Mud, mud, not so glorious mud

"Costa del Cranes" as it´s affectionately known by some. The Costa del Sol seems like one big building site these days, particularly where we are in Manilva. There are cranes everywhere, lorries taking rubble away and whilst the sun is shining it means that we have a generous amount of dust flying around.

But when it rains (like it has done for the past two weeks) all that generous dust turns into even more generous mud. As I´m not a hippo (although going by my ever expanding wasteline I could be mistaken for one) mud isn´t something I relish.

Seeing as the town hall haven´t quite finished our roads yet (by a long way) and we´re literally surrounded by building sites I´m looking forward to more wet weather during the winter.

If only I was an "Animagous" and could transform myself into a hippo....

Rainy San Pedro Fair

Most of you are probably aware that here in the South of Spain the Spanish love their "ferias" (fairs). Most of the main towns hold them every year and to be honest their great fun, for both kids and adults.

Most of the ferias are held in the summer months so you´re pretty much guaranteed decent whether even at night to enjoy them. But one town on the Costa del Sol has always held it´s feria in the middle of October, San Pedro de Alcantara. San Pedro is the town just before Marbella whetravelingng in the Malaga direction.

The interesting thing with the San Pedro fair is that you are guaranteed one thing.....rain! Every year when the San Pedro feria is on it rains for the entire week. It has for the previous 2 years and also this year. The feria was this week and we´ve had an appalling week in terms of rain.

But any mention of changing the date of the feria to maybe a week before or after the usual "rainy" week is dismissed by any San Pedro resident. We´ve yet to check out the San Pedro feria...maybe next year it won´t be so wet...but I bet you anything it will be....50 Euros anyone?

A taste of England

A friend of ours recently told us of a good place in Sabinillas to go for a brilliant Sunday lunch. I'm not one to pine over the things we miss from UK but the thought of a nice British roasted lunch was too much to cope with so we decided to trot down to Fox's restaurant and check it out.

Wow! That has to be one of the best Sunday lunches we've ever had. The chef was an absolute star in not disappointing us at all with our first Sunday roast in 2 years. It was excellent and I highly recommend this place. Great food and great service.

We didn't have the starter but for the four of us (2 adults 2 kids) it all came to a very reasonable 42.50 Euros and that included desserts. Personally I think that's a bargain espcially considering how stuffed we were at the end which shows just how good the portions are.

So now you know where we'll be next Sunday too!

Schumacher's last test at Jerez

Thursday was a holiday here but some unfortunate people still had to work...Formula 1 drivers! They have such a tough job (yeah right) and a few of us thought we should go and "support" them during testing at Jerez on Thursday.

Actually, the real reason we went was to see Michael Schumacher carry out his last ever Ferrari testing programme before his last ever Formula 1 race in Brazil next week. It was just too goo too miss and with an entrance fee of just 3 Euros (why do they even bother charging) it was as a good friend of mine would say..." a no brainer".

I actually went up in a friend's Ferrari F355 (don't often get the chance) so we cruised up to the Jerez circuit in style. We actually got mobbed when we got there as everyone wanted to see and hear the car!

Once inside the circuit it was great to hear the cars (if you've never heard one then you have to put it on your list of things to do before you die) and see Schuey do his laps and blitz everyone else. There were loads of people there as it was a holiday in Spain so it was a great atmosphere at the circuit.

I've uploaded a short video which you can watch of the testing:

Schumacher's last F1 test for Ferrari in Jerez

Just listen to that Ferrari...there's just nothing like it!

Searching for Spanish property

I noticed this week that kyero.com have launched their new website. I have to say that I think their new site looks terrific. They've got some neat little touches around the site. It looks great, there are over 70000 properties to search through there and I think they have really further enhanced their reputation as the authority site for Spanish property. Take a look if you don't believe me....

I also saw on the Kyero news page that they had a link to a free pdf download e-book entitled "The cave owners manual". It's been produced by Spanish Inland Properties and if you're into your Spanish cave houses or are thinking of buying one of these quirky dwellings then it defintely makes a good read. Click here if you want to download the pdf e-book.

We're still beaching it

Another glorious day here...of course...that's why we moved here! We haven't been to the beach for the past 3 to 4 weeks as we've been doing some travelling at the weekends lately instead, as the temperatures are much more comfortable now.

But we decided to have a lazy day and set off to our favourite beach at Torreguadiaro today for lunch, sun, sea and sleep! It was great. This time of year is ideal, it's simply the perfect temperature to do anything in. The beaches are great now too as there are hardly any tourists so the beaches are quiet all day long.

But even though it was nice and hot in the sun the sea was absolutely freezing..brrrr. It's one of those "jump in jump out" scenarios. Saying that the water was sparky clean and clear and we even did a spot of fishing with our nets...although we didn't catch anything apart from an impossibly ugly 6 inch "sea slug". I don't really know what it was but it certainly was ugly.

So we had a really nice peaceful day at the beach today (even managed to get burnt...bit silly really). Hopefully do the same again next weekend.

Off to UK for Christmas shopping

If you've ever spent a Christmas in Spain you'll know that it really lacks the buzz that you get in the UK at that time of year. The Spansh don't really celebrate the 25th of December for Christmas, they celebrate the 3 Kings on the 6th of January, so there is more buzz around that time...but still no match to UK standards!

It may seem a bit early to start talking about Christmas but I'm sure in UK they are already starting to sell "Christmasy" things in the shops. Here there is no sign that Christmas is just over two months away.

Our kids are nearly 5 and last year was the first year that they truly started getting really excited about Christmas. This year I'm sure they'll be even more excited about it. So we've decided to jet off to London for a week in December to do all our Christmas shopping and absorb some of that great "commercial" Christmas feeling that we so lack here. I'm not one for all the religious stuff about Christmas, it's just such an amazing time of year for kids or for you if you have kids (I feel like a kid again around Christmas time...it's great!). But Christmas shopping in Spain leaves a lot to be desired so London it is then!

Cheap flights to Spain

I recorded a video recently about a useful website for finding low cost airlines called Low Cost Airline Guide. I like this tool because it's just so easy to use and so effective. The only problem with it is that it doesn't report back to you about the latest/ lowest prices.

After we emiled our members about this video Bob from Andalucia Properties kindly told me about another useful website which does something similar to Low Cost Airline Guide but also includes live pricing! It's called www.skyscanner.net. I've checked this website out and it really is very good. I think the two site actually complement eachother quite well.

Thanks Bob.

Community meeting went well

Since we've been living here we've had 4 community meetings. The first three were totally disastrous but yesterday's, I have to say, went really well.

There was no shouting, fighting, kicking of chairs or any of the standard outbursts typical of our meetings. Everyone was incredibly calm, relaxed and agreeable. And I'm so glad as it was my first meeting as president!

Going on past performance it should have been a nightmare but in the end everyone agreed to everything that we put forward so I was really delighted with the outcome.

But there's still a lot to do...so many issues to sort out. But it's nice to think that finally we may actually we working together as a community instead of trying to just kill one another. Roll on the next meeting!

Beautiful Grazalema

What an amazing weekend we just had. We paid a visit to what has been voted one of the most beautiful towns in Spain, Grazalema.

Grazalema is located just a few minutes away from Ronda in the gorgeous "Serania de Grazalema" natural park. The village is just stunning and immaculately kept with some breathtaking views. We knew Grazalema was going to be special but we just didn't realise how special it is. You just have to see this place. It's not huge by any means, in fact it's actually quite a small village, but there are many established walks that you can take around the mountains and breathe in the super clean fresh mountain air.



We were lucky to have met up in Grazalema, with Maria de Castro, who is the lawyer who often contributes to our newsletter, as her family is originally from the village. Maria just happened to be there this weekend too. She took us to an excellent restaurant just off the main "Plaza de Espana" square in an area known locally as "Puerto Banus" (as there's more than one restaurant in that area!!).



So we had a long look around this prettiest of villages before heading off to our hotel.

Susan had booked us into a hotel called El Horcajo. I don't think at the time she really realised where this hotel actually was. You see, after leaving the village we spent the next hour just trying to find the hotel. We had no idea that it was going to be in the middle of nowhere with few signs pointing to it. But what a hotel! It's smack bang in the middle of the mountains, totally rural. It's a 170 year old country house that's been converted into an hotel. We just couldn't have wished for a more perfect location.

The scenery around the hotel is just amazing, the air is just so fresh, it's a beautiful place. The kids loved it. The rooms are more like small townhouses all next to each other.

If you're in the area you really should consider this hotel. It's really something else. For the four of us, including a lovely dinner, the bill came to 160 Euros for the night's stay. More than worth it in my opinion. It's is quite awkward to find so make sure you really do try and get the best directions to it and take the phone number of the hotel in case you get lost. Also, it was interesting to note that there were no Brits at the hotel, they were mainly French and German.

The next morning we headed off taking a long journey back home. We took a very scenic route (read winding and long) through various towns. We first came to Zahara de la Sierra which is another stunning village overlooking a huge beautiful lake. Totally breathtaking.



We then went on to the town of Ubrique which is famous for it's leather. There are many factories manufacturing leather goods in Ubrique and no woman there is seen without her leather handbag! To be honest, after the delights of Grazalema and Zahara de la Sierra, we we're overly impressed with Ubrique. It looks much less un-cared for and generally just much more industrialised. So off we went again.

We stopped for lunch at a venta in Cortes de la Frontera. It was nice but did actually give us a bad tummy afterwards! Cortes is a nice village with more stunning views. We didn't stop there for long as we made our way back to Manilva via Gaucin.

So, what a great weekend it really was. We just saw so much, took in the fresh mountain air and enjoyed every minute of it. We're thinking of going back to the El Horcajo hotel in the summer as they have a pool there and the setting is just of total relaxation...and we can visit Grazalema again!