So, yesterday afternoon we arrived in Bilbao after a pleasant cross-country drive from Burgos. We were booked into a hotel for the night to give us an evening and morning to investigate Bilbao, largely the Guggenheim museum, before our ferry back to Portsmouth.

The first thing to point out about Bilbao is that its geography, crammed between the Bay of Biscay and various precipitous chunks of ground not dissimilar from mountains, forces roads to be funnelled together resulting in a frenetic confusion of both roads and junctions between said lumps of rock. For once, I really appreciated having Sally Satnav and was very grateful that I didn’t have to rely on good old fashioned map reading. As good as Francine is with a map, the rapidity with which curves and junctions come upon one – speeds are quite high as many of the roads are motorway grade – any driver unfamiliar with the territory and names has little chance to assimilate the signs before the next decision is forced upon them. Being surrounded, as one inevitably is, by local Spanish drivers, going slow to gain time is not a viable option. After several leaps of the heart into the mouth, Sally got us to our target road.

Note that I said target road, not target hotel. Francine had been unable to program the precise hotel location so we just ended up near some random address on the road. Actually, we ended up at a T-junction onto the road. Left or right? Flip a coin. I went left and, after a little while we passed what we thought might be the hotel name we sought. Note also the term passed. At this point we were about half way up one of the aforementioned precipitous lumps of high ground. The roads are narrow with twists and turns. There are few, if any side turns resulting in a lack of places to flip a U-turn. I soon found myself heading for a slip road onto a dual carriageway taking us rapidly away from where we needed to be. I managed to make what was probably an illegal turn using a piece of rough ground immediately before the junction.

We returned to the hotel we’d seen where we were forced to cross opposing traffic approaching around a blind-ish bend and ended up in what this place laughingly called a parking area. Five cars was about the limit. The gate in was narrow and the driveway slope rivalled the worst of the Devon and Cornwall roads and had us nosing alarmingly down the mountainside on what must have been a 1 in 3 slope. Somehow, I parked. We announced our arrival. Wrong hotel! Señor Receptionista told us that the correct hotel was 4.5kms down the twisting, turning road. I should’ve gone right not left. The good thing about this was that this particular hotel looked and smelt like a dive and we’d rather have slept in our car. The bad thing was that I now had to renegotiate the cramped parking area and the 1 in 3 uphill slope to get the hell out again.

We meandered roughly 4.5kms down the twisting, turning road. Once again we missed and watched our correct hotel disappear on the left before we could turn in. Again there was no way to turn around. We ended up all the way at the bottom of the hill in Bilbao itself before I could perform what was probably another illegal manoeuver and return. Finally we checked in. What fun. A precise location in the satnav would’ve saved so much trouble. We drank several glasses of reality correction fluid – red reality correction fluid.

[I might offer a short explanation – oh, alright, an excuse – for our hotel name confusion. This is Basque country. The Basque language has cornered the market in the use of the letter X, most frequently in combination with a preceding letter T. We now know this combination makes a sound like our more familiar CH combination but it looks very unfamiliar to our eyes. The sound is largely irrelevant; almost every name looks like —ETX—. We’d initially picked one wrong —ETX— before finding the correct —ETX—.]

Right, so, we’re here. Bilbao highlights.

Our —ETX— looks down on the tallest skyscraper in Bilbao – pretty much the only skyscraper in Bilbao – which is the resultantly ostentatious Iberdrola [Spanish electricity company] building. We are quite high up one of those mountainous lumps. Fortunately, since I’m sure parking down below would require the intervention of someone’s non-existent deity, there is a wonderful old funicular railway running up and down the mountainside. It’s known affectionately as the “funi”. We were keen to give it a try. The top station was about 2kms from our —ETX—. We diced with the road again, this time managing not to miss our turn incurring another 5km penalty, and parked. Each funi ride costs 95 centimos. Brilliant – worth every centimos! Here’s a view downhill. This view is very similar to the one we had driving into our first, incorrect —ETX— but without the driver’s head.

We headed for the famous Guggenheim museum. To get there, we had to cross  an appealingly architected pedestrian bridge over the Bilbao river and saunter along the opposite bank.

Yesterday I freely admitted to being a cultural numbskull. Today I freely admit to being an artistic numbskull, too. [Are you getting an inkling as to why cities and I don’t mix?] I’m not entirely sure who or what a Guggenheim is because mercifully we didn’t go in. However, there was a piece of what I imagine is so-called modern art outside so I’ve mentally filed the Guggenheim away in the same dusty folder as the Tate Modern. I have to say that the structure of the Guggenheim building looks unique and quite interesting. When we were there, in common with the distressing majority of this trip to Spain, the sun was not out. I’m left wondering what this vast collection of differently angled metal plates might look like when the sun does shine. I’ll probably never really know, now.

Much is made of the so-called spider and of Pupi, both standing outside the Guggenheim. The spider may have eight legs but clearly isn’t really a spider, looking more like a spider-shaped collection of sticks. Pupi, on the other hand, is an immense flower bed standing 12m high, roughly in the shape of a dog. Why? Neither the colours of the flowers nor the way in which they are planted look particularly significant. So, more modern art, then, nothing being quite what it might seem. Give me Canaletto any day of the week.

Much more entertaining to my mind in Bilbao, was the fact that the buses are run under the name of Bilbobus and that there are tourist river boats trading under the wonderful bilingual joke of Bilboats. Terrific!

Having had pleasant weather for our journey through the animal-free interior of Spain yesterday, this morning we awoke to our old Spanish friend of this trip, grey skies. At breakfast, light rain began but the skies looked a little brighter to the north so we hoped out planned visit to Burgos en route to Bilbao might remain dry.

Our first challenge was negotiating the centre of a city and finding somewhere to park. After a few corners, we lucked out and found what appeared to be the only metered parking spot left unoccupied in Burgos. Francine eventually managed to divine the correct use of a machine with no instructions and bought us a 2-hour ticket.

Being a gastronaut, I know of Burgos for its famous morcilla. Well, famous might be going a bit far outside of Spain but it is the producer of a very fine Spanish version of black pudding/boudin noir/blood sausage. Morcilla de Burgos makes a fine lunch fried with fresh habas [broad beans] and, of course, some obligatory garlic. We’ve enjoyed this combination on a number of occasions. The morcilla de Burgos (there are other Spanish morcillas) contains rice which gives it a somewhat lighter texture than others, certainly lighter than our rather dry, gluey black pudding affairs with huge lumps of fat inside. [No, I do like it, honest!] I have tried emulating morcilla y habas at home using British black pudding and – you must trust me on this – it doesn’t work; British black pudding simply cannot be used in the same way. I’d love to have bought some morcilla de Burgos from its source but we had no cooler facilities for transportation and our journey still had two days to run. Shame.

Another thing Burgos is famous for is its cathedral. Not to me, of course, being a confirmed atheist; I didn’t even know it had a cathedral. However, Francine did and wanted to cast her eyes over it so we stumped up our two 7€ entrance fees, which included an audio tour on a wand in the language of your choice, and went in.

Now, audio tours. I chose one in English, naturally, but, for all the good it did me, I might have well have chosen Greek. I freely admit to being a cultural numbskull but I find the concept of audio tours in this context somewhat bemusing. They have to try to give you value for money which normally means trying to fill your head with a lot of names of people you’ve never heard of, together with a lot of dates you stand little chance of ever remembering. I soon tired of listening to intricate detail and stopped punching in the numbers at the various listening stations on the tour – I really don’t care which architect designed this particular chapel – and just started looking.

As with all cathedrals, the amount of money and effort mankind put into paying homage to a fictitious super-being is beyond me. Be that as it may, staring at the undoubted skills of the carpenters, artists and stonemasons employed to waste their time on such things can provide a pleasant enough distraction for 15 minutes or so.

I think this picture might be what is called an altar piece. I can just imagine the bishop saying, “very nice lads but it’s too tall, it’s obscuring the bottom of the windows, make it again but about 2m shorter”. Really, you’d think they’d make it fit, wouldn’t you? As I was concentrating only at half throttle, I may have this wrong but I think the wand told me, before I switched it off, that the cathedral at Burgos was the first built in the Gothic style on the Iberian peninsular … whatever that means.

The route to exit the cathedral proved to be considerably longer than the tour route itself. On your way out, however, you come across another thing for which Burgos is famous: El Cid, a.k.a. Rodrigo Díaz  de Vivar, who was born nearby c. 1043. Naturally, El Cid is not himself there – well, no, he IS there; he pegged out in 1099 and is buried in Burgos cathedral – but there’s a mural of him which appears to make him look a lot more like Charlton Heston than does Charlton Heston himself. I wonder when this mural was painted?

We still had a little time remaining on the meter so enjoyed a coffee beside the river front in the centre of Burgos. This amazed me more. The promenade was lined on either side with what I think are plane trees, forming what must be a very pleasantly shaded environment for summer heat, though they were not yet in leaf. What amazed us was the way that each tree’s canopy had been grafted together with the canopies of all of its neighbouring trees. How terrific and what a wonderful idea, creating a completely integrated canopy – now there’s something worthy of effort.

We retraced our steps and found our car. Sally Satnav II threw a bit of a fit and had us driving through buildings to begin with but we hung in there and, in an act of faith not dissimilar from the builders of cathedrals, found our way out of Burgos to complete our journey cross country to Bilbao.

The Jalón area really is the only area of Spain we know so we’ve decided to pause twice en route back to Bilbao to investigate a bit more of the country. Friends have recommended a hotel in some place called La Vid which is close enough to enable us to visit Burgos before heading for Bilbao. Sounds like a plan. We booked in before departing.

Our journey began heading up the coast to Valencia before cutting inland to pass Teruel, eventually clambering off autopistas/autovias [?] to strike out across country to end up in La Vid south of Burgos. I’ll try to describe the journey briefly. Once out of Valencia, we spent the first part of the journey watching large fields that were essentially empty. Once off the motorways, the majority of the remainder of the journey felt like driving through countryside that honestly looked like rough ground, most closely resembling a quarry. In moments of high drama, the rough ground might change colour from a russet red to a pale grey, then back again.

We were treated to a few sightings of raptors flying. Vultures were particularly well represented – I think they were Griffon Vultures – so they must’ve thought there was wildlife somewhere in the landscape. Other than birds, though, we couldn’t see any. Now, catch this: our journey was 380 miles. In that 380 miles we saw just two animals, one distant deer grazing peacefully and one horse standing beneath a pylon in a field. Just imagine that; it’s like driving from London to Edinburgh and seeing a single example of wildlife and a single domesticated animal. It’s utterly unbelievable.

We had driven past several villages/small towns, frequently through the outskirts of them and most places looked essentially closed. We saw nothing to entice us off the road. The same was true as we approached our destination of La Vid. La Vid lay literally 50 m off the main road over a bridge crossing the Rio Duero. It proved to be what our American friends might call a 1-horse town [ah ah, that’s where it came from!] with just a single street, a monastery, our hotel and a few dwellings. We parked in part of the quarry and went to announce our arrival.

El Lagar de Isilla is a bodega that’s been restored and turned into a hotel. We were allocated room 106 which our delightful receptionist informed us was called Los Romanos. Now, how to paint a picture of this hotel room? I think I need a few pictures to save a few thousand words, though I should give a few clues as to what you should be looking out for. Firstly the double bed was huge, about 2m wide, and would have easily befitted a Roman orgy.

In keeping with being an old bodega, the inventive hotel designer had done some very interesting things with reshaped wine bottles.

The ceiling was particularly interesting. One of our switches was labelled cupola which might translate to dome though not in my phone’s app. Suffice to say there was a dome let into the ceiling with a cloud and sky scene painted on it. Another of the switches was labelled estrallas [stars]. Yes, there were stars twinkling and changing colour in the sky dome. At least, there were until you switched them off. [They were sharper than my picture would have you believe.]

And now, the piece de resistance, or whatever the Spanish equivalent might be: the shower. The shower was behind a door opened by one of those inventively reformed wine bottles. Francine went first and had to figure out how to use it. How can showers be so darn difficult? On the side wall of the shower was a tap with a reasonably ordinary looking shower head. Turn on and water sprays out. The thing was, there was nowhere to fix this spray head up high – it appeared you ad to hand-hold it.

That can’t be right, it would be way too naff for this place. Quite by accident, Francine disturbed the tap and turned it in the opposite direction. Water drenched her from above. the main shower head was inset into the ceiling and surrounded by lights. Brilliant!

I have a strong interest in food. I am also a very adventurous eater; snails and frogs’ legs are tame compared to the Thai delights of silk worm, bamboo worm, cricket and congealed chicken blood that I’ve sampled. I read cookery books, watch cookery programs – at least, those that don’t turn it into a competitive sport – and my mind tends to hang on to the unusual. My knowledge is not encyclopaedic but I do have a bit of a reputation for having a decent knowledge of the gastronomic art.

A fascinating looking pile of something on Valencia market seafood stall had me stumped. Whatever it was, it had my friend Chris, also keen on seafood, stumped as well. The stall holder did not appear to speak English and Chris’s Spanish – he’s lived here for 11 years – proved inadequate for the Spanish explanation, too. Here’s the picture of our intriguing food item again. I had stared at them with a long buried memory nagging, trying to escape, but all to no avail. I felt frustrated.

Fortunately, my complete photograph carefully included the Spanish name, percebe. Cheap they are not, this pile being priced at some 12.50€ for ¼kg. A swift Internet search revealed them to be Goose Barnacles, or Goose-necked Barnacles. These are a highly prized Galician speciality. I even found a Gordon Ramsay F-Word program on YouTube showing how they were gathered and then cooked. The maniacs who go out fishing for the percebes are called perceberos. They dress themselves as they think appropriate and jump around rough, craggy rocks being pounded by crashing Atlantic surf – sometimes they seem to dive into the surf itself – armed with a simple knife on a stick, apparently the only tool they’re allowed, harvesting these hapless crustaceans manually. No wonder they command such a high price.

Percebes are traditionally boiled briefly in sea water but you can fake that out with some salt and fresh water – 70g salt to each litre water seems the recommended dose. There should be just enough water to cover your prized purchase. Bring the water to the boil, then chuck in the percebes. When the water returns to the boil, stop – fish them out – on no account over cook them. Naturally, that F-ing Gordon Ramsey tarted them up with some fino sherry, bay leaves and cream.

What you eat is not the white-mottled claw end; use this as a handle to hold the beast then strip the leathery casing off the fleshy arm, and eat that. No, the fleshy arm, not the leathery casing!!

Now, of course, having found something interesting that I’ve never tried, I am desperate to give them a go. We’ll be having to return to Valencia market on a future trip ‘cos that’s the only place I know to get the beasts.

[And well done to those of you who jumped the gun with the answer, you smart arses! 😀 ]

For a few years now, our friends with el perrito in Jalón have been threatening to shoow us round Valencia, particularly the covered market about which they eulogize. Being a foodie, I couldn’t help but be impresssed, they claimed. Finally, today it was going to happen. We’d drive to Xeraco, the second stop on the line from Gandia, and take a train ride into Valencia so we were really going to be educated – our first brush with a Spanish train, as well.

In common with most railway stations, Xeraco could use a bit more in the way of parking but we found a spot and bailed out. The Spanish seem incapable of buying anything without a protracted conversation. This includes train tickets. The lady in front of us at the ticket window had picked up her tickets but kept nattering with the ticket seller just long enough for the train that had recently pulled into the station to pull back out again. We finally got a chance to buy our tickets and waited the 30 minutes for the next train. Never mind, that’s 30 minutes of city that I wouldn’t have to survive. 😀

Next lesson: to get to the platform on the other side of the station you simply wander across the railway tracks. Pedestrian bridge? No, of course not. Wonderful. Fortunately, we were on the correct platform to head into Valencia and didn’t have to take our lives in our hands.

The train ride took about 50 minutes and went through the pan-flat rice fields of Valencia. Valencia is the rice bowl of Spain and is, of course, where the famed Paella Valenciana hails from. At this time of year the fields were bone dry and empty – just dry tilled soil. A little work was going on in a few fields so maybe soon they will be cultivating the next crop of Valenciana rice. We wondered where they were going to find enough fresh water in this arid part of Spain to flood the seemingly endless landscape of rice paddies. [Yes, I know we’ve suffered more than our fair share of rain but it’s normally arid.]

The station at Valencia is an impressive structure worthy of the Victorians. Having paused for long enough to go, “oo, ah” appreciatively, we wandered outside and stepped back a couple of millennia as we were faced with the adjacent bull ring, reminiscent of a Roman amphitheatre. The Romans were keen on slaughtering animals, and each other, for entertainment, too. The red, London-like double decker bus was a little incongruous, though maybe it continued the bloody theme. 😉

Pausing again en route for a coffee and toast with olive oil, we finally made it to the revered covered market. When we entered, it didn’t seem that large but, as we started wandering around, up and down alleyways between files of market stalls, it became evident that this building was actually a Tardis. Food dilation – now there’s a concept!

The market did not disappoint. I found myself wanting sufficient Spanish, any really, to engage the stall holders in conversation, quizzing them about their wares. The stalls appeared to be arranged reasonably logically, with similar produce grouped together. We began with butchers, worked our way past vegetable stalls, charcuterie [sorry, French term] stalls with endless Serrano hams and sausages dangling temptation our way. One stall had piles of that quintessentially Spanish ingredient, pimentón. Another stall had just piles of something more associated with the French but of which , the Spanish are equally fond: nothing but snails; more snails than you could shake a bulb of garlic at. Finally we came across the fish and seafood area which mesmerised us for quite a while and set the conundrum of the day. [More later, methinks.]

One other feature struck us at the market: not only was the apparent quality of the produce on offer very high but also the dress of some of the more attractive female stall holders. One delightful lady even waggled a large langoustine at us. An attractive woman with fresh seafood – I was in heaven!! Really, they were a delight. It was all a delight. We’d have loved a cold box to enable us to purchase some of the more perishable items but we came away with just some freshly podded habas [broad beans]. There is an intriguing machine that pods the beans, too, though I couldn’t see enough of the mechanism either to snap it or to figure out how on earth it works but work it most surely did.

We finished the day with a pleasant tapas lunch before returning to the station and our return train ride. This time, we did have to wander across the tracks to exit Xeraco station. Experience complete.

At least we now know enough to repeat the day out by ourselves, maybe with a cool box, next time.

OK, the promised conundrum: what do you make of these on a fish and seafood counter? No, we had no idea either. Neither the stall holders English nor our Spanish could help. Hmmm!?

Having got beyond April Fool’s Day without a glitch, we used another good weather day to investigate the nearby Marjal de Pego-Oliva. Jalon’s valley floor is about 700 feet above sea level and, though we’d thus far drawn an Odonata blank there, I wondered if the low-lying marsh, essentially at sea level, would be warmer sooner and might produce an earlier result. We drove out the 20 minutes and found our favoured parking spot from a couple of previous visits.

We began by studying the ditches near the road. Everything was very quiet and things did not look promising, though a Short-toed Eagle (Circaetus gallicus) did glide about on the far side of the marsh for a time, too far away for anything but an identification shot.

We wandered further into the marsh. Eventually Francine spotted a movement and managed to keep track of it. “It” settled on a grass stem in the verge of the track and proved to be a female Red-veined Darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii). Though not ideally placed for a photograph, she was our first of 2015.

Once our first spot disappeared from our sight, we continued. Soon, other wings were seen fluttering up but, in the brisk breeze, they typically disappeared almost as soon as they had appeared. We cut sideways down a waterway that had proved productive a few years ago. Sure enough, more glistening wings fluttered up in the breeze. The shining wings and relatively colourless pterostigmas indicated that these were teneral – it was a day for emergence.

Lower down we spotted a couple of Bluetails. Bluetails are tricky in this neck of the woods because two very similar species overlap, the Common Bluetail (Ischura elegans) and the Iberian Bluetail (Ischnura graellsii). Not only do both exist here but they apparently hybridize making determination yet more tricky. I will resist being drawn, though I may seek some local opinion if I can find it. There’s a Spanish Dragonfly group on Facebook that may be able to help. Eventually, I tried taking some shots of a rufescens female that might help with the distinguishing features. Fingers crossed!

Around the time I was flat on my less-than-flat belly taking that previoius shot, another Red-veined Darter finally posed advantageously with its wings held aloft in the breeze. I retired from the field of battle a very happy camper. 2015 is underway, in Spain, at least.

When we went around searching for furniture for Casa Libélule, we were conscious of the fact that space was limited inside and that we did not want an overcrowded living space. So, we deliberately chose furniture of modest dimensions. Even so, any former reader may recall that our modestly sized settees still had to have their cushions removed in order to fit in through the entrance door. The main problem is that, as you come in through the door, you immediately have to make a left-right dog leg turn.

A Dutch couple has been moving in to a unit of the same layout as Casa just below us and to the left. Activity has been going on for a few days but, in traditional Dutch fashion, before hardly any furniture turned up, the first addition was a large satellite dish on their lower balcony. “Never mind seating, get me my satellite reception.” We’ve noticed that the priority with Dutch men on campsites in France is exactly the same: the first thing to be unloaded from the back of the car and set up is the satellite dish. If trees cause a problem with reception on their chosen pitch, they will sling it back in the car, hitch up the caravan again and move pitches.

Today, a few days after the satellite had been organized, a delivery van turned up with a settee. The two delivery men tried one way of getting the settee in through the entrance door and failed. They adjusted their approach and tried again. Again they failed to gain access. This went on for 10-15 minutes of further head scratching failures.

The settee remained outside and the men appeared at the balcony, staring down. I could almost see the thought processes. Unfortunately those imagined thought processes brought to mind remembered lyrics from a very old Bernard Cribbins song. Then, of course, the lyrics were stuck and simply refused to leave my head. 

“Right,” said Fred, “Have to take the wall down,
That there wall is gonna have to go.”
Took the wall down, even with it all down
We was getting nowhere
And so we had a cuppa tea.

… followed by …

And Charlie had a think, and he said,
“Look, Fred, I got a sort of feelin’
If we remove the ceiling
With a rope or two
we could drop the blighter through.”

“All right,” said Fred, climbing up a ladder
With his crowbar gave a mighty blow.
Was he in trouble, half a ton of rubble landed on the top of his dome.
So Charlie and me had another cuppa tea
And then we went home.

The silly old song could’ve been penned for this very situation.

A mobile phone appeared, presumably to contact home base. The men left the balcony and, instead of leaving the blighter on the landing, as in the song, they moved the settee away from the front door and propped it up against the side of the house beneath said balcony.

We went out. Fortunately we returned in time to witness the conclusion to the story. A small lorry turned up complete with a crane device mounted on it. It drove into the rough track beneath the house with the problem sofa. The lorry came with two chaps, one of whom disappeared inside the house. He reappeared and fastened straps around the sofa and the crane operator swung into action. The sofa was lifted up to and on to the second story balcony.  I’m guessing his trip inside the house had been to remove either the sliding doors onto the balcony or the windows onto the balcony, otherwise both those openings would still have been too narrow for the sofa to pass through.

It must have worked ‘cos there is no sign of any well upholstered patio furniture.

What fun moving into a house can be.

The constant round of either waiting in for deliveries, waiting for (so-called) tradesmen and assembling things is drawing to a close. Fortunately, the bad weather that accompanied our work schedule also seems to have drawn to a close. At last we have had time to go out and play.

Today, a couple of friends were off up the Bérnia, our local Snowdon-sized mountain, for a Sunday lunch. I really don’t like to “do” lunch but, in the interests of being sociable and having some enjoyable company, having been invited to join in we readily agreed. Before sitting down to eat, though, we thought we’d take advantage of the clear, sunny conditions and spend an hour or so scouring the Bernia’s rough  vegetation for any interesting nature that might present itself. Our lunch companions would find us up there when they were ready.

Our main target was orchids, one of which Francine had spotted around the Bérnia on a previous trip. There’s usually a few butterfly-throughs, too, though, so I was hopeful of some heartbeat interest. We parked, donned some rough ground footwear and started combing the vegetation.

My hopes went unrealized; there proved to be very little in the way of insect activity. Francine, however, had much better fortune and soon spotted an orchid. Where there was one, there were others. There were actually two species, both about 10cms tall. One was a greenish orchid, the other had purple tones. Both looked like Ophrys species, the same family as the Bee Orchid. The greenish specimen is the one Francine had seen on a prior visit and seems to rejoice in the name of Dull Ophrys (Ophrys fusca). Poor thing! Fancy calling such a plant dull.

The purplish character required a little more book searching but Francine thinks this one is a Sawfly Ophrys (Ophrys tenthredinifera). It’s always a good day when you see something new for the first time.

We tried to keep a very sociable lunch light, ordering a couple of tapas, a plate of squid and a plate of duck livers along with a mixed salad, to share between us.

In an attempt to walk off some of what was intended to have been a light lunch, we wandered along the river back in our valley scouring the banks for any dragonfly activity, in particular one pool that had proved interesting on a previous year. Another blank – nothing fluttered to announce the new season. It’s like that at the start of the year, several blanks are drawn before the action actually  gets underway.

A good day for orchids, though, with a new species to add Francine’s list.

Yes, I know, we’re about 8 hours drive away from Cantabria on the northern Spanish coast but I simply couldn’t let that sort of pun pass me by. At least we’re in Spain.

Prologue

When we leapt into this little Spanish venture, we’d heard reasonable reports about the local Spanish workmen. Thus, we came over looking forward to supporting the locals rather than using expat British labour. I must say that you seem to be able to get the Spanish folks around to do things quite swiftly, typically within a week, which is usually far from the case with British workmen back in the UK where you’re lucky to get them inside of three weeks. Here’s a few brushes with the locals.

The Electrician’s Tale

Our new house came with a bunch of wires sticking out of the walls and ceilings at various strategic positions where lights and heating controllers were supposed to go. Not wishing to mess with foreign electrics, the one of the first tradesman we needed was an electrician. Our friendly local estate agent [no, still don’t get it] knew one – coincidentally the same one that lived opposite our dog-owning friends and who was known to them. We were happy to go with him. He first provided a quote to supply and fit a few LED lights, plus fit all our remaining purchases once we’d found ones that we liked.

He came to fit our initial purchases which included two kitchen ceiling lights and three hall lights. All were recessed units. The hall lights went swimmingly as he bored neat recess holes in the plasterboard ceiling and ran the cables. The kitchen was another story. Unknown to our electrician, the kitchen ceiling was solid, not a plasterboard job. His neat hole boring drill attachment effectively  bounced off the ceiling [a few muttered Spanish curses, and he began drilling several holes with a regular drill bit to make one large hole. Various bits of ceiling fell away that would have ben better staying in place. Eventually we had lights recessed into two rather messy holes. He said he’d fill them when he returned.

A few days ago, he did return and began fitting our new purchases: three outside lights, three more ceiling lights (not recessed!), two ceiling fans with lights, two mirrors, two lights designed to sit atop the mirrors, two bathroom shelves to go under said mirrors.

Did Señor Electrician put any dustsheets or other protective coverings down? No. He did unpack stuff on our newly oiled oak dining table,though, which now has a couple of minor scratches on its surface. He did move furniture beneath lighting fitments to the side but still did not use any dust sheets, so drill dust tends to get on bedding etc.

My biggest surprise came when he finally got to the mirrors and mirror lights. The clip on jobs seem quite popular here at the moment but he didn’t realize that these light units were to sit atop the mirrors. I clued him in and left him to do the mirror and light together, which he was keen to do and which is why I had driven about buying them that very day. Now, faced with a mirror that was to go on the wall over a hand basin, most people, I would have thought, would have tried their level best to centre the mirror over the basin. Nor Sñr. Electrician; our downstairs bathroom mirror is about 3cms too far right – still over the basin but not centred. Mercifully, perhaps more by fortune than design, our upstairs mirror did end up centred over its basin.

Part way through the work, lunch cropped up and they popped off for a break, during which time Francine and I checked out the existing completed lights. The lounge/dining room ceiling units failed to come on, as did the upper balcony light, probably on the same circuit being just outside the lounge/dining area. After lunch, once everything was fitted, Sñr. Electrician was about to wander off when we told him three lights didn’t work. He hadn’t tested anything – just assumed they’d work. Much head scratching, removing of junction box covers and wire testing. Eventually, the problem was discovered and fixed but wouldn’t you think they’d test what they’d done?

Oh, and having scattered brick dust about with drills, is there any attempt to clean up afterwards? No.

The Plumber’s Tale

We had begun our visit with hot water and shower fitments over both the bath (upstairs) and shower tray (downstairs) but no shower screens on either. We’d been using our shower room as a wet room and simply mopping up afterwards as water spattered everywhere. Great fun! Sñr. Plumber had been retained to supply and fit shower screens and we were looking forward to the luxury of a shower without the need to mop the floor afterwards.

The downstairs shower tray is in the corner and a screen with two sliding doors and a corner opening was being fitted. I left the professional to his work and soon heard the comforting sound of drilling. He eventually moved upstairs and put a hinged shower screen over the side of the bath.

At this point words fail me; verbal description of what had resulted with the corner screens in the downstairs shower room would be difficult and, when I saw what had been done, my jaw fell open but no words were emitted – there were none that were adequate. I’ll just let a hopefully clear, albeit mobile phone photograph featuring my own hand speak for me. See what’s going on? Is the aluminium screen seated on the left shower tray edge and sealed with silicone, as it should be? Oh no, it is suspended in mid air, about a centimetre inboard of the left edge, across the gap between the back and front shower tray edges. Stunning!

Now, unsurprisingly I got the Sñr. Plumber back. is explanation is that the screen and tray are standard sizes but that our tray was not sitting tight up against the right edge wall but was a few centimetres further left, thus the standard shower screen was not quite wide enough. There was, indeed, a marble filler strip spacing the right edge between shower tray and wall. OK, fine, but, having noticed that the screen wasn’t going to fit, why proceed to fit the darn thing in the wrong goddam place? Why not just bloody stop until you’ve got the correct spacer?

It actually gets worse. I popped in to our managing friendly estate agent [no, still wrong] and drew a diagram of what had happened. His eyebrows went up. He called the so-called plumber and said he’d be round tomorrow between 10:00 and 11:00 AM. He wasn’t. I called the estate agent who said a part had been ordered adn they’d let me know when it turned up. “He hasn’t been round”, I said, “how did he know”. He turn up later and it was obvious that they’d known all along and, once I’d raised the issue, had reacted. My suspicion is that they wondered if the Englishman would notice the cock-up. Cock-up? They did this wittingly.

What’s going to happen now is that the required aluminium spacer will (hopefully) turn up and the screen will me moved to where it should have been in the first place. This will leave behind a set of holes through tiles that were drilled where they should never have been drilled in the first place and which will, at the very least, need filling. What a complete f*****g tosser!

And this is a supposedly professional plumber?

Oh, and no, they didn’t put any dust sheets down and they didn’t vacuum up after themselves. Compared to the previous Spanish joke, however, that pales into insignificance.

The saving grace is that I haven’t yet paid any money for this so-called workmanship.

Epilogue

So, given the above, I can only assume that my standards are a lot different form those of some of my contacts. My reaction to Spanish workmanship varies from disappointed to downright disgusted and maddened. Common denominators so far seem to be that these bozos do not cover anything up to begin with and do not clean up afterwards. If my father, who was in the building trade, had not cleaned up after himself he’d have been shot.

In contrast with the Spanish, the expat British Mr Telitec with the well developed upper torso, when he came to fit our Wi-Fi connection, was fastidious about accuracy – spirit levels on the cabling – and paid attention to detail – he used only slow drilling through the wall so as not to blow out the exterior surface of the wall when boring a hole for the cabling. The Spanish bunch appear to be slapdash and careless, maybe even deceitful, with no eye for detail or accuracy.

I have re-evaluated my approach to Spanish workmen. Indeed, I have re-evaluated my approach to DIY. I was always a relatively keen DIY enthusiast, given training from my father, but I had become lazy, preferring to pay “a professional”. Now I have returned to the opinion that:

if you want a job done right, do it yourself.

How very sad!

From our little hacienda just up the valley from Jalón, there are three possible ways into the village (or it may be a small town) itself. The primary route is via a road bridge over the Riu Xaló [Jalón river]. The bridge is a single track road bridge, which causes a few minor traffic holdups though we’ve never witness any severe problems with the necessary alternating traffic flow. However, the bridge is now out of commission for the duration of a project to widen it to allow 2-way traffic. Work is supposed to be finished by the end of March but we won’t be holding our breath.

A little further downstream of the Riu Xaló is the preferred alternative route via a ford through the river. Normally here, the river bed looks very dry, with just a few remaining pools of standing water. I think there is a small flow because it reappears at some distance downstream beyond the valley, but what little water there is apparently flows underground. When the river flow increases slightly, there is a pipe under the ford’s cobbled surface, which normally copes with the increased flow.  This morning, as I set off to get some bathroom mirrors [yes, more shopping], the pipe was not coping and a certain amount of water was flowing over the cobbled surface of the ford. Well, it is, after all, a ford, so why not? The rainwater from last night’s downpours had clearly been draining off the mountains in the upper valley and had reached the river, increasing the flow. I drove off to complete my thrill-packed shopping trip.

When I returned, the ford had been closed to traffic. Both the main route and the preferred alternative route into town were now out of commission. This ford closure may seem somewhat over cautious, it is a ford, after all, and fords are normally covered in water for the traffic to drive through, aren’t they? Well, yes, they are, but here’s the thing. During extreme weather events, cars have been known to be swept off this particular ford by the flood of water and carried downstream. If some twat takes it upon themselves to drive through the ford while it’s dangerously inundated and when there is a safer alternative, they have themselves to blame, perhaps. Now, though, with the closure of the safer main route and a council-arranged diversion through the ford, maybe the local authorities would be liable if someone ended up floating off downstream towards Lliber? Or maybe it was just over cautious. 😉

In any event, all the traffic needing to pass through Jalón in either direction, was now forced to use the one remaining route through, a small, rather tortuous side road running along the northern bank of the river and eventually over another single track bridge. There are several sections of this last remaining route that are too narrow for two cars to pass each other, consequently there are several bottlenecks. With no traffic flow control in place, you may be able to imagine the difficulties that resulted.

We didn’t quite hit gridlock but it wouldn’t have taken much, I think.