Just a week after the last update, the blog has been updated again (it’s been raining…) So anyway, without further ado, we will let you get to the main bit, with one small preface.. did we mention it’s been raining again?? (and we have run out of DVD’s to watch) Consequently these updates are quite long (because it passes the time when it’s raining you see, which I’m not sure if we mentioned before – the fact that it’s been raining that is..) so to see all the updates you may need to click on the “Older Posts” link at the bottom of the page..

Oh dear, that turned out to be quite a lot more further ado… I blame the rain…

It finally happened.. The weather cleared up for long enough for us to dry the firewood up so we could have our long awaited Christmas dinner. Below you can see the oven that Jimbo spent an in ordinate amount of time creating (with nothing but a pair of pliers – which is why it took so long) built in the remains of a small brick housing for an old swimming pool pump, with the main workings of it being constructed out of and old water heater and and an abandoned oil heater.. Complete with fire pit at the bottom and shelves inside so we could cook meat and potatoes separately.

And here is how it turned out – finally.. we didn’t finish cooking until just after midnight, but managed to include all the essentials: Roast Chicken for Jimbo, Quorn sausages for Betty, Roast potatoes, Brussels, Bread Sauce, stuffing and gravy..

And below we can see a very relieved Jimbo carving the aforementioned chicken – it’s all very well thinking your homemade oven should work in theory, it’s quite another to actually put it into practice!

And what Christmas dinner would be complete without a flaming Christmas pudding?? This one was courtesy of Betty’s mum, which she had sent out with Freya when she came to see us (As well as some Christmas decorations and chocolate coins – yum!), and to add a final flourish we added a sprig of olive (no holly round here..) and surrounded it with some of the plums from the Cherry Plum Brandy that Alistair and Kerry had given us to open on Christmas day – all the way back in August!  So on the 3rd of January we could now tick Christmas off the done list!!

 

But Christmas wasn’t done with us yet!! Yesterday we actually had three wise men ride past our Casita! Throwing sweets as they went!

Although we are yet to find out the meaning of this tradition it was on the eve of the 6th of January which is when traditionally some Spanish give presents instead of Christmas day. It turned out to be some of the workers  from the organic farm behind us, who helped us on Christmas eve.. Carlos had even completely ‘blacked up’, not sure PC in its full version has reached Spain yet!!

Happy New Year everybody!! We hope you survived the snow, and for those of you who are stuck at home on a “snow day” today here we have a message come news report for you, that was supposed to be online for you to see on New Years day, but once again thanks to the weather (have we mentioned it been raining?) is a week late.  We hope you like it, and apologise for its cheesiness – you do have to remember that we have been cooped up in a small casita for the past few weeks and consequently went a bit stir crazy!! (no talking vans this time I’m afraid.. if you don’t know what I mean by that (and are really bored) have a look at our Christmas message that is now lurking somewhere on the “DVD extras” page)

And so after what seemed like an eternity (and I don’t just mean the length of the Christmas post below) the weather mercifully calmed down (for a while) but what had been left in its wake??? Above you can see Dragger – one of Konstanze’s dogs – keeping a very watchful eye on the cat (which we called NoName) that had appeared when the flood was at it’s peak..

Now cats meowing at your door is not uncommon round here as there are loads of strays, but this cat seemed to be from a home as she was well groomed, very young and actually scared of birds!! Jimbo lovingly made her a bed from some of his jumpers (as you can see in the picture below),  although Dragger and Belfie took great delight in scaring her, so she spent much of the next 3 days in the olive tree next to the front door! As soon as we had started asking about whose it might be it and lined up a possible home (with Bebe & Otto up the road), it disappeared! We like to think that it managed to find its way back to its original home as the flood waters receded, or possibly that it was a feline version of the littlest hobo, either way it disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived (she must have been cute though – even Betty was warming to her!)

NoName’s timing, as it turned out was impeccable, as Jimbo had still not had an opportunity to roast the chicken that had been bought for Christmas day.. consequently it had started to smell like the shop “Goyals” on a wet Saturday afternoon (anyone who went to school in maidenhead should know what I mean..) so had been hastily turned into a very large chicken casserole that was more than enough to sustain Jimbo and NoName for the few days she was here..

 

Finally things had calmed down enough for us to fill in the hole that was the end of our driveway, so we could venture out in the little blue van and break the cabin fever we had succumbed to (which explains some of the cheesiness of our new years video in the post above – some of it, not all!) Below you can see the swathe the river carved through the mountains next to Orgiva

Our first port of call to gauge the destruction  was a trip to the “Rules dam” a few miles away where all the local rivers combine, which we had heard was quite a sight. You can see from the pictures in this post (and from the video in the post above) the amount of water it was having to deal with –  below you can see one of the edges of the dam (on the left) and all the trees that had been washed downstream looking like matchsticks from where we stood.. We had been told by one of our neighbours that close up it was horrific.. Dead cows, dogs, sheep etc washed away in the initial deluge – We could quite believe the carnage down there, however we were slightly sceptical about the dead cows, being as we haven’t seen a whole one since Switzerland…

And below you can see a panoramic view of  the dam itself, with the water looking a very eerie colour once the rain had eased up a bit (you should just about be able to make out Betty on the left):

 

We then actually had a few days sunshine and felt brave enough to try and go for a walk.. We decided on walking about 3km upstream to see what damage had been done, to go and see a waterfall we had battled our way through to see before the floods arrived, however we had barely walked 1km when we were met by the scene below – to give it some perspective each waterfall is about 20 meters high, and on the left where the big pile of boulders are, used to be a cliff face that you could find a steep path up to, to get to the top of the small waterfalls and then follow the river upstream, however it is now completely impassable (Jimbo did make a rash attempt at scooting up the right-hand side though, and came ever so close to doing himself some serious mischief..)

Below you can see Betty standing next to some of the Boulders that the river was bringing downstream when the flood was at its worst..

But, all this water has, as they say, been good for the garden, and as you can see from the photo below, that at least the Marigolds in garden have been thriving!!

Hello pop-pickers! After our last post about the floods, we thought we would fill in a few of the blanks to 2009’s alternative Christmas… As mentioned previously it had been raining pretty much non-stop for 10 days, and the Rio Chico had started to rise from nowhere, to the extent that we stayed up until 2am on the 23rd as it was getting worryingly close to engulfing the bridge, it did however seem to be stabilising enough that we could finally get some sleep..

Wrong!! At 4am we were awoken by Konstanze (our next door neighbour) frantically knocking on our window letting us know that the bridge was now underwater. A very long day then ensued (with lots more rain) – keeping an eye on the river and building trenches to divert the flood water that was starting to flow into the garden. At about 6am the tap water stopped working (and didn’t return for 4 days..) It all but escaped our attention that it was Christmas eve, in fact it was not until about 3am on Christmas day – as he was packing emergency escape bags – that James remembered that he had yet to wrap Betty’s presents (or sleep), but as you can see from the picture above they were wrapped and under the tree – at about 4am! Incidentally, before Christmas we had a agreed a Ten Euro limit (hence the newspaper for wrapping paper, that saved another Euro to spend on the present!) – It had been 5 Euros until Betty had noticed a yoga mat she really wanted.. about 5 minutes after we left that shop the limit mysteriously rose to 10 Euros. Betty denies all memory of this but still it made present buying easy for Jimbo – Can you guess what’s in the cracker in the photo above??  So anyway rather than the long climb up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, we did a short sock slide across the tiled floor to the bedroom, and set our alarms for sunrise..

Unfortunately, we completely misjudged sunrise (can’t think why!) and it was still pitch black when our alarms roused us, no matter we thought, the world outside maybe flooding around our ears, but it is still Christmas, a bit of stiff upper lip, and business as usual will get us through this, so we settled down to smoked salmon, eggs and Champers for breakfast – well ok, to be perfectly honest it was trout, eggs and cava but it hit the spot just the same, although you can see from the picture below possibly the merest hint of sleep deprivation in Jimbo’s general appearance ..

So anyway, finally the sun rose, and actually decided to shine for a few hours  as we were joined watching the river by Konstanze’s son Martin and the two organic farm workers who live on the ridge behind us and who helped save our garden the day before. As you can see from the picture below it was glorious for a few hours and the rapidly imbibed cava had most certainly perked up Jimbo a bit..

 

Christmas day brought us Santa in the shape of a digger (Special note to Abigail: If you have a look on the “DVD Extras Page” a certain someone can watch the digger in action..) which cleared away a lot of the stones which had been brought down stream and started to dig a trench to try and reroute the river (this was achieved a few days later after redirecting the  torrent mainly to our side! Thank you very much!!) In the picture below you can see one of our neighbours (Antonio) relaying instructions to try and resurrect the main water pipe across the bridge..

The rest of the day was spent in an attempt to cross the river to get water from the main square on the other side (Which as it turned out wasn’t working either). Needless to say this was fruitless and the water crisis was solved by Betty going with Antonio in his jeep over the water once the boulders were cleared and driving to the next village armed with as many containers as we could muster. Although ours was clearly not enough and our lovely Spanish neighbour, Antonio (again), took pity on us and gave us one of his containers.

Anyway, shortly after the picture above of Martin and Jimbo trying to cross the river was taken, the rain started again (seemingly heavier than ever) – there was no way that we would be using the hastily constructed oven in the garden to make a roast dinner today (and besides all the firewood for it was soaked through anyway..) Luckily Konstanze stepped in and cooked us an amazing dinner to warm our wet souls and in return Betty introduced her to Quorn sausages!..

After dinner – and checking the water levels of the river as the rain was still teeming down – we taught Konstanze and Martin how to play rummikub, and as you can see from the picture below, everyone was exhausted – even Dragger and Belfie!

Even though it had been a long day, and we knew there would be many long days and short nights ahead, once back in our now very wet Casita, we decided to round off the day with a toast around the cactus tree and a last look at the river to see it was not going to get us in our few hours sleep before we had to check it again! (and for Jimbo to ponder why he hadn’t been able to prise the camera from Betty’s grip all day! She says it is payback and that for once there should be more photos of Jimbo than her in a post!)

Hello everybody, just thought we would update you about our very different Christmas!! In the picture below you can see how the Rio Chico at the end of our driveway looked 10 days ago.. Just a little trickle: (click on the images to make them bigger)

And then the rain started (the loudest thunder either of us had ever heard, that rattled the windows as if it was an earthquake) and a week ago we were quite impressed that we now had a nice river near our little casita.. (the picture below by complete chance was taken from the same spot)

 

And then it kept raining, and raining, and raining, and the temperature warmed up enough to melt the snow on the mountain above us, which led to this… (it was too wet to take the camera out when it was at its worst – and widest, but this should give you an idea!

And here we have a panoramic picture showing why we thought it was like Armageddon!

 

And a little video as to why we started to worry for our little casita (I would also point out that the bridge you now can’t see in the picture above is our only exit from the casita as we are surrounded by mountains..). Plus we discovered an overflow pipe which comes into our garden and started to spill over requiring some immediate trench digging and wall building. 

But luckily things are now slowly getting back to normal… We were actually able to pick a route over the mountains through to Orgiva with our next door neighbours’ son Martin, to get some fresh water (as when the river went it took our water pipe with it! so we had no water for 4 days) In the picture below you can see Betty and Martin on the edge of what used to be a road further down the valley from us, in front of a car that had been washed downstream..

 

And finally here is a picture from last night showing the water finally (slowly) starting to recede a bit..

Anyway, that was our Christmas, not quite as planned but definitely memorable! Hope you all had a drier one! We will post some more pictures of our interesting Christmas soon..

Now we have settled in to to our little casita, what to do all day?? LOTS! Almond picking, olive curing, walking, catching rays and admiring the magnificent scenery (and clouds!).. We also now have a river at the end of the driveway, a snow capped mountain to our right, goats wandering past and horses grazing in our garden.. Tranquil!

 

Driving past the entrance to the campsite in Orgiva which we had stayed in before we told Freya that we were going to try somewhere different. Heading out and through Orgiva into a little Hamlet called Bayacas she still did not twig. When James jumped out of the van to ‘check us in’ she still did not think anything was odd. It was only when she met the nice English lady, Sarah and her husband standing outside a little casita (little Spanish farmhouse) and James and I signing a tenancy agreement did she twig that we had been very sneaky and not told her- or any else for that matter – that we had found a base!!! So technically we were meant to find work first but this place was so beautiful and available that we thought we would take it for 2 months anyway. The five days we have spent here have already been brilliant, obviously helped by the presence of Freydo and we have been heavily involved in amazing spanish food which we bought from the market and proceeded to cook over about 6 hours eating it tapas style. We also did a fantastic walk up in the mountains (which have since been covered in snow, visited the hillside villages and managed to squeeze in a night out where we managed to find a taverna which re-opened the kitchens for us to eat!  So here we are for the next couple of months, we explained it to the little blue van and she is not upset as she is still being used a bit and is glad of the break!

Our next-door neighbour is a German lady who has two lovely dogs who frequently come round to say hello, or ola or Guten morgan (they must be very confused!) and then Antonio who lives at the end of our little drive and keeps horses there (and sometimes in our garden!). We have already met one of the old locals who humoured us and spoke very slowly in Spanish.so we could grasp a little of what he was saying! Because we are in such a small village there are no permanent shops and so different people come to the little square to sell things, so far we have had a fruit and vegetable man, a bread man and today there was a man selling clothes and blankets!

Tearing ourselves away from our new home we went on a mission to Malaga airport one afternoon to collect our first visitor from home – Freya!!! We decided that she needed some little blue van living and so we stayed in the same campsite for the next few nights (with James staying in a tent) and had a lovely day at the beach and introduced Freya to our way of cooking. James surpassed himself in the kitchen (well on the table outside the van!) and managed to make a sort of oven with the pans in which he cooked jacket potatoes and roasted some chicken! The pan tower which you can see in the pictures produced all this and a vegetarian option for Betty plus vegetables! The sun shone and all was well, but we had a surprise in store for Freya which meant we had to leave the campsite and head back to the mountains to meet that very nice english lady we mentioned earlier.

 

Continuing our jaunt down the ‘beauties’ of the Costa del Sol we tried to seek out the nicer parts and found an absolute corker! (for those of you who remember Matty H’s stag do, it was about a 5 minute walk from miraflores..) Set back from the main road (as many of the campsites around this area are right on the road – no idea why!) we found an amazing place set amongst a pine forest and a 5 minute walk to a really lovely beach – which of course James went swimming in straight away and even Betty ventured in a little. Even better was the fact that included in the price was a heated swimming pool and activities!! So one morning James went off and did archery whilst Betty went off and did yoga! To top it all off we were treated to an evening in the campsite bar with a Glaswiegen Elvis impersonator (see the DVD extras page for his tearful farewell – one highlight being his “If anyone wants a picture with me while I’m still in my pyjamas you’d better be quick!”) and lots of older couples ready to party. We never did really work out which partner was actually with which, to the extent that James kept making sniggering remarks about the “Pampas Grass” at the front of the campsite for reasons that I’m really not entirely sure I understand.. Proper entertainment!