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.

In my admittedly rather limited trips to Spain, I’ve never experienced anything like this. We’ve been coming here for two or three weeks at a time for the last seven years but I’d have to describe the weather that we’ve endured for the last eight or nine days as unusual. For over a week the skies have resembled those of an English winter, being a solid grey overcast with frequent, occasionally heavy spells of rain. It got worse today. Today had me dipping into my smart phone translation package – isn’t modern technology wonderful? – wondering what the Spanish words were for what we were suffering.

Our education began in a restrained manner with a little modest lluvia [rain]. We’ve seen plenty of this over the last week so no surprise there, though we had not previously bothered to look up the word.

The skies gradually got darker and heavy, black nubes [clouds] covered our part of the valley. The nubes began to be accompanied by some sound effects in the form of several rumbles of trueno [thunder]. After a few more rumbles, the lighting department, not wishing to be left out, got in on the act with some swift flashes of relámpago [lightning].

As the tormenta [storm] increased in ferocity, so did the rain. Soon, the rain became solid in nature and lumps of it began bouncing back up off our external window sills. We were being treated to some granizo [hail].

Casa Libélule is on the back/high row of our development There is a run of five blocks, each one of four or five houses, the roofs of which act as a catchment area for the rear pathway.onto which they spill their collected rain/hail. The only way down for the water and ice mixture to reach it’s point of lowest potential energy is down the flights of steps beside Casa. That flight of steps had now turned into something resembling a Welsh mountain cascada [waterfall]. The hail stones washed down and were collected in white piles at various strategic points. They remained for some time, not melting. Please forgive the crappy phone camera picture but hailstones were bouncing inside when I opened the window to take it.

Eventually the storm abated and we were left with just the hailstone debris.

Shortly afterwards, a good looking young English man who, judging by his upper torso development, spends a lot of time in the gym (and, I’d guess, women :shock:), arrived and proceeded to install the radio dish and router for our eagerly awaited Internet access. He did a very neat job, even using a spirit level to make sure the cable running between the dish and door frame was horizontal. After a little drilling we were online. At least, we were for a few minutes. The storm was cloaking the hillside across the opposite side of the valley, where the Internet service mast is located, and we soon lost our newly established contact with the outside world.

A reboot of the router fixed our connection problems, comme d’habitude/como siempre.

How educational weather can be.