Trip to Spain, Torrevieja. 7th - 13th December
7th December 2008
Up just before 5am and off to Luton Airport in temperatures as low as –4C. The flight out was uneventful in a very under-filled aircraft. No passport control at all in Alicante airport. Had a bit of confusion because I did not come out where expected but eventually Lee and I were in the same place at the same time. We drove back to Lee’s house and put my delivery of sausages and cheese into the refrigerator. The house looks smaller and the road outside narrower than I had imagined from the photographs. The area behind, which was destined to become a golf course, has now been built over and the view is almost gone except from the roof of the house. The architecture around the town is very varied and very ornate. There is a new motorway a little further back inland but looking at the map I see that it is a detour from Alicante and apparently nobody uses it because of the toll.
The ground floor consists of a large living room, a kitchen, the third bedroom and a shower room. The front door opens out directly from the living room onto a partly covered veranda. On the first floor there are two more bedrooms and a bathroom. Lee uses the smaller bedroom as an office. The larger is at the front of the house and has a big balcony in front of it which is above the front part of the living room. There is a further staircase up to the top of the house where there is an extensive roof area.
After having a look around the house we went down to the centre of town and took photographs of the huge nativity scene and of the public paella.
The flowers outside the church were amazing and I also saw a lot of hibiscus.
We walked along the front and stopped for a beer. After that we came home. A couple of neighbours dropped in for a drink. We sat on the veranda for a while until it became cold and then we moved inside. After they left we changed and went out to have dinner in a restaurant that cooks your food while you wait in a wok.
8th December 2008
Up fairly late and after breakfast we drove to the sea front and had quite a long walk around the headland. There is a well-made path right by the sea wherever there is no beach. We ended up in a marina and stopped for a coffee in the last of the sunshine before it clouded over. We then walked back to the car along a road that followed the coastline one block in from the seafront and we looked at the rather beautiful houses along the way. I photographed various trees and plants including a curious bush with small yellow fruits. When the fruit ripens it bursts, exposing four sticky red seeds. There is hardly anyone at all about but I gather that even in the summer season only about 25% of the houses are occupied at any one time.
We reached the car just as it began to rain and drove home through the drizzle. It was not even a decent downpour. The rain continued throughout the afternoon and we discarded our plan to go into town and watch the procession. At some point there was the sound of fireworks so we went onto Lee’s balcony to watch them. It was cold in the house so I pulled the door shut behind me and Lee pointed out that there was no way to open it from the outside. We were trapped on a first floor balcony without even a phone between us. Luckily Jock, living opposite, came out to see what all the noise was about and we invited him to come and see the show from our vantage point. The front door was not locked so he came up and reached the balcony just as the last firework was dying away. We never did tell him just how much his timely appearance was appreciated but Lee poured him a drink in silent appreciation.
I managed to get Lee’s English-Spanish vocabulary program working and we played with that for some time. We also spent a long time discussing the best way to reduce the heat loss up the stairwell. The stairs go up behind a dividing wall with two archways in it. One reaches the floor and the other forms an open window into the stairwell. The openness is a great advantage in the summer but not in the cold weather.
9th December 2008
After breakfast Lee received a phone call from Jock asking to be picked up from the other side of town. He had taken his car in to be serviced and the garage could not do it while he waited. Having brought him home we went out to the supermarket for a few supplies then I made some sandwiches from a stick of French bread and we set off for the nearest range of mountains.
Lee thought I was mad to want to see them but on the approach to Alicante by air I had seen massive peaks and sheer deep valleys and I wanted to see the same again from closer to. The nearest point of high ground appeared to be to the northeast. For an objective I selected a road that appeared to lead to a hermitage called Ermita de Sant Cayetano. We had some difficulty getting through Orihuela and at one point we found ourselves heading back to Torrevieja again. Our second try was more successful and after Granja we then turned off the main road and past Virgen del Camino. We wound our way along little back lanes past endless streams of fruit trees. Mostly they were oranges, lemons and tangerines but there were also some pomegranates. We stopped at one point to pick some oranges from the side of the road. Finally we reached a crossroads where I had expected to turn right. A ‘no entry’ sign barred that road, and the road ahead involved crossing a rickety concrete bridge and going immediately on to an unmade road. To turn left would have required us to cross a long, narrow viaduct. That would have taken us in entirely the wrong direction and in any case the viaduct was more than Lee was prepared to risk.
We decided to eat our sandwiches at the crossroad before reviewing the options. A substantial canal flowed from west to east alongside the road we wanted to follow and to our right there was a field of fig trees. They were devoid of leaves from which I deduce that this is not the right time for figs in southern Spain. The sun shone here, although it had been overcast when we left Torrevieja, and the peace was absolute. No sooner had we started our sandwiches than a van approached us from the East and it turned down the road we had come from. Next a couple of vehicles came over the viaduct and they drove straight past the no entry sign. By the time we had finished eating we had seen a steady trickle of traffic in every direction except over the rickety bridge. The traffic included several lorries laden with oranges. We decided to take our chances by driving along the ‘no entry’ road and we passed several gangs of men picking and crating oranges. None of them took the slightest interest in us. Eventually we reached a crossroad on the minor highway, the CV873, from Albatera to Hondon de los Frailes. We wanted to continue ahead but our way was barred not only by another ‘no entry’ sign but also with a pair of massive concrete blocks and a chain. The highway mounted to the left towards a pass and seemed to promise good views so we took that road and stopped a couple of times to take photographs.
When we reached the pass I found an intriguing fingerpost with one arm pointing to Hondon de los Frailes, 2.5 km away and another to Rincon del Moreno, 3450 km away! I guess it is intended for walkers because it was small and alongside a path a few metres away from the road. It is labelled the P.R.V 255. (Oh, what a prat I am. Of course the comma is the Spanish equivalent of a decimal point and the village was actually 3.5 Km away!) Lee stopped for a smoke while I climbed a hillock nearby and was rewarded with a wonderful panoramic view of the valley behind as far as Torrevieja and another in front of me with the town of Hondon in the foreground.
We turned back and I was determined to make one more attempt to reach the Ermita. There appeared to be a side road to it just before the town of Albatera but we did not find it so we abandoned the attempt and headed for home. As we returned we drove past the Sierra del Callosa, a jagged mountain which towers over Granja and the surrounding flat countryside.
We met the new Swedish neighbour who is from Gothenburg. He has rented the house opposite for six months. His grey hair was neatly plaited into a ponytail reaching to his shoulder blades. Lee quickly established that this man rides a Harley Davidson. He had previously lived for some time in Sitges. I was also introduced to one of the other neighbours who is a terrible bore. Lee teases him unceasingly to no effect. Then Adam, a Polish builder, dropped by and had a beer as we tasted the ‘Bonka’ coffee we had bought that morning. Lee encouraged him to talk to me in Spanish and I could follow quite a lot of the monologue but I did not manage to make many replies. He is something of a linguist with English, Polish, Spanish and Russian at his command. He talked about a problem he has with the plumbing in a client’s house where the hot water only reaches the taps in the top floor of the house.
In the evening we walked down to a local bar. There was a lot of discussion with the owner and his partner about a denunciation process that allows anyone to complain anonymously about a bar. The local authorities had received over 100 denunciations recently about various bars in the town and they have decided to refuse to accept any more. It all sounds rather like a witch-hunt and the procedure might well be being used as part of a trade war between the bars. The owner explained how business had fallen away this year. He does not seem to have been troubled by ‘denuncias’ but he does not have much hope for the future of the business in the present economic climate. He is a colourful character with one leg and an ear that looks as though it has been bitten off.
We returned to the house for a curry and then watched a few minutes of the film “The Pirates of the Caribbean” on Lee’s large TV.
10th December 2008
The Swedish neighbour had asked about the best place to get an economical connection to the internet so Lee took him down to a place in the town and I came for the ride. Overnight it had become much more windy and it was cold and cloudy. Once the business had been concluded we dropped him off home and drove to a neighbouring village for a look at the market. It would put the Farmer’s market in Hatfield to shame in terms of size. Stalls were spread around practically the whole village selling food, clothes and furnishings. I bought some bananas, some Spanish sausage and some dried figs and nuts. Once we had looked right round the market we carried on to another village where we visited a very British bar. The owners were English and served English food. I suspect all their customers would be English too: certainly the ones we saw in there all were. I am not surprised by the English influence in Torrevieja but this bar is in a small village some way inland. As we drove back to Torrevieja, we saw many more gangs picking the citrus fruit. Presumably the harvest of oranges and tangerines will be over in another couple of weeks. These trees look very green, unlike the pomegranate trees, which have almost mo leaves on them by now. We also passed some orchards filled with almond trees. They are also bare. We stopped in a local bar for a lunch of tapas and I chatted to an Englishman who used to own a concrete yacht.
In the evening Lee cooked a dish of chicken and rice and we watched the rest of the film. The weather improved during the course of the day and it became quite sunny. By night-time the sky was entirely clear. It is difficult to see the stars, though, because of the very bright streetlights.
11th December 2008
Lee was keen for me to see some more of the countryside so today we drove down to Los Alcazares, a town on the Mar Menor. First, though, we cut sandwiches and made up a packed lunch. Then it was a quick run down the motorway. This cuts out the need to weave through Torrevieja but it seems to be relatively expensive. Los Alcazares was absolutely deserted. We parked the car near to the marina and strolled northwards for about a mile. I took my shoes off, rolled up my trousers and paddled in the surf looking very ‘English tourist’ with only the handkerchief knotted at the corners on my head to perfect the picture. The water was cold but not unbearably so. The sea here is sheltered by the ring of reef and it was incredibly calm. The outer ring of the reef in the distance is apparently dotted with hotels along almost its whole length of several miles.
After a while we stopped in a bar for a coffee. I fancied a fresh orange juice and rehearsed the request in Spanish but once we were in the bar it became clear that the proprietor was more likely to speak no Spanish than no English. Even though this town has more of a real Spanish feel than Torrevieja does, the majority of people we saw were English. We strolled on a bit further passing a cluster of bronze statues consisting of a very old fisherman being followed by two mermaids on sea horses. Someone had decorated it with a scrap of orange fishing net. The sea front comes to something of a point here and there is a very tall lifeguard look out post.
We cut in from the sea front and walked back to the car along the main street. All the shops were closed and we hardly saw a soul all the way along. The one church we passed was also closed. On the front we had been walking in the full sun but here, behind the first row of buildings we were shaded and the wind whipped round the corners of every building so it was much colder. We arrived back at the car and took out our picnic which we ate in front of the marina. The shore shelves very slowly so we were mostly looking at small flat-bottomed motorboats and sailing dinghies. Lunch was rounded off with oranges and this time I brought a knife and tissues and water was available to wash our hands afterwards.
So far the whole area has been remarkable for the total absence of trees other than those in neat rows in the orchards. There is the occasional palm or decorative Norfolk Island Pine but mostly the landscape is barren. Up in the hills the terrain is covered by scrubby thyme and rosemary. After lunch we drove down to the south end of the Mar Menor and here we arrived at the most naturally fertile area I have seen so far. We drove through a couple of golf courses and into a town, Portman, which was clearly once the centre of a mining and refining process. On the hillside there was a very tall chimney with a considerable kink in the middle of it. I tried to climb up the hillside to the base of the chimney but the cactuses were a deterrent since I was only wearing sandals. There are also large factory buildings on the hillside and we wondered what was being processed. The factory has the remains of several tall iron chimneys with a bulge in the middle. This bulge is designed to be reached routinely for some reason. Perhaps it could be some kind of filter. At one end of the town there was what must have been a very substantial dock but now it is entirely silted up and the warehouse alongside it has been razed to the ground.
At the other end of the town there is a marina. The beach here consists of jet-black sand and rocks. I asked a couple of old men with a rather expensive camera if they spoke English or French but they both looked at me very suspiciously and shook their heads. I then questioned a youngster in my best Spanish. He seemed to think that the mining was for lead and zinc. I don’t know if they naturally occur together.
The town as a whole clearly has a significant population but the factories and refineries are now derelict and the rest of the town has a very depressed appearance.
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PORTMAN. Information on the Internet.http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S-CKbEMAvrI and
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cBqPQV-AS9c&NR=1 and
http://www.lamangadreams.co.uk/properties/portman_guns.asp and
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GrbYrhZSid4&feature=related
Tons of toxic substances from a mine were spilled from the middle of 2oth century to 1988 over a Mediterranean bay of a great natural value. The mine had been there from ancient Rome and the balance with nature remained inalterable. This video filmed by the Spanish architect Carlos Asensio-Wandosell shows the damaged ecosystem, where in the future will be a golf club and a residential complex, much typical of the spoilt Spanish coast.
There is lots more about it on YouTube. See also:
http://alkaidedicionesmedioambiente.blogspot.com/2008/10/tha-portman-bay-spain.html
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After spending some time in speculation we returned home and tidied up for an evening at a local bar to listen to a band that Lee recommended. First, though we had a curry in a restaurant he has used before. The food was good but the only other two customers left just as we arrived so it was a quiet meal. The restaurant and bar are in one of four commercial centres in the outskirts of the town. This one has at least 15 restaurants that were open and several more that have closed down but the number of diners cannot have averaged more than 6 per restaurant and some were totally empty.
After eating we went down to the Lansdowne. It looks very much like an Irish pub. We ordered beer (Estrella lager) and sat on tall bar stools with a barrel in front of us for a table. The members of the band, the ‘Plan B’, were setting up their instruments for a gig that was scheduled to start at 9:30 and there was something of a buzz in the room. The owner is a man in his 40’s or 50’s and he apparently knew most of the customers. He is assisted by a young barman who spent quite a lot of time serving drinks to the customers at their tables. The three musicians also knew many of the customers.
Almost exactly on time the three musicians took their places in front of microphone, drum kit and keyboard and struck up. The lead singer plays the classical and electric guitar. He is quite short and very spare. I gather he is about 60 but he has the boundless energy of a man in his 20’s. I recognised much of the music, including numbers such as ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ and ‘Black is Black’. Many of them were played completely straight but the three have worked together for a long time and some pieces started with one tune then segued to something completely different, the process being repeated several times before they returned to the original. At one point the man on the keyboard commenced with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and later with the fourth movement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony.
After some time the guitarist, the leader and vocalist of the three, switched to the classical guitar. His skill with either is consummate and he is a masterful performer. His vocals were not up to the same standard but whether this was because of his voice or the sound system was hard to tell.
During the evening the audience swelled to about 40. Just after the performance started an elderly couple arrived and were shown to seats right in front of the stage. Lee tells me that they are regulars and they were welcomed by the bandleader at the end of the number after they arrived. Later a group of 5 middle-aged women came in. They may have been on a hen night and were clearly enjoying themselves a great deal. Lee said that he also saw the couple who had been dining in our restaurant. One man wandered around like a visitor at an art gallery, occasionally standing right in front of me before moving to a different vantage point. At one point he clearly received a telephone call and tried to talk and listen over the noise before turning his mobile towards the performers for a couple of minutes. He reminded me of Mr Bean. The young barman did an excellent job of keeping the drinks flowing: The tiniest signal was enough to catch is eye.
A guest accompanied the band on his mouth organ for a couple of numbers. They have included them on their latest CD. He was good but it seemed to me he was not up to the standard of the regulars. After about two hours of continuous performance the drummer gave up his place to the bar owner. He played a couple of numbers and his performance was right up to the same standard. Finally the performance finished a little after midnight and we made our way hack to the house.
12th December 2008
We had plans to do some shopping but Lee received a call from someone who had a problem with his hot water system. Some weeks earlier Lee had assisted the Polish builder, Adam, with a bit of tricky plumbing. The house owner called and asked for Lee’s advice so he offered to drop in for a look on the way to the shops. On the way Lee told me that when they first met he held out his hand to Lee and said, “Boo”. Lee’s reply was “You will have to do better than that if you want to make me jump,” but it transpired that that ‘Boo’ (spelling uncertain) is his name. Of course we were aware of a problem because of Adam’s visit on Tuesday but our understanding was that the water was running out cold from the hot taps downstairs. We just assumed that Adam had not let it flow for long enough. When Lee investigated the problem it transpired that the hot water was not flowing at all. He expressed great concern about tampering with the stopcock in the bathroom upstairs because it was 20 years old and embedded in the wall. However he did manage to free it and Mr Boo was overjoyed. Meanwhile I took photographs of the plants in the garden, including a ‘nispero’ (loquat) tree in flower, and chatted to him so the time passed very enjoyably.
We then went down to the local Carrefour and I bought various bits to take home for Christmas. After that we drove back to the centre of town and walked the length of the pier. We then wandered into town and listened to the carol service in the church for a little while before returning home to tidy up for supper. We demolished a plate of cod and chips then set out to another bar for a country and western recital. Nobody turned up to play and the bar was not very inspiring anyway so we went home and I transferred my photos to Lee’s memory stick.
13th December 2008
I packed and then we sat in the sun on the veranda chatting until it was time to leave for the airport. The plane was about 30 minutes late leaving so we took off in the dark which was a shame because I had a good window seat. However we soon entered the clouds and I read until we landed. It was raining steadily. Rob picked me up and I dropped him off at Hatfield station.
