About one kilometre down the valley towards Benissa is a lavender garden that is open to the public only on Sundays. Being a fan of the lavender fields of Provence, Francine was keen to stick her nose into this one.…

Spain is one of those European countries where languages get mixed up. Here, it’s a little like driving into Wales and suddenly being faced with a mixture of road signs in Welsh as well as English. I’m not a fan…

With almost a week of mostly sunny, clear weather in the bag, we thought we’d try a walk up the Jalón river, that is to say, towards Alcalalí. I suspect that the river flows a little too quickly for for…

Bereft of life, that is. The Bernia is a roughly Snowdon-height mountain, that is to say about 1000m/3000ft-ish, to the south of the Vall de Pop where we are house-and-dog-minding. There is a spectacular circular walk around its peak but…

Because of the last week of heavy rains, the Jalón river had been more of  a raging torrent. When we took Scamp for a wander around the town. we came across an interesting variation on the idea of car parking.…

It seems that yesterday afternoon’s spell of sunshine and temperatures approaching acceptable were a flash in the pan. Today we had flashes of different nature, those that accompany heavy downpours and precede claps of thunder, which el perrito definitely did…

Monday dawned with more solid grey but the rain was mercifully missing. Yesterday’s rain was still around, though, covering the garden plants in raindrops. Since it was actually dry outside and raindrops were my only interesting subject, I experimented with…

On previous dog-and-house-sitting visits to Jalón, we’ve travelled close to the dates when Chris and Yvonne left and returned. We were a little like ships that passed in the night. This time we flew in earlier to give us four…

When the near constant rain stopped later yesterday afternoon and we wandered down to Jalón town square for a beer or two in the scarce sunshine, we watched a small stage being set up. The waitress delivering our beers explained…

Today began pretty much as yesterday left off, with grey skies and monotonous rain. Oh joy, this was not why we flew to Spain. Just to add insult to injury, we learned that temperatures at home yesterday had exceeded 20°C…