Things I love about Spain

1. That you can buy a bottle of decent* wine for 80 cents

2. That you can buy wine in 5L plastic bottles direct from the winery

3. Climbing on Margalef pocketed limestone, such novelty value! 

4. That no body gets up before 9am, and few before 10am

5. The old Spaniards who congregate at some known social meeting point, usually the town square or in front of the church, to “socialise” (which actually looks like they just sit near each other and watch the colourful climbers pass by with a disgruntled expression of confusion and amusement)

6. The communal water fonts, often referred to as the Lion’s Heads, (which are another common meeting location of the oldies)    

The Lion and his beard (of slime)

7. The terraces that you stumble across in the most unlikely places, like when you think you’ve bush bashed and scrambled far away for a morning poo, only to arrive at a well constructed stone wall holding up a levelled field in the side of a mountain, that is likely to be a few thousand years old.

Terraces at Margalef, if you look closely you can see the stone walls at every level

8. The fact that no matter how tight our monthly budget becomes, we always manage to have a vast selection of olives, a type for every occasion. The little bitter ones as beer snacks, the big green ones for dinner, those of the “Receta Abuela” (Gransma’s Recipe) which have a curious flavour of cumin and citrus, and Mick’s favourite – the “Bombas”, which the Olive man assured us would blow his head off, and was slightly disappointed when Mick didn’t collapse to the ground wheezing but casually bought a tub full.

9. The ancient stone towns full of epic history, like Siurana, where they say the Moorish Queen road her horse out through the castle window and over the cliff to commit suicide when the town was falling to the Christians. 

Siurana

Siurana after the storm

 10. Climbing in Siurana. This was kind of a love-hate point, beautiful scenery, nasty crimps, from which my skin still hasn't recovered.

*It is possible that my judgement of decent wine has degraded somewhat over the last few months

Starting to feel like home

After just over two weeks, sleepy sunny little Chulilla is starting to feel like home. 

From the 1st of April, which must mark the start of a season, the countryside has jumped to life. All the old farmers are out on their tractors ploughing the terraced fields around their olive trees. This is a picture of my favourite olive tree, so large and old it's limbs are supported by poles. 

Most of the population in the town are senior citizens, as old as their olive trees, and they are starting exchange pleasantries with us in the street (well I assume that’s what’s happening when the grunt incomprehensibly and wave their walking sticks at me). We’ve also found the bakery, which is quite possibly a big mistake… they sell Nutella filled croissants for 70 cents. Hopefully this is compensated for by the wild asparagus that grows at the crag and is now an exciting addition to our diet of pasta red sauce.   

We’re also feeling a bit more at home on the rock here. Some of the limestone tufas, which have been seeping ever since the week of rain, are starting to dry out, making some of the more exceptional routes climbable. I have no photos to show of it yet though as I keep forgetting to take the camera when we go climbing! 

The van is also becoming more homely too, with the addition of a herb garden and some chickens (chickens sadly only in printed form, on the lino we got to cover the bench).

Amongst other home improvements (such as the removal of the floral curtain) the van is also now equipped with a clamshell sand pit as a bath tub, which fits perfectly in the floor space, and makes for a great steamy bath time.    

And lastly, a couple of other shots...

Morning view.

Dinner time.

We made it to paradise...

...and now it's raining!

After 2 days of driving through France (which should have taken much less but for our efforts to avoid all toll roads, resulting in having to go through a round-a-bout every 800m or so), we popped out of the tunnel through the Pyrenees into Spain!

First stop: Chulilla, a beautiful little Spanish village perched on a ridge between canons of endless limestone. 

Before the rain... 

Now it's quite cold and wet, even the olive oil is solidifying.

And here's a little photo of the Van interior after the makeover. 

The van certainly has a sense of humour

I walked into the spare room where we are staying last night to find Mick trying to crimp the lip of the draw on the filing cabinet next to his mattress….it’s time to leave England. We haven’t climbed in over a month, not a great average for a year dedicated to climbing. Any hint of a tan that I managed to accumulate in my brief Aus summer stint has gone…and my strength to body weight ratio is severely degraded by an indoor inactive English winter lifestyle…and my Nutella binge the other day to commemorate the death of the almighty inventor of the blissful substance (RIP Ferrero).

The interior decorating of the Van is complete…with Royal Blue carpet for the floor, baby poo coloured insulation on the walls, and a hideous floral curtain, we’re all set!

Apart from one thing. The van is now apparently un-roadworthy! In the UK they have this stupid mandatory road worthiness test, called an MOT, and can fail you for any number of ridiculous things, such as a tiny bit of body rust, or the hand break not pulling tight after three clicks. We were a tad concerned about our van passing it’s test, especially when the indicators mysteriously stopped working on they way to the MOT place, and then when the mechanic couldn’t get any of the doors to unlock (there’s a knack to it), and then when the mechanic couldn’t start it (there’s a knack to that too). But failing us for a rusted seal which would cost 750 pounds to fix it (that’s about a 1 million AUD at the moment with the way the dollar is), well that was just hurtful England. Anyway luckily we’ve found some dodgy bloke in Chatham (aka dodgy-ville), who’ll do a cash job on the weekend for a lot less. Let’s hope we still have a van by Sunday!

American motor home...almost

We bought a van yesterday. It's huge! Of course I’m getting the blame for the extravagance…after my outburst in TESCO the other day over the UK’s extreme obsession with pre-packaged food (even fruit is packaged), which lead to my announcement that while we are travelling through Europe we would have source our food predominantly from the likes of bulk food suppliers, if I were to avoid a psychological meltdown over society’s complete disconnect with the origin of our food. Mick then concluded we would need a van large enough to accommodate a year’s supply of sacks of rice and lentils, and therefore agreed to the long wheel base high top semi trailer we purchased yesterday. But I actually think the real reason we ended up with such an enormous vehicle is that Mick quite fancies the idea of inviting new friends (aka unsuspecting victims) over to play (or more accurately… get thrashed at) his favourite card game, Monopoly Deal. Anyway, whatever the excuse, we now have a bloody big van, and are commencing refurbishments today, after having spent the afternoon yesterday scrubbing out the English countryside mud that was caked on the floor.

That is a massive broom...by the way...in case if affects you're appreciation for how large the van is.