The Three Kings, which is a 12th night present bonanza and a bigger deal in Spain than Christmas, is done and dusted and things are now returning to relative normality, whatever that is. We are currently enjoying a spell of very fine weather and, though early morning temperatures can hover around 0°C, or even just below in the frost hollow that is our valley, Francine and I have been out and about stretching our legs.

Most of our leg stretching has been with a couple of walking groups, though we have been out by ourselves a time or two. Either way it normally involves puffing and panting up one of the mountains in or around the valley, trying to force our lungs to remember how to work in addition to our knees. We’re getting there.

There are five species of butterfly that over winter as adults in the UK which can be seen out foraging if a warm, bright spell occurs. [Go ahead, you can do it.] It may be that warmer, brighter spells in Spain are more frequent but we’ve been spotting a few here whose flight seasons don’t mention winter in the books, either. Because butterflies indulge in a habit called hill-topping, scaling the odd height or three tends to bring us into contact with some. Most common at the mountain tops have been Wall Brown (Lasiommata megera) and the delightful, rather diminutive Lang’s Short-tailed Blue (Leptotes piritous).

One of the UK’s winter-flying butterflies is the Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta), so it is perhaps no surprise that we’ve seen one its relatives, the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), feeding on the Red Valerian behind our property.

The only other winter flier that I’ve managed to capture on pixels so far, though not necessarily very well, is the Bath White (Pontia daplidice). This species is a rare migrant to the British Isles and the rather curious English vernacular name apparently comes from a piece of needlework allegedly depicting a specimen taken in or near Bath in 1795. Vernacular names can be very odd things. It was originally known in Britain, I read, as Vernon’s Half Mourner, which sounds even more curious, so I think I’ll continue with Bath White.

Missed completely on pixels, we have also seen several Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) specimens flying through. Tis is a rather frustrating species at the best of times since, when and if one does settle, it invariably instantly snaps its wings shut. The underside is very attractive, though, so I’ll keep trying.

I believe I had a brief glimpse of a single Long-tailed Blue (Lampides boeticus) but my attempt at driving the new camera was so clutzy that it disappeared before I got photographic evidence. This one, at least, is said to fly all year in the Canary Islands, so it seems reasonably likely.

With any luck, both species of Swallowtails may appear before our Spanish visit is over so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for those.

Yes, the first day of the new year and a sunny one here at the Costa Blanca. 2019, if you please. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we in the IT industry were fretting about the havoc that a change of millennium would cause to all our computer systems. In the similar intervening period a century ago we had time for a couple of bicycle engineers to get man aloft in a powered heavier-than-air craft, begin filling the world with cars and to fight one of the most senseless and bloody conflicts in European history. I guess 19 years is a long time. Following WW I part II, the European Union was originally formed to prevent further bloodbaths and this year, here we stand on the brink of turning our back on it.

Ignoring that which we are powerless to control, we went out to enjoy the sunshine. A little further up our valley is a side road offering access to a site, Pla de Peteracos, with some Neolithic paintings. Having ignored it for a year or two, we thought we’d go an have a squint at last.

Not being a historian, I had to look up Neolithic: apparently it was a.k.a. the New Stone Age and began about 12,000 years ago. If only Dulux could make paint that would last that long. We took the side road and drove up to the handy-dandy parking area created immediately below the relevant cliffs. A short walk uphill was enough to get us to the now fenced off site (apparently it had been vandalized at some point in time) and to wake up our legs and lungs. The first design proved very difficult to see, particularly for me, until I adjusted my scale – it’s quite faint, only about 3cms long and depicts a wounded deer (it says). The remaining designs were larger, stronger and more readily seen from a distance. I’ve circled the two “shelters” on the bigger picture of the cliff face better to show location.

We’d been up this road before but playing with the flowers rather than the rock art. Then just a little beyond where we now were, the metalled road continued to climb but petered out and became a rough track. It was probably passable in the days when Land Rover made proper off road vehicles but was likely to be a little less attractive to their modern Chelsea Tractors. We left our car parked a wandered up further listening to the constant 50Hz mains hum of bees in the flowers, and were surprised to note that the road now appeared to be metalled all the way. It was a little narrow but a better surface than anything in our now dilapidated road system at home. We returned to the car and drove off to see where it went.

Where it went, passing a few places where the ironing board flat road surface sides would benefit from shoring up against falling stones, was over the mountain and down into the next valley at the Vall d’Ebo, one of my dragonfly hunting spots. The sun was out but the air was chill; we had seen patches of frost in some of the constantly shaded areas. My dragonfly habitat was bathed in sunshine, though, so we stopped for a look. From the road bridge, I was surprised to see not only a dragonfly but an ovipositing female dragonfly. Along the side of the stream we found several males, basking on the rocks in the 1st January sunshine and flying occasional sorties over the water.

A New year Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum) for 2019.

There are times when one just have to laugh at technology. Currently, our car is one instance with its irritating “BONG!” every time we turn it off even though everything is just dandy … everything except the monitoring system, that is. [Incidentally, Francine’s brother has christened it Zebedee. Inventive, I thought.]

The technology in my new OM-D E-M1 camera can go wrong, of course, too. It has the potentially very useful in-camera focus stacking that can produce excellent results. It has already produced good results on dragonflies which, when perched, sit largely still. If one is steady enough, it produces a successful result even hand-held which, over a period of ½ second, is pretty good – it speaks volumes for the in-body image stabilization (so-called IBIS). I’m perfectly happy with the fact that if one wobbles a little too much it fails to line-up the eight images successfully and comes up with a “stacking error”. Fair enough.

I tried stacking on a butterfly behind our property. Actually, this was unintentional – I had forgotten that stacking was activated. My butterfly was quite active, flitting wings frequently and crawling around a head of Red Valerian (Centranthus ruberso) so, having seen the stacking process begin, I was more than a little surprised not to get an error message. What I did get was what I can only describe as an error image. 🙂

Realizing my mistake, I reset the camera functions and tried again. This is what the critter, a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), should look like. Actually, if you can catch a butterfly with its wings open there’s no benefit from a focus stack. Some species, though, tend to sit with their wings just half open, at 45°; then a stack could well be advantageous.

Flowers flapping about in breezy conditions would be a problem, too, of course.

How nice it is to be able to see such creatures towards the end of December, though.

For a Boxing Day leg stretch to get the blood pumping around again, with a pleasantly sunny day we decided to go on our more usual kick-off walk up to the cross above Senija. There’re usually some butterflies hill-topping up there, too, so I took the new lighter-weight camera along to try my luck. Regrettably there weren’t any swallowtails of either description but there were the usual Wall Browns and several dicing small Blues. The blues weren’t terribly cooperative but I did identify them as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue (Leptotes pirithous). I messed up my focus-stacking – too big a step between the focus points – on the Wall Browns (Lasiommata megera) but here’s a half-way recognisable straight picture.

Realising my error, I did better with a focus-stack on the way back down. Francine and I had been seeing interesting little blue flowers looking a bit scabious-like. I managed to get down on the ground and adjust my focus step to get a decent facsimile. Our suspect was not a scabious but something rejoicing in the name of Globularia alypum, or Shrubby Globularia in common speak, which sounds a bit naff, really, so let’s stick to the scientific name.

And so to an educational lunch. That is, our chosen lunch of some cold meats, cheese and anchovies wasn’t especially educational but the establishment’s menu had us scratching our heads. Here is said menu.

For four days of the week, the Aleluja bar affers a fixed price menu featuring a rice dish, their arroces melosos. Keeping in mind that we were sitting looking at this at a rather sharp angle, please notice the first of these arroces for Martes [Tuesday]. It features pollo which we’re happy with [chicken] and … “es-something” that was utterly unrecognisable. Given our angle of view, we thought the letter(s) after the “es” might be either “d” or “cl”. A “d” would have got us to something like “Esdatasang” which sounded most unlikely. Actually it sounded like nothing at all. Then we tumbled that everything was written in uppercase so we thought it must be “Pollo y Esclatasang” despite that still sounding like nothing at all, certainly not like any food ingredient. Who on earth would come up with an unappetizing name like esclatasang for a food item?

“Sang” sounded related to blood to us and, on a Thailand street some years ago, we had indeed bumped into a broth containing chicken (or at least, the feet of chickens) together with smooth reddish brown lumps that we finally discovered was actually congealed chicken blood. So, maybe a precedent had been set, chicken and chicken blood, though I couldn’t quite imagine the Spanish going for it. Well, they do like their morcilla [black pudding], so who knows.

Neither of our mobile phone dictionaries professed to know either esdatasang or esclatasang, so they were no help. Finally I did an Internet search and, lo and behold, up popped Esclatasang. Strewth! Our mystery arroz ingredient was some kind of prized mushroom. Not only that but our considered blood connection had been somewhat inspired, the actual mushroom apparently being Lactarius sanguifluus or Bloody Milkcap in common speak.

So, there we have it, on Tuesdays you could pop into the Alejuya bar and enjoy a steaming bowl of soupy rice with chicken and bloody milkcaps.

Live and learn.

Which, I believe, is Valenciana for ¡Navidad Feliz!, the latter being Castillian, or what the British would normally refer to as Spanish. With what seems like a plethora of languages in the Iberian peninsular, we Brits, who are world-renowned for struggling with foreign languages anyway, are apt to get even more confused. Before attempting to translate, one has to figure out what one is translating from. There’s Catalano (Catalan), further up the Mediterranean coast, Valenciana here with Castelano (Castillian) throughout. At Bilbao, where our ferry arrives, it’s Basque, characterized by a lot of “tx” combinations. I recently bumped into Galega (Galician), too. Then there’s word order: I’m still unsure as to whether there is any preference between ¡Navidad Feliz! and ¡Feliz Navidad!, both of which seem to be used.

Anyway, regardless of language, after the 3-month run-up that Britain seems to force upon people, the big day is finally here. Happily, it is not such a big day in Spain, which is one reason we enjoy coming here at this time of year. Another, of course, is the weather.

As Francine and I have both recently invested in expensive new camera equipment further presents, other than small stocking fillers, are superfluous. So, today really came down to this, the first being a good helping of fruit units (freshly squeezed orange juice – yes, those Spanish oranges again – with fermented grape juice – Cava) and the second a healthy helping of protein in the form of a roast half sucking pig.

Spain is, of course, well known for its oranges. I think it’s fair to say that there is a surfeit of oranges in Spain. There are so many that, at this time of year, the going rate for a 5kg sack of juicing oranges from the street vendors in Jalón is a mere 2€. Well, 1.99€, to be exact. There are so many oranges around that they all but give them away.

Not all the Spanish oranges are limited to fruit, however. Though our balcony faces south, the valley before us runs more or less east-west and this morning, looking east towards the hills that front Benissa, it looked as if the sky was on fire. Yesterday morning had been pretty spectacular, too. There’s little point my trying to describe it; I’ll just let a picture or two try and do the job.

We are both playing with new toys at the moment. Francine has invested in the new Canon mirrorless full frame camera, the EOS R, whilst I’ve gone completely off the rails and am trying the Olympus OM-D E-M1 mk2, also mirrorless but a micro 4/3rds body. I’ll refrain from comparisons at this point because the main subject is the sunrise. Francine likes to do more impressionist renditions so here, first, is a straight shot (cropped a little) out of the Olympus and then an ICM shot out of Francine’s Canon. [The Olympus is so different to drive that I haven’t yet figured out how to do impressionistic, anyway.]

Coffee and sunrise fun and games over, we sallied forth to Calpe to visit a travel agent. Prior to leaving England, Francine had booked tickets for a Van Gogh exhibition in Madrid. This is a projected images show similar to those that we are familiar with in the Carrières de Lumières in the former bauxite mines near Les Baux de Provence, where our last show had been Klimt et Vienne. The venue not being a bauxite mine but a building, Madrid will be a little different but it’s a darn good excuse to go. We wanted a travel agent to sort out the best train tickets for a 3-day visit. A lady in Gandia Travel was very helpful and we have allocated seats travelling between Alicante and Madrid, hopefully on the high-speed train. Now we’ll just have to figure out the parking at Alicante station.

Returning from Calpe, there were a couple of dragonflies posing on rocks near the ford in Jalón. Pushing my photographic luck for the second time in one day, I decided to try one of the E-M1’s tricks: in-camera focus stacking. Set correctly, it will take 8 shots rapidly (in about ½ sec), automatically changing the focus point slightly between each shot, then stacking them together in a composite. I must’ve lucked out. Almost unbelievably, this first shot is the result of the 8-shot sequence hand-held. Just for comparison, beside it is one of the individual picture, focused on the abdomen, to show the effect of the focus-stacking. (Note the wing tips. If I wobble too much, being hand-held, the stacking fails but the IBIS seems pretty amazing.)

That’s too much luck for one day. We quit while we were ahead.

Our winter escape to Spain last year had been reasonably successful so we thought we’d go for a repeat performance. Our outbound ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao was booked for midday, Wednesday 19th December. After another medical procedure (just for fun) we were ready.

One week before our departure, Wednesday 12th December was to be our last evening at our photography club. At 19:30 I pulled up outside, pushed the car into “park” which duly lit green, pulled one of those silly switches for the electronic brake [what problem were they trying to fix with those?] which duly lit red, and hit the off button. With an unerring sense of timing, BONG! went the car. What?

The first thing you have to do when there’s a BONG! of any description is to look around and see which of the displays available is explaining the reason for the BONG! This is the problem with one particular BONG!, the too-clever-for-its-own-good ”imminent collision warning” BONG! – you immediately begin scanning the displays for a reason for the BONG!, which makes you take your eyes off the road and risks you colliding with the very vehicle the BONG! was trying to warn you about in the first place.

This was not an collision warning BONG! and we were already stationary, so scanning around was safe. A message was writ large on the main control screen:

Transmission. Secure vehicle with parking brake when stationary. Have the problem checked by your Service Partner.

But, but, but the parking brake is on. Bugger, or words to that effect.

Every time I stopped and started the car the irritating BONG! recurred. I tested both the “park” position of the gear selector and the electronic parking brake on our very sloping driveway and both were holding perfectly well. This looked like being a problem with the two monitoring systems themselves rather than the systems being monitored.

We were busy on Thursday but on Friday 14th, expecting difficulties of availability on such short notice, I phoned our “Service Partner”. “Our first appointment is Thursday 20th”, said my Service Partner. “Ah, the car is booked on a ferry to Spain on Wednesday 19th”, I re-joined, impressing upon him the need for urgency. “Hang on … okay, I can squeeze you in on Tuesday – we open at 07:30”, he said helpfully. Even more helpfully, he also suggested I try BMW Emergency Assist, since the car was still under warranty, because that apparently trumps everything. We made the Tuesday booking anyway, leaving me to try the assistance avenue.

Through BMW Emergency Assist, I did get a rental car, so that was a result. I dropped our car off later that day, Friday, with our Service Partner and picked up the rental. As it turns out, the rental was the only advantage because BMW Assist didn’t appear to trump anything and the car still didn’t get into the workshop until Tuesday morning, just 24hrs before our intended departure for Portsmouth and the ferry.

Tuesday wore on and I heard nothing. I phoned a time or two reinforcing the reason for urgency – if I was going to need to cancel/rebook the ferry, I needed to do so before 17:00 when the booking agency would close.

Longer story short, I was assured the car was safe and I could pick it up. Unfortunately, when I collected the car I discovered they’d been unable to diagnose the problem and every starting or stopping of the engine was still accompanied by BONG! and the now irritatingly familiar message. We could go to Spain safely though the stress had made us question whether we were now in the right frame of mind to do so.

Sense prevailed and we did depart for Portsmouth at 06:00 on Wednesday 19th December. BONG!

Everything went swimmingly until we came to a standstill almost a mile from the Chertsey exit of the jaM25, heading anticlockwise (towards the A3). As is usual, once firmly stuck in the traffic jam, we got a traffic report about avoiding it perhaps being a good idea. Some arsehole had caused a 3-vehicle pile up some way after the Chertsey exit (we wanted the next one) closing three lanes of the jaM25 in rush hour. 8-10 miles of stationary traffic built up. We were in plenty of time but with progress being nigh on zero, time was ticking away.

I finally managed to get over to the inside lane and take the Chertsey exit. We had to turn north since the roundabout to go south was similarly gridlocked. Heading first back north and west, we eventually worked our way across country and down to Portsmouth in time for our ferry, though a 90-minute journey had take almost 4 hours. BONG!

We boarded, BONG!, and collapsed in the sanctuary of our cabin, breathing a sigh of relief.

Our cabin’s toilet refused to flush. Well, of course.