Tuesday 7th March
A rather grey start to the day which didn’t really help my mood, though the sun came out in the afternoon and the thermometer got up to 18°.
Since we came last year, the front garden has been landscaped. It did look a mess before! There is a watering system which has been coming on at 1pm. We normally have lunch about that time and it took a while for us to realise that it wasn’t spitting with rain it was the water from the watering system that was being blown up to us! When Phil came the other day, it was quite amusing watching him wondering where the water was coming from! The gardeners came today and have changed the time the water comes on!
This cactus has the strangest and rather pornographic flowers on it!
We sat out and read our books until Muffin demanded his afternoon walk and I needed to go to Dia for some fruit.
Every evening we change into jeans and jumpers as it is cold in the house. We have been sitting in the lounge with the fire on some evenings I have had a blanket over me! These houses have no insulation in them whatsoever. This evening we didn’t hire the fire on and I didn’t have a jumper on either. It was 18.5°.
We spent a rather nail biting evening waiting for Ingrid to phone. She had had a CT scan and was then seeing the Consultant. Eventually she messaged to say it wasn’t an embolism but she has been referred to a heart consultant. She video messaged later on, and she looked so much better – the worry must have been awful for her.
Apparently, tonight’s moon was a “worm moon”. I didn’t realise that when I took this photo.
A lovely sunny day, we actually had the patio doors in the bedroom open from about 8am, a first for this trip.
For years we have wanted to go to a place in Los Gallardos where we had seen flowerpots that hang on the wall. Today was the day, Richard said that we were going! There are some road works, so we had to make a detour via the Pueblo. I took the opportunity to get Richard to stop while I took a couple of photos of the Pueblo.
The main reason for stopping was to take the photo below. After last year’s calima the majority of white houses have been painted - blocks of flats down to smallest cottage. However, in the Pueblo some flats have been painted and others haven’t. They do look most odd.
Our detour took us through Turre so I took the opportunity to stop and got to Super Turre, a supermarket that is very Spanish but does have some English food as well and not at a bad price.
We got to the “flowerpot” place, but the pots were plain, they didn’t have the lovely bright painting on them which is what I wanted. A wasted journey but it did help me get out of the villa and go somewhere. My “mood” has meant that I haven’t wanted to do very much, I’ve been quite happy with my New Zealand research and reading. We have also decided that tomorrow we will take a picnic and go up into the mountains 😊
The temperature in the shade got up to 21° so Richard put the pool heater on. It will take about 24 hours to get up to a decent temperature.
It got quite hot (for us anyway) in the afternoon, up to 22°. Richard couldn’t sit in the sun and had to move to the veranda where there is a nice comfy sofa, Muffin liked it there too. I lay out on a sun lounger in the shade listening to my talking book, needless to say I think I might have just missed a bit by nodding off.
I took these two photos while sitting on my lounger, just trying to be arty!!
When we went to bed, I checked the thermometer again and it
was still 20°.
Thursday 9th March
Up early as I had a blood test at the doctors. It was a fasting one, so no cup of tea for me this morning. I had had an email from a doctor at the travel insurance company yesterday asking what sort of blood test I was having, how am I supposed to know?? When I got back to the villa I sent the receipt for the blood test to the travel insurance people and got an email back later on to say that the money has been reimbursed!
We were off to the mountains today, hopefully to see the almond blossom, but I was worried we were far too late. I had planned to go the route we have done before but I must have made a mistake though the route we did was lovely. We drove almost to Tabernas then turned north up into the mountains. The first village we came to was Tahal which was a pretty little town. At this stage I am going to call them small towns as each one had its own public swimming pool, I don’t think a village would have one of those! It was then Alcudia de Monteagud, Benitagla and Benizalon. We didn’t really know where we were going, but sort of followed our noses! The small towns were dead, totally dead! I think in all four we only saw four people and a dog, who was lying in the road and had no intention of moving! In Benizalon we came across a small shrine with picnic tables, as it was lunchtime, we availed ourselves of one. I had packed a picnic, so we sat in the sunshine and ate. From the town we meandered up the mountain towards the Santuario de Monteagud which we could see at the top. We kept coming across picnic tables and benches and realised that they were for people walking up to the Sanctuary. We didn’t go up the final stretch to the sanctuary which was a shame as later I found out that we could have done. We were nervous about going up in case we came across monks or nuns who would be cross with us for invading their space! The views from the road were stunning, my photos don’t do it justice.
Google maps showed a road continuing to Cobdar which we had planned to take, but it was just a cart track and Richard was not going to go down! So we had to turn round and go back through the small towns and on to Cobdar.
Benitagla.
These photos are from our picnic place in Benizalon.
Santuario de Monteagud. It doesn’t look anything from this angle but looking online the other side is very old.
These are general photos were taken from the mountain and our drive to Cobdar.
Don’t move out of the way, will you???
This town was clinging to the mountain side.
We had been passed Cobdar before but must have gone a different way. Last time we saw a huge marble quarry, but this time it was a sandstone quarry.
I can’t say much about the rest of the journey from Cobdar as I was fast asleep! However, we weren’t too late to see the almond blossom 😊 From a distance the trees look lovely but when I tried to take a close up photo it just didn’t work. I took this one from the car so it’s not brilliant.
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