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 a fan of traditional art galleries, museums, stage shows or shopping, which seem to be largely what cities are about. So what was I doing in Madrid, pray tell? Well, I went along for the ride on an advanced, high speed rail network to see a 30-minute Van Gogh Alive experience. Both of these were enjoyable and successful experiences.

Hold on too your hats: skipping to the punchline first, I really quite enjoyed Madrid. We didn’t do any shopping and I found I was quite happy to pound the paving slabs walking around the city gawping at some of the sights. It did not feel crowded and I wasn’t constantly avoiding a crush of bodies. I could walk comfortably. We must note, though, that this was off-season. We’ve been told, by a Madrid football fan, that in summer, Madrid can be baking hot, most of the Spanish leave and it is crawling with tourists. In addition to our Van Gogh show, we did visit two traditional art galleries, one of which housed a pair of Canalettos [Canaletti?] which is the kind of art I can appreciate. There should’ve been three but one was off being restored. Darn! There were a couple of Picassos, too. He’s one who was having a laugh. Oh, speaking of having a laugh, there was a Rothko, potentially the biggest joker of them all. Jeez!

We had stayed at a so-called hostal, the Hostal Bruña, which was family run and very conveniently placed in the heart of Madrid, within easy walking distance of the train station (Puerta de Atocha), the Prado Museum and a maze of narrower streets leading up to Plaza Major. From what I can make out, a hostal offers rooms but no restaurant/food service. Our little 2-roomed apartment was on the 4th floor of a building and was a fully equipped self-catering apartment, though I wasn’t about to start cooking, with en-suite facilities. The room was cleaned and tidied daily for us. My only downside was sheets and blankets which I really don’t get on well with in these days of duvets. I imagine it makes the laundry service simpler, though. Francine and I paid 238€ for three nights.

We tried a few of the local bars, of course. We had to get used to big city prices paying about 2.50€ for a beer instead of the 1.50€ that we’re used to in Jalón. My favourite bar, other than when it was invaded by the remnants of a prison service protest [more later], was El Hecho [H completely silent]. Our first visit was great and, in common with most of Spain, each drink ordered comes with a tapa of one kind or another. This is not a luxury that we enjoy in our Costa Blanca region, for some reason. In much of Spain, you can probably get away with just ordering drinks and not bothering to order food at all, just take the tapas. One of our acquaintances figured out that it was bad practice to order a tanke [large beer] ‘cos you only got one tapa whereas with two cañas [smaller beer] you got a tapa with each. Honestly, some people. 🙂

The best food we had by far was in the cosy (<12 tables) Taberna el Sur. Initially, we just went in for a drink. Then, having already given us olives with our drinks, they brought out a beautiful tapa of padron peppers with morcilla. I’m afraid Spanish morcilla has completely ruined British black pudding for me. I’m thoroughly hooked. Well, that did its job and hooked us again; we ordered our dinner there. Jim and I both had the solomillo [fillet steak] stuffed with goats cheese which was simply superb. Francine opted for a prawn risotto but declared mine to be better. [Gloat] I rarely eat beef and even more rarely do I order it in a restaurant but I’m glad I did. Interestingly, there was no “how do you want that cooked?” question; you just got it the way the chef liked it which was probably medium-rare(ish) and suited me fine. Decisions were off, mercifully. I don’t care for the assault course of questions that can accompany ordering a meal. Just bring me some good food, goddamit. 🙂 We returned a second time for lunch and ate well again, though rather too much.

We’d seen two protests in Madrid, too. They seem to be timetabled/booked, there being almost one a day. We’d wanted to find kilometre zero, the start of the distances in Spain, at the Plaza Puerta del Sol but a crowd were setting off explosions and waving Basque flags. Being chickens, we went another way. Then we found a demonstration by the prison service complaining about something killing their jobs. These were the weary protesters who later invaded Bar El Hecho on our second visit. They were behaving perfectly well but the sheer number of them made it too difficult to get served so we moved on. There had been a protest against Uber by taxi drivers, too. This is a modern technical revolution, an equivalent of the industrial revolution. Along with shops being World Wide Webbed out of business, the fabric of society is changing.

Killing our last morning, Francine had been taken by the complete external wrapping, in multicolored canvases, of the Prado Museum. There are folks who regard wrapping parts of the coastline as art so perhaps this, too, was art? Francine rarely takes a straightforward picture these days, preferring a more impressionist approach using the techniques of ICM and/or multiple exposure. Enter Francine Rothko and one of her multiple exposure impressions of the wrapped Prado.

We’re into poor season as regards wildlife but we did see some parakeets flying around outside the Prado. Initially I glibly assumed these were the Ring-necked Parakeets that we’ve see spreading across England recently. Francine did take a straight shot which made us realize that these were different, there being no ring around the neck. These were Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), a South American native and a monotypic genus, for those that care about such things.

Our AVE train ride back was swift, on time and comfortable. Nothing like an English rail service, then. Being mid-week, instead of being accompanied by the rugrats we’d shared the carriage with on our Sunday journey out, we were now accompanied by the almost constant bings, bongs and musical ring tones of messages, emails and phone calls that is a part of the modern world we have created. No wonder I crave silence and wildlife.

So, I quite enjoyed Madrid, though I wouldn’t necessarily rush back for a repeat visit. I quite like Valencia, too. Maybe it’s not generically cities that are unappealing, maybe it’s British cities that are unappealing.

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 slot at 11:30. After a leisurely breakfast avoiding more chocolate and churros, we joined the queue to wait. There seemed to be an 11:00 slot but that was filled with a school party and, even though Spanish school kids seem far better behaved and controlled than do ours, we were pleased not to be in there with ‘em. This should be interesting.

It was interesting. We tramped three floors up an imposing marble staircase and came to a man who scanned our tickets and led off in a complex stream of Spanish. Our blank stares soon made him switch to English – what a guy. Photography is permitted as long as it’s without flash, of course, which would ruin the show.

Unlike the Carrière de Lumières show in France, this large area included a static exhibition of some of Van Gogh’s paintings with accompanying explanation/discussion. If you felt like it, you could entertain yourself reading these before the audio-visual component commenced. I, of course, didn’t. Oh, there was a slightly bizarre mock up of Van Gogh’s room, too.

Leap of faith time: Francine had used ISO 3200 on her Canon 5D mk III successfully in the Carrière de Lumières so I opted to copy that on my new Olympus. I’d tried an even higher ISO 6400 shot once and that looked reasonably successful so maybe this would be OK, too. My Canon 7D, even the mkII, would be utterly hopeless at that ISO. I should’ve learned how to kill my in-focus beep, too, but it was too late now. When the projection and music began, I beeped away intermittently.

As expected, the scale wasn’t quite that of the Carrière de Lumières with its bauxite mine walls but the projections were still large and quite impressive. The accompanying music, a mix of classical pieces, went along nicely and one screen projected a series of quotes and snippets, should anyone want to read them between looking at Van Gogh’s paintings. One quote, which I now learn is well known, caught my eye:

I would rather die of passion than boredom.

Francine and I were in different areas of the exhibition for most of the time so hoped to get a varied representative sample of images. Given the dramatic colour changes, white balance setting proved also to be a leap of faith. There were a few benches on which to sit but mostly one has to stand and wander around the various sections of projection, which surround you. Some projections are even on the floor. Hopefully these will give a flavour.

This appears to be a bit of a Marmite show in that people seem to either love it or dislike it, so much so that I almost called this post The Marmite Experience. The first set of your standard Internet reviews, which must always be taken with a hefty pinch of salt, that I saw had the vast majority of votes being either 5 or 1, with 1 winning  by a head. There were just a few 2 and 4 votes and no 3 votes at all. I began reading some of the reviews and the most frequent negative comment I found appeared to revolve around ticket price. Entry was 15€ and the AV show lasted about 30 minutes. There were, of course, also the static exhibits if you were interested. Full price entry to the Prado Museum costs the same amount, 15€, but you can stay all day should you have the stamina. So, several reviewers considered the Van Gogh Alive experience to be poor value. Some complained because there was little seating and they had to stand but to me, wandering to different sections of the sizable display arena is part of its appeal.

Personally, I like to be spoon fed my art in small doses with no effort required on my part. Being a slow reader, I’m not good at trying to absorb information in a traditional museum with static exhibits and printed words, even when it is a subject close to my heart, such as science or wildlife. So, this AV type of entertainment suits me perfectly and I would happily pay 15€ for a repeat visit here instead of going back into the Prado. If you are one who takes well to a traditional museum, wandering, browsing and reading about the exhibits yourself, then I can perhaps understand a negative sense due to the cost comparison. It does take a lot of quality projection equipment and precise installation of that equipment to put on a show such as this, though, so I think considering it expensive is a little harsh.

We all enjoyed it and left content.

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 deep fried doughnut-like creations. Banish from your mind any thoughts of insipid, thin Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate still with the smack of powder. I have no idea what the raw ingredient was for this cup of rib-lining chocolate but I did see the café proprietor steaming the chocolate with the nozzle of a barista machine. The result was a cupful of indulgent luxury as dark and thick as crude oil. The churros, oddly unsweetened, are clearly extruded through a star-shaped nozzle and have plenty of deep furrows to hold onto the chocolate when dunked, which is, of course, the whole point. The accepted portion for one person was four churros. That should keep out the cold.

Oddly, despite my guise of self-confessed art numbskull, I was quite looking forward to our first encounter. We were heading about 1km east to the southern end of the Parque del Buen Retiro to a glorieta [roundabout]. In the middle of the roundabout is a fountain topped by an unusual statue by Ricardo Bellver called the Ángel Caído [Fallen Angel]. Yes, it’s a depiction of Lucifer falling from Heaven and is supposedly the foremost of very few statues dedicated to the Devil. Having a perverse side, there are number of aspects which appeal to me. First and foremost is the unusual subject matter but another, I’ve only just realized, is a statue of the devil being positioned in something that the Spanish call a glorieta, which seems a bit ironic. There’s better, though: here is a statue of the Devil at 666m above sea level. How cool is that? [Well, in winter, it’s quite cool.] I had at least to try to check it with my phone’s GPS. Madrid’s altitude is usually quoted as 667m and that’s where my GPS began when it fired up. It did wander up to 676m, as I stood there beside Lucifer, though. Maybe the Almighty was interfering. Still, within the bounds of GPS accuracy,  I just love it. I liked the statue, too. Well done Señor Bellver.

We headed up through the park where we encountered another art work, this one unexpected. We were expecting to find the Palacio de Cristal Del Retiro, a Spanish Crystal Palace, though I’m not sure I expected such a structure to be empty, which is how it appeared as we approached. Once inside, however, it proved to be not quite empty. Suspended from the ceiling were three enormous heads fashioned from interwoven stainless steel strands. The heads each have a finger to their lips in “shhh” gesture. It wasn’t easy to get the light right such that they showed up well on pixels; they certainly deserved their name of Los Invisibles. The artist is Jaume Plensa.

All the coffee shops in the park were closed. One looked as if it were preparing to open up but it was beside the large, exposed boating lake with a biting wind cutting across it. We left the park in search of warmth and coffee elsewhere, crossing what appears to be the Spanish equivalent of Marble Arch, also known as the Puerta de Alcalá at the Plaza de la Independencia [it says here]. It is a so-called triumphal arch which predates the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin [it says here, again]. Marble Arch is a mere babe. Educational stuff, visiting a city.

We found our warming coffee near the arch and wandered about gawping at a few more statues, which weren’t going to challenge the interest of seeing Lucifer, and buildings on our way to locating our venue for tomorrow’s visit to the Van Gogh Alive experience. Then we headed for the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Prado Museum. Here, advancing years come in handy. We played the age card, supported by our passports, and got tickets for 7.50€ instead of the normal 15€.

The Prado is a big museum. It is a 200m long building with galleries on three floors. Outside, the whole lot was scaffolded and wrapped in protective, multi-coloured canvass. Inside, there is an awful lot of oil on an awful lot of artists’ canvass. The vast majority of said oil appears to depict either scenes from the bible or scenes from Greek mythology. There were countless renditions of Christ on the cross and Christ’s body being lamented over having been taken down from the cross. I found a little light entertainment with one of the renditions of Christ amongst the doctors ‘cos Christ appeared to be flipping them the bird, until I realized it was the wrong finger. Drat! There was a particularly graphic image of Saturn devouring one of his sons, biting a chunk out of his chest while the hapless infant was still screaming. Apparently, Jupiter was the only one of Saturn’s sons not to became daddy’s dinner. Getting back to the bible, I lost count of the Adams and Eves. There were a pair of almost identical Adam and Eves, side by side, where one artist had copied another. Plagiarism in the art world. One had a Macaw added to a tree, though, probably to avoid copyright issues. In another, Adam was fondling Eve’s right breast, though her nipple was still visible. It made it look as if Adam couldn’t wait to get started. Well, they did have a whole planet to populate, after all. In addition to the gratuitous sex and violence, which gave a little light relief, there were, of course, a bunch of portraits of people I’d never heard of.

The Prado is so vast, one can’t take it all in and it all begins to blur into one. I suspect even those interested would need targeted visits. I couldn’t find a picture that I’d hang on my wall. If I liked anything, it was a sculpture of Hermaphroditus lying seductively, face down on a cushion but clearly sporting both a penis and breasts. The cushion was so well sculpted that it looked soft enough to touch.

Educational but tiring.

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 and we are not going alone; our pal Jim, who has not only put up with attempts to roast a sucking pig, is coming along to make sure we don’t destroy the Spanish capital.

There are a couple of main attractions for us.

In an abandoned bauxite mine in Provence, France, we have seen a couple of shows that I think the French might refer to as son et lumière, though I’m now seeing the term “immersive experience”. The first French incarnation was called the Cathédrale Des Images but that was closed for health and safety reasons … most un-French. The second incarnation, presumably safer because it’s been running for a few years now, is known as Carrière De Lumières. The mining of bauxite leaves vast white-ish, almost perfectly flat vertical surfaces underground. These surfaces are used as the screens upon which images are projected accompanied by classical music. The last show we saw there was Klimt et Vienne opening to the grandiose musical accompaniment of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The scale of the surfaces, 10m or more high, makes the experience very impressive.

There is now a similar show on the road, currently in the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. This time the subject is Van Gogh Alive and Francine’s got tickets that she booked online ahead of time. There are 30-minute admission slots though apparently you can stay in and watch again should you wish. [When I was a kid they used to let you do that in a cinema.] Having a building as a venue will make an interesting comparison to a bauxite mine.

Another attraction is a trip on the Spanish high speed train, the Alta Velocidad Española. I was surprised to learn that the Spanish high speed rail network is the longest in Europe and the 2nd longest in the world after China. Who’d’ve thunk it? The trains hit speeds “up to” 310kmh or 190mph. We’ve got tickets with allocated seating on the high speed service from Alicante to Madrid and back, the journey one way taking about 2½ hrs with two or three stops en route.

Jim organized the parking at Alicante station and kindly drove us, prepaying to make a decent saving on the parking fees, so Francine and I didn’t have to deal with an unfamiliar city.

I’ve missed an advance in rail technology. The train was smooth, almost like riding along a carpet – minus the carpet burns, of course. Gone is the familiar, comforting clickety-clack as the wheels cross the expansion joints between the lengths of rail. OK, so here we have 500kms of track reacting to summer temperatures reaching the high 30sC so how is metal expansion now dealt with? It beats me. It was a very comfortable ride, anyway,  and with a film shown, too, though we simply sat and watched the hardly changing Spanish countryside rush past. Given the seats and the film, I felt as if I should have been strapping myself in.

Arriving in Madrid soon after 15:00, we walked the half kilometre or so to our well chosen hostal and checked in. Our rooms were not only close to the train station, Puerta de Atocha, but were also only a spit, about 200m, from the Prado Museum, which was on Jim’s hit list.

We soon found a handy-dandy hostelry for a reviving beer close to our rooms. Thus refreshed, we embarked on an orientation route march around parts of the city. Ignoring all the regular tourist stuff, I was particularly taken with the artistic approach to many of the no entry signs adorning some of the lanes in the vicinity. Why should a road sign be boring, after all? The Flintstones depiction is my particular favourite.

After a kilometre our route took us first to Plaza Mayor, the main square. It is overlooked on the residential sides by over 200 balconies from which, at one time, you could take in a darn good execution, or maybe watch the Inquisition at work. Now they were overlooking a large, fake Christmas Tree that should’ve been taken down a few weeks ago, together with the usual array of street entertainers wearing various costumes, including what I can only describe as Homer Simpson dressed in a Spiderman costume. This was clearly Spiderman in his twilight years. Such was his paunch that I couldn’t help but christen him Spiderlump. I’ve no idea what his purpose was – he’d only recently turned up – but he had a small effigy of Spiderlump on the ground beside him. Curious.

Half a kilometre further on was the cathedral, Catedral de la Almudena, which stands, somewhat uninspiringly, I thought, in front of the much more impressive Royal Palace, Palacio Real.

After another half kilometre we came to the Temple of Debod in the Parque de la Montaña. It’s an ancient Egyptian temple, built around 200BC, that was dismantled and reassembled in Madrid, as a gift of thanks to Spain for its help saving various relics from the Aswan Dam development. Francine had been keen to see it because it has a water-filled moat around it for some fancy reflections. Or, at least, sometimes it has a water-filled moat around it. As we approached, the moat was clearly woefully devoid of any water, much to Francine’s disappointment since reflections were there none. I wondered if the moat got drained over winter lest the water freeze.

That’s enough tourism for one day, time for the more serious pastime of drinking and eating.

On Monday our walking group, numbering eight, had gone up a couple of mountains that gave us great views of the mountain known as the Montgo towering above Dénia and Jávea. Today, our Wednesday walking group, the Costa Blanca Mountain Walkers, was heading up the Montgo itself. That should give us a different perspective. Another aspect was going to give us a different perspective, too: there were 40 of us. Strewth, a busload!

Happily, a much recovered Francine was with me. We began with the usual briefing about walking at your own risk and warnings that the initial ascent of almost 400m was a bit narrow, quite challenging and, being up a gulley still in the shade, would be damp and slippery.

They weren’t kidding. Getting 40 souls up a narrow, slippery gulley takes quite a time and we, now walking near the back for some peace and quiet, were forced to stop and wait in the cold shade a number of times and for several minutes. As we’d left the car park at the beginning, I’d been following two ladies who, after half a kilometre or so had not stopped talking, hence my dropping back to join the back marker.

Frankly this many people on a walk was too many. There was too much stopping and waiting and a lot of talking. I renamed the group the Costa Blanca Mountain Talkers. Our back marker enjoyed that and confided that he had thought of arranging some “silent walks” where the only people allowed to talk would be the leader and back marker to give instructions. We’d discussed limiting the size of the groups but that seems a tad too difficult – it’s free form and members are free to just turn up or not.

There had been a couple of slips and stumbles, fortunately nothing serious, on the way up. As we were approaching the top, one lady was heard to mutter, “almost there, the end’s in sight”. Our back marker was less than pleased and explained how dangerous such an attitude could be – the going is still uneven and potentially slippery; you must keep concentrating.

Once up, safely, we could look back down the gulley, with a sense of achievement, up which we had come.

Walking along the track on top of the Montgo in the warm sun was very pleasant. With some slower talkers about half way down the group, it broke quite naturally into two chains of about 20 each. We were happy to continue near the rear. Francine was delighted to spot an Ophrys orchid in flower very early right up on top. It wasn’t in the greatest of condition – there didn’t appear to be a lip – but we didn’t know if it may have been nibbled or was, perhaps, malformed.

Further round the high path we got expansive views of Dénia and its harbour beneath.

Before our descent there was the CBMW/CBMT lunch stop, which I’d personally rather not have, preferring to keep the legs going, but we finally continued and descended a wider track strewn with loose stones requiring more concentration and care.

Our route eventually finished up on a paved track before returning on the flat through the woods to the cars. It’s tempting to switch the brain off at this point but to do so is dangerous. Right in front of me a lady was regaling Francine with stories. Quite suddenly she pitched forward and fell, heavily, flat on her face (the other lady, not Francine). She had caught her foot under an aerial root anchored at both ends in the woodland floor beside the path – a very effective trip wire. Blood poured from a flap of skin torn on her thumb. She was shaken and feeling a little queasy but not seriously injured. One of our number was a retired doctor who checked her over before another helpful chap got a car close by so she could be driven off to the current professionals in Dénia hospital.

There were far too many people to contemplate queuing for a beer with the remainder in a bar.

Walking in the mountains is uplifting but can be risky. It really is best to continue concentrating all the time – more walking and less talking.

Monday walking group time again. Unfortunately, Francine had a need to visit a farmacia so could not accompany me. She also needed the car so I was into being dropped off and bumming a lift to and from the walk.

[Linguistic aside: We’ve been a tad confused about the Spanish for pharmacy, in particular where the stress falls. We thought we’d seen the word, basically farmacia, both without and with a stress mark. I think I finally cracked it and, almost inevitably, we’ve been falling foul of the mixed pair of languages in our region, Castillian (national Spanish, if you will) and Valenciana. Normally the mix up is more obvious ‘cos the words differ but here, we’re dealing with farmacia (Castillian – stress on the “i”) and farmàcia (Valenciana). Phew! It’d help if Google translate had Valenciana. OK, back in your box, Franco.]

Francine popped off for some drugs and I cadged a ride to our start point, a bridge under the A7 autopista at the foot of our initial ascent. Yes, initial ascent; we were being treated today to three linked peaks. The only really notable thing on our way up the first and second was a trail of red marks on some of the rocks over which we were walking. The marks did look a lot like blood and someone suggested that hunters had perhaps dragged a dead wild boar down the same path. I remain unconvinced: it would have been one heck of a physically demanding task. The alternative suggestion was that someone had chosen to mark a route, perhaps for a similarly demanding run, using a dull red paint. We’ll never know.

The other thing we didn’t know was our route up. We went off-piste a couple of times before GPS made our fearless leader aware of her mistake and we got back on course. Maybe we should’ve been following those red marks ourselves.

There was a gentle descent after the first peak before we climbed again to the top of the second, handily marked by a sign post. This was the highlight for me because we had a very clear view of the Montgo, the rather odd mountain that towers above the towns of Dénia and Jávea/Xàbia [there’s that Castillian and Valenciana mix up again]. I say “rather odd” because the Montgo is a sort of standalone coastal mountain, so perhaps a little more impressive than it would be were it nestling amongst other similar peaks.

Whilst trekking between the first and second peaks had been quite gentle, with only a modest descent between the two, the route between the second and third, the final and highest, was more difficult. The descent was quite long and the loose rocks on the path made care essential; I was glad I had my poles. There’s something frustrating about losing the height you’ve gained, only to have to go up again. 🙂 Still, that’s walking in the mountains.

After another wrong turn and brief sally off-piste, we continued to descend even more before our eventual third and final ascent which was steep and tough on tiring legs. It got us back above our parking area overlooking and overhearing the autopista. Another walking group, the leader known to ours, was already at the top enjoying their lunch break. Their lunch paused for a natter. Our group doesn’t do lunch stops which is the way I prefer it – my legs tend to believe they’ve finished.

I’d actually been up this lump before with the Costa Blanca Mountain Walkers so I new the decent we were in for – it’s a little precipitous in places. We made it unscathed and back to the cars, though, where I bummed another lift for a couple of well earned beers.

On a couple of our day trips out, usually heading for dragonfly sites, we have driven higher up the nearby Vall d’Ebo. As one drives the road, high up on the righthand side can be seen a moiuntain peak capped with an arch forming a hole in the rock. This hole is La Foradà. Today we joined the Costa Blanca Mountain Walkers to walk up to La Foradà beginning and ending from the adjacent valley, the Vall de Gallinera, which is apparently a corruption of a phrase meaning “valley of the large hole”. To save me repeating someone else’s words, here’s a photo of the explanatory board for the walking route.

The route begins on a concreted road surface, which is never very enjoyable, but soon turned into Spain’s more usual rocky mountain pathway. The going was a little steep in places but our trusty walking poles helped us up and we were eventually on the ridge looking at La Foradà itself. Scale gets a bit difficult in such grandiose vistas so there’s a closer shot of the hole, which was our lunch stop, with a few of our walking companions for reference.

Our leader liked to use the Viewranger mobile phone app to follow his route. As is often the case with technological aids, such things can tend to make one turn ones brain off. We see this most frequently with car satnavs. It also appears to be the case with walking satnavs. The path was, to be fair, awkward to follow in places with a few optional “burnt” rocks over which to walk and on our return route along the high ridge we ended up somewhat off-piste, despite protestations about being “bang on course” “according to the GPS” which can, of course, really mean that you are within about 10-20m of the intended track. Viewranger bleats if you get too far off course but we were not, apparently, too far off; we had just ended up in the rough, prickly stuff beside the fairway. A scout went a little higher up and soon found the actual track. Undaunted, we fought our way back to it.

Constantly nattering instead of watching doesn’t help with navigational accuracy, either, and, still bleat free, our fearless leader shot confidently straight past the descent path. Before anyone had gone too far, though, a hawk-eyed person further back down our caravan spotted the posts marking the path and yelled for a course correction. Here’s a view back along the Vall de Gallinera itself.

Nothing terribly untoward happened and we were not about to get irretrievably lost in the Spanish mountains but the beer at the end began looming large in my imagination and eventually went down very well. We must try to stop people ordering blasted coffee, though – making coffee takes far too long when 20 others are lined up trying to get their hands on a cold, frothy one with but one over-worked barkeep. One of our more canny leaders said he is not beyond falsely claiming that, “unfortunately the barista machine is out of order”.

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.