La Bloggerie

Living in Chalais town centre, you get used to the sound of bells. After all, we are within earshot of two churches and the town hall.

For a reason that I have not yet discovered, every hour is rung twice, 2 minutes apart, by one of the churches and the town hall, in perfect synchronisation.  In term time, we also get to hear the bell that indicates the end of lessons in the school at the bottom  of the garden.

Or at least, we used to.  Yesterday evening there were a couple of electricians at work up a ladder on the outside of the school building, and at 8.30 this morning came the proof of their successful completion of the job.  At a volume that they will presumably reduce fairly quickly, came a burst of classical music to announce to the 300 or so young teenagers in the playground that it was time for the first lesson.

The music itself was greeted with raucous derision by the assembled students, and with a look of total disbelief by our dogs. This was an aural assault of GBH proportions. 

But if they have decided that music is the way forward in low-stress lesson changeovers then I trust they will not play the same piece every hour.  They owe it to us to ring the changes.

We launched the newly madeover La Tannerie website today.

New features include an online enquiry form, and will be followed over the coming weeks with online booking and payment facilities, as well as redesigned photo galleries.

The brighter weather didn’t last.  After an 8-hour thunderstorm through the night, we were faced by a grey, rainy morning and made the decision to head back to France.

We took the most direct route up through the centre of the country, skirting Madrid on the way. It was a mostly uneventful drive. We had been impressed with the Spanish motorways on the way down, and having got used to paying tolls in France, it was good to find that most of the route was free of charges. We knew we were back in France when we paid three tolls within 10 minutes.

It was a long journey – about 18 hours door-to-door – but it gave us the chance to come up with the following list.

5 things we liked about Spain

1. Mountains:  We had no idea there were so many there.
2. The temperature:  Despite our bad luck with the weather, the temperatures were much warmer, especially at night.
3. Prices:  On the whole the cost of living seemed to be less.
4. Valencia:  We didn’t see much of it but it looked like a lively city.
5. Guaro:  The village we stayed in was the closest we got to what we assume is ‘real’ Spain.

5 things we didn’t like about Spain

1. Mealtimes:  We never really got the hang of eating lunch at 4pm
2. Torremolinos:  Hell on earth.
3. Dirt:  In comparison with France it was dirty, and frequently smelly.
4. Attitude:  We missed the friendliness of the French.
5. Road signs:  Misleading numbering and a tendency for towns to suddenly disappear.

Just as we were thinking this holiday was doomed to an early end, the first rays of sun appeared on the roof terrace and we decided to head for the hills.

Our destination was Ronda, and the route we took wound up and over the Sierra de las Nieves – the Snowy Mountains. The views just kept getting better as we climbed to 1200 metres, but no snow. In fact the temperature stayed pleasantly warm. 

Which was probably as well because by the time we arrived in Ronda it was early evening and the locals were out doing what the Spanish seem to do best – walking up and down, looking at each other. It seems to be part of their culture to get dressed up and go and strut about in the evening. 

As a social occasion it takes some beating.  Hundreds of couples and families all out in the main street.  Or it would be a social occasion if anyone bothered to stop to talk to anyone else.  But conversation doesn’t feature – it’s all about how you look.  Which for us, as the only people in shorts and t-shirts, left us some way down the social order.

I suppose it was asking a bit much to expect our first holiday in four years to be bathed in constant sunshine, especially in October, but the weather forecast had been promising that it would be both sunny and warm.

However, what the weather forecasters had failed to predict was that Spain would be hit by extreme high winds and torrential rain, resulting in floods, roads washed away and bridges damaged. The local TV news showed us how lucky we had been to arrive just ahead of the worst of the storms.

But we had to go and take a look down at the coast. The winds that lashed Marbella were ripping branches from trees and uprooting huge palm trees. I had never imagined that the Mediterranean could look so angry as it threw itself at deserted beaches.

We should have seen the warning signs.  They were lit up as we approached the end of the tunnel that took us from France into Spain.  “Rain” they said. “Reduce your speed.”  And sure enough, as we emerged through the Pyrenees it was chucking it down, which was a bit odd because it hadn’t been raining on the French side.  And this was going to be our holiday in the sun.

But given that we still had 800 miles or so to go we didn’t for one minute think that the sun wasn’t going to shine and drove on full of confidence.

Two days later, having stopped over-night in Zaragoza and then Valencia, we headed down the Mediterranean coast still looking for the sun. It put in a brief appearance as we drove past Alicante, but not enough to improve the depressing view of an over-developped coastline where every available space is being filled with modern, concrete boxes. This surely is Spain at its worst?

But the rain returned, and through Murcia and Granada it never let up. The views were constantly shrouded in cloud, and with each passing mountain range we expected to see it start to clear.

Finally it seemed to be doing just that as we dropped down from the mountains above Malaga and began the last stage of our journey into the hills behind Marbella.

It was always our plan that we should take time out and travel around a bit during the quieter parts of the year.  But we never seem to have had those quieter times, so we are going to take advantage of having Graham here and head off into Spain tomorrow.

We have borrowed a village house in the mountains inland from Marbella and are looking forward to sitting around in the sun, doing nothing in particular.  Not exactly ideal material for a blog, but if we find an internet connection we will let you know what the weather is like.

The price we pay for having so much sunshine is that clear skies at night can see the temperatures fall away sharply, and over the past week it has started to feel very autumnal.

 We shall resist putting the central heating on for as long as possible because we know full well that once it has started we won’t want to turn it off again this side of Easter.

 With that aim in mind we arranged to have the chimneys swept yesterday.  It is something that you are required to do in France every year.  The certificate that the sweep presents you with is needed in the event of a fire if you are to claim from your insurance company.

As a race the French are a fairly short lot, but the sweep that turned up yesterday was of a size that he could have climbed up the chimneys with his brush to do the job.

But out came a large vacuum cleaner, a set of brushes and a bunch of dust sheets and within a couple of hours all was  clean and dust-free.

So it was with quite a smug feeling that we looked out this morning after another cold night to see our first frost.  Still the central heating waits.