Mother-in-law’s recovery from her Boxing Day tumble continued to be pedestrian at best. Added to the fact that the carer thus far, Francine’s sister, has to return to work on Monday 6th January, the decision has been taken that we should return home early. Inevitable really. Our hosts are due to return to Alicante airport at about 1:30 PM on Saturday 4th. There is an easyJet flight, actually the only flight prior to our original one, out of Alicante at 6:50 PM on the same day. Assuming no delays, the two flights dovetail nicely. Our plan is to drive down to Alicante, park the car in short term, meet Chris and Yvonne, show them where their car is parked whilst swapping their suitcases for ours, have a coffee with them and then kill a couple more hours waiting for our flight. I’ve booked it; we’re flying back tomorrow.

With our last full day in Spain being advertised as sunny, I’ve been wanting to take another look at the Marjal de Pego-Oliva. On our summer visit, we’d seen eight species of Odonata there and, since it is at a lower altitude, near the coast and, therefore, less likely to suffer from the frosts we’ve had in Jalón, I wondered if there might be some Common Darters (Sympetrum striolatum) lurking about there. We thought it might also be a reasonable place to take el perrito for a wander, since he’d seemed disappointed at our false start when trying to get to Moraira early one morning. We hitched him up in his harness before setting off and, other than the occasional whimper which we amateur dog-sitters failed to understand, he was fine.

On arrival, Francine swapped Scamp’s car restraint for a lead and he jumped out of the car enthusiastically. We began examining the water’s edges and I can’t say I was particularly surprised but we didn’t find any dragonflies. I don’t actually know whether Common Darters are normally found here but they certainly weren’t here now. It really is late in the season anyway.

There were several birds, however, most of which took flight at my approach – status quo. I eventually managed to snag the Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) that kept moving away from me but, as is the norm with birds that take flight, what you usually get is a view from behind. At least it’s a good view of its splendid yellow feet. 🙂

At the end of the track, my luck improved as I happened across a Cormorant which had already begun its take off run. Fortunately it continued on its original course, towards me, and I hurriedly filled the frame as it grew larger in my viewfinder. Nice one!

On our return route a sizeable raptor flew over. It was quite high but I grabbed it anyway. As usual I was concentrating more on tracking it in the viewfinder than on what it might be. We have limited experience with raptors, though, and this looked a little unusual. It was somewhat Buzzard-like but its tail looked a little too long. Out of date though our Collins Field Guide may be, we didn’t have it with us so I was completely lost.

Enter Back to the Future. Once having returned home, I leapt into our old Collins for some raptor help. I was right, it certainly wasn’t a Buzzard: the wing markings are all wrong, the tail is too long and there are 6 (as opposed to 5) primaries clearly showing on each wing tip. The best match I could find was a light morph Booted Eagle which, our Collins claims, “is about the size of a Buzzard” but “has 6 fingers instead of 5”, and some adults “over-winter in SW Spain”. Hmmm, that’s not where we were?

I signed up to BirdForum and submitted my raptor to get some more experienced help. Sure enough my new friends came down unanimously in favour of a Booted Eagle (Hieraaetus pennatus). They went on to say that more and more Booted Eagles seem to be remaining in southern Europe over winter rather than migrating back to Africa.

Not only are some of the scientific names out of date in our old Collins but so, too, is the distribution information. We really MUST get a more up to date guide. 😉

Having had Christmas Day off cooking duties dining out with friends, I was back on duty on Boxing Day, not that the Spanish recognize Boxing Day. It was time for us to deal with our medio cochinillo [half suckling pig], which is something we’d both been looking forward to attacking.

As a result of some serious forward planning, even though distracted by battering winds, we had thought to remove piglet from the freezer on Christmas night. Since there seemed to be no suitable roasting tray, we had even bought him/her a special cheap one from the local Chinese bazaar. The tray didn’t feel as though it would last long but at €4, it didn’t have to. Piglet fitted it perfectly. The observant may notice a few flecks on Piglet’s skin. That’s because, inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi’s TV program on Majorca featuring a whole suckling pig, I drench him in a marinade made of lemon juice, oregano and brandy.

Bottom line: this was not a great success.

Thursday evening’s being a weekly meeting to sup a few beers at Casa Aleluya in Jalón, I left Piglet in a lowish (125°C) fan oven for two hours, then returned and gave it another 45 minutes at 200°C. That formula chez moi produces a meltingly tender full shoulder of lamb and Piglet was an altogether skinnier beast and should, I’d have thought, been falling off the bone. Piglet certainly looked the part but was it falling off the bone? No. Was all the skin crispy? No.

As advertised, our previous adventure in Spain with a medio cochinillo was a great success, though I can’t remember the formula. However, I’m confident this would have worked well at home so I can really only put this disappointing result down to radical differences between the two oven thermostats, both being electric fan ovens. Neither am I convinced that a wet marinade over the skin helped it crisp – I wish I’d left it off and dry roasted Piglet.

Oh well, live and learn.

Completely unreligious though I may be, one of the things that I feel adds to the enjoyment when travelling through France, in particular, is the chiming of church bells on hours and half hours. The hours don’t chime just once but twice, with a gap of about a minute in between the two sequences. I think this is so you can count the chimes accurately second time around having been alerted by the first sequence but inevitable missed one or two. Most communities seem to stop the chimes over night – between, say, 11:00 PM and 6:00 AM – to reduce sleep disturbance but, even around the odd community that leaves them ringing over night – Arçais, for example – I find it all quite atmospheric.

Here in Jalón at midnight on Christmas Eve we were treated to bags of atmosphere. We are within ear shot of the churches of Jalón and Lliber, both of whose church bells began clattering away with gusto. I think they may have been trying to drown out Santa’s sleigh bells. Terrific!

As well as throwing excellent fresh prawns at us for what seem like ridiculously low prices, another thing that the Spanish give away for peanuts is fresh oranges. The price seems to vary, according to season, between €2 and €3 for 5 kilos. We’re in the €2 season now but we don’t even have to part with €2 because Chris has an orange tree in his orchard that’s still cropping. Perfectly decent Spanish Cava, like Freixenet, is readily available at €4 a bottle, as well. At this point, gastronauts brains should be lighting up with ideas of the perfect start to a Christmas morning. What better than a glass or two of Buck’s Fizz made with freshly squeezed orange juice?

Just because I could, I leapt onto the Internet to check proportions. Good job, too! Fine though the distinction may be – this is similar to the difference between a Dry Martini (mixed) and a Gibson cocktail – it seems that a Buck’s Fizz should be 2 parts of orange juice to 1 part of ridiculously priced Champagne/much more reasonably priced Cava. That’s far too much fruit unit and far too little alcohol, of course = way too healthy. On the other hand, a Mimosa is made with equal proportions of the same ingredients. Right, Mimosas it was to be, then. How educational research can be.

Using freshly squeezed orange juice improves presentation greatly, I noticed. The fizz in the sparkling stuff causes a very appealing orange-tinted froth on the top of the drink. This is not something I’ve ever seen using that accursed “reconstituted from concentrate” orange juice beloved of supermarkets. A few perfectly reasonable but purchased sausage rolls helped our drinks down and served as breakfast.

Our Mimosas were the only really sunny thing for Christmas Day, which, as had been advertised for some time, dawned an even, dull grey reminiscent of Britain and continued in that vein with sporadic rain as we walked the mile or so across the river to our Christmas lunch engagement with a friend on the other side of the valley. And very pleasant not having to cook was, too, if you’ll pardon the beginning of a sentence with a conjunction for effect. 😉

Since returning after being well fed and watered, the wind has risen and has been battering the house. Scamp dislikes the noise made by the wind and is decidedly jittery, and the wind is doing its level best to rip the sunshade roof off Chris’s gazebo thingy but I can’t see in the darkness to take any corrective action. Fingers crossed.

Scamp was so jittery that he insisted on sleeping in our bedroom. 🙁

There are many good reasons not to fly Ryan Air. First among these reasons, of course, is that the plonker in charge has no respect for customers and doesn’t deserve to have any. The reason uppermost in my mind this very early morning, though, was that the Mr Plonker’s plane that would be taking our hosts back to their Xmas celebrations in the UK was due to leave Alicante airport soon after 6:00 AM. It’s an hour down to Alicante from Jalón and our friends had a bag to check-in (15kg limit, hardly anything – thanks Mr Plonker) so the alarm roused us at 3:00 AM. In fact, I’d been awake since 12:30 AM waiting for the alarm so it had hardly been worth getting undressed and going to bed at all.

Even when the autopista running between Jalón and Alicante is busy, it’s quieter than our M1 at midnight. In the early hours of a Spanish morning, the road is all but completely deserted. Who else but those poor unfortunates with a seat on Mr Plonker’s early morning flight would want to be on the road at 3:30 AM, anyway?

I’ve never seen an airport so quiet, either. I dropped off my passengers and concentrated on finding my way back home. At 5:50 AM and after having only 80 minutes of sleep, I collapsed again.

The day proper began at 10:00 AM. We shot into Calpe to enjoy the sunshine and see what might be lurking around the lagoon. The sun, however, was accompanied by something more than a stiff breeze, so much so that the normally calm Mediterranean sounded like a proper sea with breakers hitting the sandy shore. Such wildlife as there was, a distant group of Flamingos and the odd seagull, was hunkered down. Most interesting was a small group of fishermen mending nets in the uncannily quiet fishing harbour.

With the wind spoiling plan A, we headed for the Consum supermercado to implement plan B, which turned out to be a lunch of  wondeful bara rustica (bread similar to the best of the French baguettes) and prawns accompanied by allioli, on the naya back at home. Why is it that we Brits pay through the nose for pathetically small prawns when the Spanish can buy 500g of good sized cooked prawns for a mere €3.00? It makes you want to spit!

A bright afternoon gave us the chance to settle lunch by walking el perrito through the vineyards to Lliber where there is a small bar overlooking the square. A matching pair of cafe solos [espressos] together with a digestivo of generous measures of Soberano [Spanish brandy] finished things off admirably.

¡Feliz Navidad!

After a few days of damp weather that peaked towards indifferent, today dawned with crystal clear blue skies. We’d used the rubbish weather to seek out a half piglet for our freezer ready for the festivities but now we were looking forward to getting out into the surrounding countryside à pied. After a few necessary chores, I slung my camera and monopod over my shoulder and headed out into the vineyards lying between Jalón and Lliber [pronounced “Yee-bear”].

It really is amazing what difference a blue sky makes to ones demeanour. It makes a difference to the demeanour of the wildlife, too. I spotted a few Small White butterflies flitting around the hedgerows and lines of vines but I was toting my camera largely for the birds which are always there. Regrettably, the birds proved to be very skittish and always too far away, even with a 300mm lens plus 1.4 extender on a 1.6 crop factor camera body; I began to wonder why I’d bothered. The old vines still held a few small unwanted bunches of grapes. I don’t know if these were what the birds were after or whether their target were insects. Had I been able to identify them, maybe I’d have known their diet.

We continued back along the river towards Jalón, always keeping eyes open for dragonflies. Normally at this time in late December I wouldn’t have been concerned about dragonflies but host Chris claimed to have seen one fly through his garden not too long before we arrived. Other than a few more Small Whites in the surrounding fields, though, the river appeared deserted.

Back in Jalón, we headed for Casa Aleluya in search of a coffee. We wandered past a small pool in the river that seemed to be something of a sun trap and our eyes caught some movement. Lo and behold, not only dragonflies but ovipositing dragonflies. The path was too far away but a lengthy diversion and scramble over some of the river rocks got me to within shooting distance – Common Darters (Sympetrum striolatum), unsurprisingly, they are late season specialists, after all. Given that fellow Odo-nutters had been spotting Common Darters in Hampshire in the earlier days of December, I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised that there was still activity this much further south in Spain. Curiously, I had not found this species here in August.

Toting my camera was a wise decision after all.

One of the enjoyable things about a Christmas away from home, other than the actual being away from home itself, of course, is that different celebratory food items become available. Francine and I did spend Xmas 2008 in Spain and we stumbled, quite by chance, upon a suckling pig in a supermarket. Well, to be perfectly accurate, what Francine stumbled upon was a vacuum-packed half suckling pig – the left half, if memory serves. ‘T was Francine who had to do the stumbling ‘cos I was temporarily back in the UK on a classic family emergency, returning just in time for our Xmas together on Xmas Eve. It seems that suckling pig is quite popular in Spain over Christmas. I’d been salivating at the prospect of a repeat gastronomic experience this time since leaving Luton airport.

I had not been looking forward to the rather rainy conditions that we’ve experienced since arriving but at least wet weather makes scouring the supermarkets an enjoyable experience. First, we checked out the Masymas supermercado in Jalon. Nada, nichts, nothing. Darn, I hope the Spanish haven’t gone off suckling pig. The following day found us in the local Masymas again and lo, cutely curled up on the meat counter, its little trotters curled appealingly beneath it, was a whole suckling pig. Francine thought of two reasons not to buy it:

1. it was too big for two;
2. it looked too much like Scamp (our charge for the season).

Well, Scamp does curl his paws under him in much the same fashion but really, some people have no sense of fun.

Finally, today on Saturday morning prior to an evening dinner party Francine and I hit the Mercadona supermercado in Benissa for some supplies. Ever alert, though our personal needs weren’t our prime requirement, we wandered past a chiller cabinet filled with halves of suckling pigs. The expiry date was 25th December and, having been invited out on Christmas Day, we’d have to freeze our booty but it was too good an opportunity to miss so we bagged €25 worth.

This year’s acquisition is the right hand side of the piglet so we’ll be able to do a taste comparison. 🙂

When was the last time you saw a suckling pig in a British supermarket?

After much agonizing over deserting an elderly parent for the so-called festivities, Francine and I finally bit the bullet and accepted a Christmas and New Year house-and-dog-sitting assignment in Spain. I booked the flights, departing on 19th December and returning on 9th January, and ‘fessed up to my mother. The flights were more expensive than usual being around Christmas but, hey, life is for living. Mother was thrilled. [Ahem :)]

Just to add insult to injury, having decided upon a 3:30 AM alarm and arranged with our neighbour for a 4:15 AM departure for Luton airport to get our 6:50 AM easyJet flight to Alicante, easyJet sent out a text message saying,

Owing to high passenger volumes travelling through Luton airport over the Christmas period, we recommend allowing extra time for your journey. We are opening check-in desks three hours before departure rather than the usual two hours.

Screw that! Friendly though our neighbourly reciprocal arrangement for transport is, I wasn’t keen on dragging anyone out of bed any earlier, so 4:15 AM it remained.

Good decision! We arrived at Luton in good time and walked straight up to a bag drop desk (having checked in online some weeks earlier). Maybe extra staff in readiness for the Christmas rush was helping? Our luck continued as we encountered no horrendous queues at security; we got through the scanners quicker than ever before. Great stuff!

Our flight left on time – actually a couple of minutes early – and went smoothly save for a little turbulence approaching the Pyrenees. Alicante’s baggage handers were their usual slow selves getting bags from plane to conveyor belt but our luggage did arrive eventually and we sauntered out past some strangely alert Spanish who actually wanted to see our passports. We were reunited with our hosts, Chris and Yvonne, for the 1-hour ride north to Jalón.

The only fly in today’s very smooth ointment was that we’d left a sunny forecast in England in favour of a rainy forecast in Spain. Nonetheless, since making the almost impossible decision to come, we’ve really been looking forward to a different Christmas and it felt very good to be back.

First job, an early evening beer or five with a few more Vall de Pop friends at the Casa Aleluja in Jalón. 😉