t yet made one of our normal forays around Las Salinas in Calpe – until today, that is. Today was looking like the warmest and sunniest day of

Posted in Uncategorised