Life in Culebrón

I half remember an early city walk that I did. It was around Oxford and the chap introduced himself as the obsequious Turnbull. He was about twelve years old, or so it seemed to me at the time, and he wore a threadbare suit complete with bow tie. He did a good tour though. I like walking tours around towns and cities. Trees and geology in Leeds, Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, writers in Dublin or 1726 in Petrer - they're all worth a go. I don't even mind those leaflet based walks that do the drainage system in the Fens, Bomber Command in 1942 or Carmen Conde in Cartagena. We've always tried to throw a few cultural things in amongst the alcohol and wild excesses of our lives (well that and the nightly cocoa) and even having to do it it in Spanish hasn't quite vanquished us. I've taken, purportedly, willing house guests to the theatre or to a film. We've done lots of music - festivals, flamenco, ballet, zaerzuela, contemporary, jazz, latin and opera. Folky an...

Sometimes it's surprising the things you don't know even close to home. A while ago we were watching the telly and there was a featurette about Murcia. The cameras visited the Ricote Valley which is some 65kms from Culebrón. One of the villages in the valley is Blanca. It's a small place of around 6,500 inhabitants. We didn't know, but we learned then, that it had an art gallery, the Pedro Cano Foundation. "We must go and have a look one day," I said to Maggie. Today was the day. As we walked through the door the woman on the desk greeted us in English "We must look very English," I said, in Spanish. "No, but you're the person who phoned yesterday, aren't you?" Now that was true but my instant reaction was then that either they get so few visitors that they remember every phone call or we must look very, very English just like I'd said. The gallery was really good. A nice light airy building. Interesting and well execute...