A safe and pleasant journey to Spain

I arrived in Spain Wednesday evening after a pleasant and completely trouble-free two-leg flight from Inverness; the flight down to Bristol left on time and we landed about 10 minutes early. I'd never been to Bristol airport before; it is busier than Inverness, but not bigger. Check-in for the Murcia flight was done within 10 minutes of me collecting my baggage (half an hour before check-in for the MJV flight was due to open officially) and I then proceeded straight through immigration and customs. Although it has many more cafes and restaurants than Inverness (most places do) it is still quite a small airport and was not at all busy so I had a relaxing lunch in one of the upper eating areas. The flight took off on time, or shortly ahead of time and we touched down in San Javier 15-20 minutes early. I was able to pick up the key for the hire car about five minutes after entering the terminal, well before I collected my luggage and that only took a further 10-15 minutes, too, so within about 20 minutes of entering the terminal I was heading for the car. I now know the routes from San Javier to Mazarrón pretty well so did not bother with SatNav (I still feel more comfortable using it to/from Alicante airport though) and used the 'toll-free' route described in my website here. It barely took the 55 minutes I mention as the estimated time for this journey as the roads were not at all busy.

The only 'excitement' on the trip was that coming off the A30 (Cartagena-Murcia) autovia to join the RM-2 heading for Alhama de Murcia, there was a big police presence before the exit ramp warning people to slow down and at the 'glorieta' (roundabout) over the A30 all cars were being slowed down almost to a standstill with torches shone into every car. Obviously the police were looking for one or more specific individuals - however, I was not one of them quite obviously (I can only assume I was the 'wrong colour') so I was waved on.

Oh yes, the next morning (Thursday) I did the usual grocery shop - Mercadona (Puerto de Mazarrón) - and on the sail-boat roundabout most cars were being stopped and asked to show driving licences. All very polite and once he had taken a look at mine I was waved on. Moral of that story - car your driving licence and ID/Passport at all times (I wasn't asked for the latter though, as my licence already has a photo of course).

Now to the really important stuff! The lady who looks after my house (holds keys, etc) had kindly visited earlier in the evening before my arrival to switch on a light, the heating and plug in the immersion heater - so I had hot water to take a wash and of course for a shower the following morning. Life always looks better after a hot shower! The electricity problems here at MCC are not over yet, of course, but for the moment it works. Let's see what happens next week when we go over to direct funding (through the CoO) of diesel for the generators - fingers crossed!

Nairn to Spain (via the Netherlands)

I'm away for about a month beginning Wednesday, intially to the Netherlands for some family celebrations (birthdays and an anniversary), then at the beginning of next week on to Spain, where I'll be until early September. For only the second time since I moved to Nairn from Culloden (near Inverness) in 2000, I shall be away during the Nairn Highland Games weekend, so hope that this year there will be better weather here than there was (especially) two years ago and last year, too, when it wasn't much better (the last occasion I took photographs was in August 2005, and I got some reasonably OK photographs in 2004, too).

Anyway, the theme of this post is 'Nairn to Spain', so here are some photographs of the two places I call 'home':

'Chez moi' in Nairn - Click on any image to see an enlargement -

Mi casa en España - Click on any image to see an enlargement -

I shall be taking a laptop with me, so whilst there may be a 'hiatus' until next Tuesday, until after I've arrived in Spain from the Netherlands, after that I should be able to resume my usual [recent] level of sporadic posting. However, I have quite a lot of things to do today before I can contenplate getting on that 'plane early tomorrow [Wednesday] morning ...

(PS/ Whilst the time-stamp for this posting is late on Monday evening, it was in fact published early on Tuesday, the delay as a result of a software 'glitch' when uploading images to the Blogger host, resolved since I went to bed it seems)

Bill signs-off from Mazarron - tomorrow my journey home to Scotland begins

I shall be departing Mazarron tomorrow morning to begin my journey back to Scotland, which I am scheduled to reach on Tuesday 6th May after having driven north through Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, spending some nights in hotels, others with friends and/or family.

Earlier today I recorded a couple viedos of my preparations for my final lunch in the house here; the last videos I uploaded (see here) had music tracks, but no spoken content from me and someone made a comment that he would prefer to hear me talk, rather than have music - so you are duly warned, that is what you get in these latest videos! Whilst preparing lunch I run through my itinerary for the next 10 or so days in some detail - I hope you find it informative even if not precisely 'enjoyable'; I'm no professional as you will readily observe!

In the first video I prepare a salad and provide a running commentary of the food I am preparing and the itinerary I shall be folowing for the first several days of my journey to Scotland (as with the lunch in the earlier videos, although I prepare the salad first, I eat it after what you will see me preparing in the second video):



In the next video I'm preparing some salchichon (a little like a sliced chorizo sausage) and continuing my narrative of the rest of my journey back to Nairn:



I'll be in Nairn until the first week of August, then flying to the Netherlands for a party, then flying on to Mazarron for several weeks until early September. No doubt there'll be enough to pique my interest in doing some blog posts during the time I'm back in Scotland. Probably I'll manage to do a few blog posts during my journey home, assuming the hotel wi-fi is working. However, until then, this is Bill signing of from Mazarron for the present ...

Bill does lunch

Strictly for YouTube addicts! I thought I would share with readers the sight of me preparing my lunch earlier today. Usually lunch for me, even when I'm in Scotland on a cold winter day, is cold - either cold meats or fish, accompanied by a mixed salad. What I decided to have today was some Serrano ham (a Spanish dry-cured ham) and my usual salad. I always prepare the salad first, then the meat/fish, but I always eat the meat/fish first then the salad; this order of eating food dates back a long way for me, really from when I lived in Djibouti during the 1970s - it was then that I came across the French custom of eating a small green salad after the main course at formal meals/banquets, also of the custom of following this with cheese before serving any pudding or dessert; I came to realise how much better this is for the digestion so now always eat at home this way, specially when I'm on my own. Another peculiarity of my eating habits is that I almost never mix different kinds of food on the same plate, a custom I learned from my amah when I lived in Hong Kong for the first time in the early 1980s; what this means, for example, is that if I am having steak accompanied by, say, green beans and courgettes (I never eat potatoes, rice or pasta), I will first eat the steak on its own on a properly warmed plate with one set of cutlery, after that I will eat, say, the green beans on another warmed plate with fresh cutlery, finally I will eat the courgettes, or whatever other green vegetable I am having, on a third warmed plate with a further set of clean cutlery. This prevents flavours being mixed; it also slows down considerably the speed at which I eat - again I believe this is good for the digestion. Of course all this uses up a lot of crockery and cutlery, but that's what dish-washers are for, in my view.

Anyway, with that preamble I thought I'd share with you part of my preparations for lunch today. The first dish I prepared was a mixed salad (romaine lettuce, rocket, celery, radish and cucumber, sprinkled with extra virgin olive oil, low sodium salt and garnished with parsley), to be eaten following the main course, prepared next. Here's the salad preparations under way, accompanied by 1980s/1990s French band Gold singing 'Josiane':



After this I set about preparing the main course, Serrano ham. Six or seven slices of thinly-cut ham, a sliced pepinillo (a large sweet-pickled gherkin) and some Greek-style black olives, all sprinkled with extra virgin olive oil and finished with freshly-ground black pepper. During the preparation of this dish I'm having an aperitif of a small glass of chilled fino (dry sherry). Accompanying this the music is again by Gold, this time singing 'Plus près des étoiles'. Lunch itself was accompanied by a glass of local red wine. Bill at pleasurable work:



If I do any more videos, I'll try and getting the lighting a bit better. Oh, other good news today - I finally got a working electric door bell fitted this afternoon. This has been for many weeks the remaining item on the 'snags' list I gave to the builder's office months ago and despite regular visits to remind them about this (the young lady there is very pleasant, always smiling, but only intermittently effective) the fault had not been repaired. I therefore decided a few days ago that I was fed up waiting and would get it done independently (at my cost) - the same electrician who fitted my lights came and did the job in about ten minutes. Luckily the wiring from the bell-push at the gate to the bell was intact, but the bell itself seems to be kaput so has been replaced with a much better type of bell.

It is an absolutely lovely evening here today - very windy, but sunny and warm (probably about 22 or 23 degC, down from the 25 degC it got up to earlier in the afternoon); better than yesterday when it was warm, overcast and sultry in the afternoon - until it started to rain. I was out on a lengthy walk when that happened so I spent the next hour walking back in the rain, getting thoroughly soaked with rain which was a little cool if not precisely cold - a change of clothing when I got home sorted that out!

PS/ I should clarify that I have been thinking of doing some YouTube podcast-style uploads here for some weeks, but more in the style of the audio comment-style podcasts I did in this blog a few years ago. I hadn't got around to doing that unfortunately. However, a few days ago one of my recent regular blog-reads, the very cute, gay and witty London Preppy, started to do a series of videos of his day-to-day mundane existence, the first of which showed a rear view of him doing some ironing - of course his torso, and his bottom(!) is much more eye-candy material than mine, but that's where the idea came from for my video efforts today.

Gearing up for my departure for Spain

At the end of this month I shall be departing Nairn (a little town on the Moray coast of Scotland, just east of Inverness) and beginning my journey to Mazarron, where I hope to arrive about 126 hours later. First will be a three or so hour drive down to Rosyth, the ferry-port on the Fife shore just north of Edinburgh, where I will board the Superfast ferry for Zeebrugge. With luck, assuming we arrive on time (weather permitting - last year we arrived a couple of hours late), I will be driving out of the port there soon after midday on Wednesday 30th.

My first overnight stop will be in Orléans, about an hour south of Paris. The whole journey, which will take me around part of the Bd Périphérique in Paris (a road I haven't had the 'pleasure' of driving on since I ended my 4-year sojourn there in 1988!), hopefully missing the worst of the early-evening traffic. I've been to Orléans only once before, a Sunday lunch destination on one occasion when I lived in Paris, although I have toured parts of the Loire region a few times as well (to visit the mediaeval castles and of course sample the wine).

The next day will take me from l'Aquitaine (the French A10 motorway linking Paris to Bordeaux) onto the A71 (l'Arverne - see a website about the names given to French motorways here) in the direction of Clermont-Ferrand, a city I've not been to before (and indeed will only transit this time). It is, however, the home of the ubiquitous Michelin company. Then it will be onto the A75 (la Méridienne) and my destination for the night, Millau, because I've wanted to cross the Viaduc de Millau, the spectacular bridge across the Tarn valley designed by Sir Norman Foster, ever since it was opened at the end of 2004.

My third day out from Zeebrugge will take me into Spain, where I'll spend my first night in a place called Castelldefels, just south of Barcelona; although I've been to Barcelona before (I drove through it earlier this year and did the 'tourist thing' there some years ago) and must have passed through Castelldefels before on the train on the way to/from Sitges (where I have holidayed before), I've not actually visited it yet.

The following day will take me farther down the AP-7 motorway to the city and region of Valencia where I'll spend the final night before arriving at my destination near Mazarron in the Murcia region.

I'll be writing some more about my pre-departure preparations (already done and to do) in the course of the next few days and weeks.