Enoturismo

We've always been big supporters of the Spanish wine industry. Maggie maybe a little more so than me. I worry more about the brandy business.

As well as swigging as much of the stuff as we can lay our hands on we've also visited a number of bodegas but we've never before tried to follow one of the wine routes.

The idea of a wine route is to use the wine "peg" to hang any number of touriist activities on. The key element is obviously the wine producers or bodegas but restaurants, bookshops, hotels,specialist bars and shops etc. can all get in on the act with a bit of thought. I've seen some imaginative links over the years - music in amongst the barrels, libraries running lecture series, cultural centres doing wine appreciation sessions etc.

Jumilla has a wine route. Pinoso has been talking about setting one up for years but so far zilch. The tourist office in Jumilla was deadly efficient and within seconds of pushing the leaflet into our hands we were booked in for a tour and tasting session at Casa de la Ermita, a brand of wine we've seen a lot of down in Cartagena. Tour of the vineyards, tour of the bodega, tasting session, shop - pretty standard I suppose but the route and spiel was clearly thought out and nicely executed.

It worked too; we spent some cash.The friendly young woman who showed us around, Micaela, says that the Casa de la Ermita brand is sold in Waitrose and M&S in the UK.

Back in Jumilla we went to one of the restaurants on the list too and they were playing their part offering wines from all the participating bodegas as well as highlighting the route in their menus.

We're thinking of doing a few more very soon!

Sunday afternoon every day?

I only cleaned this little blighter two days ago!

I should like to suggest

Have you ever followed a police patrol car on a UK motorway? They'll be driving at 68mph in a 70mph zone so you can creep past whilst still obeying the law. I have a lot of respect for patrol car drivers - in my estimation they know their stuff and they give a good example in their driving habits.

Here in Spain we have to wear seat belts - a good thing. Amazingly police officers at local and national level and the Guardia Civil (who deal specifically with traffic) must have an exemption - they go around beltless. How odd is that?

So I just emailed the Interior Minister and asked him why. I expect a reply. As Willie Whitelaw once said to me when I, amazingly, got through to him on the phone "Why do you think I have a phone on my desk?" - Señor Rubalcaba has an email address at least.

Always something new

Agost is a town just 40km from Culebrón. We've been there a couple of times but somehow we've managed to miss the thing that it's known for. It's famous for ceramics.

A pal took us to the workshop in the photo where the owner gave us a quick demonstration of his skills at the potter's wheel and a tour of the old Arab style kiln before pressing free gifts into our hands to suck us into buying something. He needn't have worried, I fancied one of the botijas, Maggie was captivated by the bowls and we bought an essential garlic storage jar too.

A botija is an earthenware jar - this one is for water. It's porous so that the heat needed to evaporate the water cools it down. You drink the water by tipping up the botija, the water spurts from the small spout so no worry about passing germs from person to person. Of course it's easy to get a mini shower at the same time.

Gathering dusk

We had to choose our fun tonight between a horse riding demonstration and the local environmental service returning animals to the wild. We chose the horses. There were flies though and apart from women in admirably tight riding breeches it all seemed a bit unwelcoming and disorganised. We moved on.

Up in the natural park on the side of Monte Coto the local environmental service was letting loose some beasts. We had a Kestrel, three Little Owls and a Northern Goshawk. The chief ranger person was pretty good and told us stuff. Did you know, for instance, that owls can't move their pupils which is why their heads are articulated as they are? I also learned that Spaniards say that people have eyes in their backs rather than the back of their heads. Being Spain everyone who wanted to stroke the owls before they were released got to and they were then let loose by children from amongst the thirty strong crowd.

There were toads too. Apparently the Common Toad can live for about 20 years, is pretty big and isn't at all common in this part of Spain partly because it is being slaughtered by a fungus that we carry on our hands. Then there were Natterjacks and finally some tiny Midwife Toads. From the man's imitation of their sound this may well be the beast that makes an electronic beeping noise that we heard whilst we were sitting on a friend's terrace last week.

Just so I can remember the Spanish names after tonight and so any Spanish readers have a chance the animals were cernicalo (kestrel), azor (goshawk), mochuelo común (little owl) , sapo común (common toad), sapo corredor (natterjack toad) and sapo partero (midwife toad.)

Gearing up for the Fiesta and Fair

This is pure conjecture.

The 10 day long Pinoso Fiesta starts officially tomorrow. The rides and stalls are already setting up in the town. Just from a quick look this morning I'd say there are fewer stalls than last year and last year there were fewer stalls than the year before.

Spain is a rich country nowadays. The IMF may say that the economy faces some serious challenges and the word crisis is still on everyone's lips. Unemployment reached a 13 year peak yesterday with over 20% of the working population idle. Nonetheless, the last time I looked we were still the ninth biggest economy in the World. In 1965 Spain was on the UN list of "Third World" countries. Quite a change in 45 years.

When I used to do Spanish lessons with a chap who lives here in Pinoso he told me that, in 1984, there was only one tarmac road through the town - in from Monóvar and out towards Fortuna - somewhere, I heard that mains electricity didn't arrive in Pinoso till 1974. I have photos of the town in the 60s and 70s. There's a mule in the street, dirt roads, poverty.

Pinoso is still pretty isolated, still a rural farming community. Imagine the annual fair and carnival twenty or thirty years ago. Stalls selling pots and pans, knives and agricultural implements. New clothes for the kids, toys, strangers in town. The fairground rides, the opportunity to eat strange food, to let your hair down.

Nowadays if someone wants a new fridge freezer or a garlic crusher they can get it in town or jump into their motor and zip off to the Aljub or Thader or Nueva Condomina shopping centres. If they want entertainment Elche and Alicante and Murcia are all less than an hour away. Terra Mítica, the huge theme park is an easy day trip.

Maybe the knife seller from Albacete, the ham and sausage from Galicia and the dodgems just don't have the appeal for the population that they once had. Or maybe I'm a foreigner and I still don't understand how Spaniards like to party.

Flies

One of the downsides of living in the country is the flies. Sitting in the shade with a cold drink in hand the little blighters start to pester. Their tiny little feet pitter pattering across your face, in your ears, up your nostrils, drowning in your drink.

I like to think I'm pretty zen about small beasties. Spiders removed from the bath before showering, beetles scooped up from the living room and released to the wild. Yesterday though there were more flies than I could cope with. Out came the fly swat. Tens of corpses surrounding the sun lounger; higher body count than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It ain't half hot mum

It isn't really. The highest temperature we've had here in Culebrón over the past few weeks has been 36ºC and normally daily maximums have been around 32ºC. For those dinosaurs amongst you that means our maximum has been about 97ºF and we're generally running at around 90ºF.

When we got back from holiday several of our English pals were keen to complain about the heat - suffocating, unbearable, nightmare - were common words. The complaints were nearly as loud as the moaning about the rain, icy winds and low temperatures of a few months ago. 42ºC was bandied about. At those sort of temperatures the State Meteorological Service starts issuing weather warnings along with advice about drinking plenty of water, wearing hats and buying a camel. It has been over 40ºC recently in several parts of Spain, it's been on the telly, but Alicante hasn't featured.

It's hot, no doubt about it, but it's far from unbearable. In the full sun (where the temperature zooms off the top of all the thermometers I own) the sweat will soak your clothes, dribble into your eyes and turn your hair into a dripping sponge but in the shade a heat haze just helps to increase the profits of beer and soft drink companies and it reminds me at least of one of the things I like about Spain. It's sunny. And I can't remember when it last rained.

Minimums, by the way, turn around twenty, it was 18ºC for instance last night so a perfectly pleasant temperature for sleeping.

Another little glitch

This is another in my series of moans about Spanish websites.

We booked a couple of days away with the Castilla la Mancha tourist website. I booked and paid online without any difficulty. I got a confirmation of the purchase by email. The next working day a courier turned up with the voucher and a really well presented booklet. I was well impressed; the website had worked, the organisation seemed efficient.

The package contained a voucher which can be exchanged for a series "weekend" breaks. I could either ring or send a request by email. So, for the usual reason of avoiding a phone conversation, I sent an email. The next evening I got one of those "This is an automatically generated message, delivery of your message has been delayed, you do not need to do anything, we will try to resend the messsage." I checked the email address and I even replied to the email that they had sent me as a foolproof way of getting the address right. I've just had another "undeliverable" message again on both emails.

Ah well, on the phone tomorrow then.

P.S: I did phone and they were dead efficient. They confirmed the details of our telephone conversation by email within moments, phoned through the confirmation in a couple of hours and sent the voucher for the trip at the same time by email.

The Floridablanca garden in Murcia

When I did the piece on gardening in Spain a couple of days ago I had a root around on the Internet for information about Spanish gardens and gardeners. One bit of information that I turned up was that the oldest public garden in Spain is in Murcia City and, as that's very close to home, we went to have a look today.

Nowadays the garden is a traffic island so it's hardly peaceful but it was certainly shady and well used by a mixture of strollers, newspaper readers and bench sleepers. The parkie was having a fag as we passed.

Apparently the garden was designed and opened in 1786 on what had been the tree lined avenue, the Alameda del Carmen. It was designed to a Romantic style and when it was remodeled in 1848 it was given a new name in honour of one of the city's notable citizens, Jose Moñino Redondo, Count or Conde de Floridablanca.

We'd never heard of the fellow before but at our next stop, the Hydraulic Museum, his name turned up again as the promoter of the old water mill which had doubled as a flood defence system.

Not Camarón de la Isla

I have lots of Flamenco records. We've been to several Flamenco concerts. I've even read books about it. Sometimes it's a fat bloke and a guitarist, sometimes it's tight flouncy frocks or a long haired chap with high waisted black trousers. Sometimes they dance, sometimes they stay stock still, sometimes there are dozens of people on stage. I have no idea what's good, bad or indifferent though I have personal likes and dislikes. Give me another twenty years and I may work it out.

This evening we went back to el Cortijo, the Brit run bar and restaurant out at Paredon where we saw the World Cup England v USA game. Good evening I thought with a bunch of snacks and a Flamenco troupe of three female dancers and a couple of musicians for just 10€.

The music was pretty lightweight but they put on a good show; an appropriate show for a non specialist audience who would soon have tired of anything heavier.

Oh, and they had Maggie up and dancing.