Quick Trip to the Cold UK

Well I had planned a trip to go and visit my family in the UK, I enjoy going to see everyone but I am getting more and more reluctant to go and suffer the miserable weather. I managed to get a really cheap deal for €50 return, but this actually is not good as it puts into perspective how much your paying for taxis and such to get to the airports and getting home, normally pay 40 Pounds return to get to the airport, so I cannot justify this anymore, so I decided to do it on the cheap, I caught the bus to Malaga and then the airport bus from the bus station. this was easy and very cheap, I managed to get it for about €5, the next problem with going cheap is the luggage allowance, I was wanting to bring back from the UK things i had bought on Amazon.co.uk and also some things I had left from my last trip when i was also weight limited. so I went with only a warm coat some underpants in my pocket and two pairs of socks plus a toothbrush. I made the mistake of also not taking any food for my 3 hour wait in the airport, I last about 2 hours before I went to the bar for a sandwich and an orange juice plus a chocolate bar, it cost me €13, daylight robbery, The flight was OK, they tried to sell me food and perfume and beer and finally lottery tickets to which I declined all. We left a little late and then we hit a headwind and this totally screwed up my itinerary, I missed my connecting bus to chesterfield from the East Midlands airport, I had already accepted that I may not make the bus so my backup plan was asking my brother to pick me up and stay the night, I had planned to see him anyway but this was rather cheeky but as he lives only 10 miles away. He arrived after only 20 minutes or so and we greeted each other and set off, he kept looking round and it was only later he said it was the first time he had ever picked anyone up without luggage, we went to his house and had a cup of tea and then off to bed, it was midnight by now. In the morning i was going to say hello to my sister-in-law, but she had gone to catch the bus very early so I missed her, my brother then offered to take me all the way home as he is now a retired country gentleman and has only kind things to do to fill his time, I really appreciated the lift as it saved me probably 3 hours travelling. I got to my sisters home at 10 and she was with my father getting him ready for the day, being 89 with alzheimer's disease, it is advanced but he can still function basically. So i decided to get item number 1 out of the way,

1, opening 9 months worth of mail, each year when I come back I try and ask all banks and pension companies to only mail me the critical items, not all junk. I managed this in 2 hours, shredding all the old statements.

I went down to see my dad and he looked well but I am sure he didn't recognise who I was, he also looked older which is pretty normal also. I had number 2 to deal with after dinner

2, Checking all my Amazon.com purchases had arrived and were correct, namely all the kids DVD`s were the ones i had ordered, all were present and correct, i was a happy bunny by now

In the afternoon I went to walk to my buddy's new factory which is across town, i took about 30 minutes and arrived to see him pull up in his brand new Ferrari 599, he had some good business transactions and even though he said he was done with buying his silly cars he just couldn`t refuse when the main dealer offered it to him, he is on first order listing for when new cars come into the country, he was a contractor like me until 15 years ago when he had a vision of making a go of being a dealer in instrumentation and he has been far more successful than anyone could ever imagine. He showed me around his new office and his new workshop, he had some new guys who are now building instrument panels for offshore installations.

we planned the night out and I got a lift to his house with his brother who also works in the office along with his son. we went out around 9 PM for a drinking night aorund some of the older seedier bars in Bakewell, a picturesque tourist town in the Derbyshire Dales, most of the locals are farmers and quarry workers and form a very interesting and diverse group with which to make observations of drunken behaviour, I was drinking Rum and Cokes all night as after a summer of being beerless mostly I have almost lost my taste for beer, but the run I was drinking was cheap and ugly tasting but I couldn't bare the idea of going onto beer, I should have drunk Gin & Tonics, when we got back to his house it was attacking the fridge in savage style like we always used to do and ate a lot of cheese if I remember right. I got his sons bedroom for the night as he has finally moved into his own place. In the morning I got the duty of taking some business partners to the airport in his daughters new Alfa Romeo Mio, nice but a tiny engine, I was then using the Satnav to find my buddy at his shooting event, it took some searching and after he sent out the gamekeeper with his land rover to locate me I was there, in amongst the fields and hedgerows standing behind him while he shot the crap out of semi tame birds, it was nice to be out in the fresh air and some sunshine, but I cannot see the point of this so called sport, it is much more interesting going to find rare birds than shoot hand reared and tame released birds. We all left about 6pm and I went home to find my sister and finally drink a couple of cheap beers with her at home, she seems very happy with life and enjoying a busy retirement, she is now an official pensioner but still working full time. We chatted all night long and ate and drank and I started my next important function

3, open 9 months worth of charity magazines, I am still a signed up member of 6 conservation and wildlife organisations and get all the regular mags and updates, this normally take a week to read through, this took 4 days this time, as I only had 6 days anyway.

Sunday was a lazy day, just chilling doing mail and reading my mags. Monday was a day of weighing all my items to take home on the plane as I had a cheap flight which had a hand luggage limit of 10 Kgs I was already at that limit, I was taking all the Amazon stuff plus my multimeter, I wanted to take back some clothes I had left from my previous trip but all I could do was wear them in multiple layers, OK in the UK as it was about 9-11 C only, but for Spain far too warm. In the afternoon I did my next item

4,Visit the Bank and arrange all my normal banking stuff, this can be tricky, trying to deal with your bank when travelling round the world.

Tuesday was a day of rest, but i had arranged for a meal with all the brothers and sister for the evening at a local bar restaurant, it was a nice large place on the highway out of town and as soon as you opened the door there was a large array of spit roasting chickens and I decided that was what i was going to have, it was a delicious meal and I saw my sister-in-law, she looked in the peak of health and had just returned from a holiday in Tunisia, I was very happy to have seen her as I don't get to see them very often and she has had health issues over the last few years, so I was delighted to see her looking so well.

Wednesday was travelling day, I was packing my little bag, and weighing it over and over as I didn't want to pay for excess baggage, I had booked a seat on the express bus to the airport, which left at 12.00am, my sister was going on holiday the following Sunday with my brother and so my dad was going to the local old Folks Home for 3 weeks to have someone to look after him, it was a very sad and moving thing for me as I had never seen that before, he looked lost like a little kid at his first day in school and this is something he has done many times before, the biggest problem with most old folks is they become incontinent and the smell of stale urine is always joked about but when it is your own relative it isn't funny just sad. It was full of decrepit old ladies and i felt very sad for them all, how terrible that the human body so strong to stay alive and brain is totally useless, this is evolution gone mad. I left feeling as though I would never see him again, I have even dreamed of this same thing since I got home, My sister dropped me at the bus station and we said a fond farewell until the next trip, I will be visiting more often now I am closer to the UK.

The flight was uneventful, but as I landed I turned on my phone and it rang immediately and it was My lovely China Latina, telling me we had screwed up with the car keys as she had planned to collect me, I had taken the only working car key with me, so she at the last minute had managed to find a almost non drunk Brit to drive her to the airport. So we at that moment planned to go and buy a second car key, which being chipped is very expensive. but at least it will not be with me when I leave the country again.,

A relatively manic and speedy cheap trip to the cold miserable grey old country.

Fuengirola Zoo, Best Little Zoo In Spain

We used the Sat Nav to find the way into the Zoo, Fuengirola is a strange town as it is a bay below some large cliff ranges and the main road runs along the cliffs, we managed to get lost amongst some large road works and finally went round and round until we spiralled into the road next to the zoo, it is funny that it is actually build on land that surrounds the Bullring, quite ironic isn't it, probably the same folks who own the Bull fighting ring also own the zoo, anyway, not to get into my favourite topic of bulls killing bullfighters, we went to the Zoo as a way to spend a day with the little girl, we went in and found well laid out and wonderful gardens, large trees and lovely looking compounds for the animals, I have a problem with zoo generally as they can never really give enough space to anything larger than a squirrel, even here at what I call a good zoo the larger animals were looking miserable, the chimpanzees were quiet and looking miserable. Apart from that aspect, the bird aviary was very interesting and had a rare Mynah Bird from Bali, it also had fruit bats which freaked out most folks. I really enjoyed the way water was used around all the compounds and it was full of fish, they even had fish eating Alligators from Malaysia, which were huge, and from the glass walls you could see the fish and also the alligators, all very interesting for the kids, as a day out i really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone, the best part was the daily display where they had birds being flown around a small arena, not just birds of prey, they used Toucans and vultures and Hornbills and a small brilliantly coloured jungle fowl, they had wild boar and Porcupines coming in and out of holes around the stage and it had the kids screaming for more and more, quite brilliant, the best part was after we were on the way out , it was a toss up between McDonalds or the restaurant in the zoo, I am not a fan of zoo food, it is usually expensive and not good, but we were all tired and we didn't know where Mcs was so we went to the zoo place, it was buffet day, we could have 3 courses for 10€, so we managed to get a ton of really well cooked and very tasty roasts and soups and deserts, I was in heaven, we went for a walk around the town afterwards and found a really nice little place, but suffering from the crisis, lots of empty shops and some unfinished developments, all along the highways along the coast there are tons of unfinished projects, probably never will get finished, plus all the illegal projects built without permission with corrupt officials turning a blind eye and Mayors taking bribes. They are now being pulled down it is all a sorry sight for all the brits and Germans who bought here with high prices and now cannot sell at all. But life is a bitch and then you die

Selwo Adventura Theme Park - Crappy Place

We went to the Selwo Adventura theme park and it was out of town on the main coastal road and very easy to find, the road up to the park high on the coastal mountains was wide and I was surprised by this, i later found out why, the car park was too small and the road was the over spill car park. the entrance was a nightmare, massive queues and all moving very slow, I hate queues like the plague. we went in and the place seemed pretty nice a long walk down to the first cages and the large lake, but once you arrived at the cages it was a different thing, small cages with miserable looking animals, with untidy not nice looking surroundings for the animals, this was a typical zoo from the Victorian mentality. it was an exhibit, not a breeding centre. we wanted to go around the park so the method was by a large 4 wheel drive truck, just horrible, noisy and stinky, it was a fare ground ride, rushing down hill in a pretty scary way. the hills were incredibly steep and all the compounds in which the animals were staying were totally barren, all the grass had been eaten and the ground was eroding away under the weight of the animals hoofs, it looked desert like, a really sad pathetic place, we arrived at the main camp and went round all the events, the main one was the snake exhibit, it was so poor, no seats, nobody could see anything apart from the kids at the front, poor PA system and just a poor show of 3 snakes.

The next was the bird display as we both like birds, well we couldn't find the display area we walked up and down this pathway and round and round, but nowhere we could see it, at the allotted time we realised that there wasn't a display area, we had 500 people all stuffed into the pathway between the comnpounds, it was just crazy, the birds were being released to fly from above the pathway. The display was the best it could have been with the situation, amazing birds but in the worst possible layout, never could you imagine anything so badly organised, and this whole operation is from Warner brothers USA, to piss poor money making robbery, The elephant compound was OK but all the others were poor and Europes largest aviary was pathetic, the nets overhanging the valley were damaged and all the small birds had escaped leaving only the large birds, some painted storks and Ibis's, it was europes largest empty Aviary. I haven't been in such a poor rip-off for such a long time, I was robbed and got nothing in return to say was good, it is a joke and Warner brothers should be ashamed of it. The zoo in Fuengirola was so much better, tomorrows blog

Tale of Two Theme Parks

Last weekend we went away for a couple of days to the coast, just to make a change and be by the coast as i live about 1 hour inland and up in the mountains, it is my preference but it is away from the beach, the beach is nice for touristy things and shopping. So as i had just come back from working away we decided to go to Gibraltar just to have a look around and then we found a nice little B&B right on the beach in Estapona. The drive down to Gib was uneventful enough apart from the fact we missed the turn off for the coast highway and managed to end up on the toll road, I hate paying for roads. We arrived at the entry road across the airport runway, the access to Gib is across the airport unbelievably. So just at that point i had a funny feeling that we had forgotten passports, yes we had, I had forgotten that you need them to gain entry as it is basically the UK. Also you cannot believe this one, as we drove down we had to have the A/C running in the car as the sun was so hot, it was blazing blue skies. When we arrived to the Gibraltar border, it was friggin' foggy, a giant wall of fog that blotted out the top of the rock, in fact the cloud base was about 10 foot so we saw almost nothing and the wind was also blowing pretty cold, we wanted to have a meal but we tried parking and the parking machine we put 3 Euros in refused to give us a ticket, by this time i was a raging lunatic, I was goose stepping up and down shouting abuse at the ticket machine, I don't think Jenny my wife was amused but after I calmed down we drove back to Estapona and found a small restaurant where we had fish and chips, only problem was it cost $50, far too much for spain but the fish was nice. So after eating far too much we carried on back to find this B&B. I was using my new GPS, just a miraculous piece of technolgy, we drove directly to this guys house, it was this fabulous little house , take a look,

http://www.spanish-vacations.com/

but he wasn't at home so we walked all around the local condominium. It was a wonderfully small scale development, as compared to the ugly giant apartment complexes that have been the norm for the last 30 years, it was only 100 yards from the sea, not really a beach, just a sea wall and lots of pebbles. the next two days we were going to visit the two theme parks i am now going to blog about next.

Life Back in Spain

well I arrived back very tired but as I had been working night shift i wasn't that jet-lagged. Jenny had been telling me that the weather had been cold and rainy, I was very miserable at the thought of coming back to a cool autumnal weather but when I arrived it was roasting hot and got hotter since, in fact it has been so hot that one day when I was knocking a hole in the front wall at the side of the main door to put in a small window, I was feeling dehydrated at lunch time and was just so thirsty, we had been down to the coast to take Emma out to the local parks for the weekend and again it was just roasting hot, so far from being cold and autumnal it is frigging' blazing summer temperatures, even at night the bedrooms are hot and sweltering. I am travelling back to the UK to see my old buddies pick up my christmas Amazon shopping and of course see my sister and brothers. So life for the next weeks may involve working on certain problems with the house, I am looking at changing the metal doors in the house and maybe a few windows, this is to help with the winter cold we have here in spain.

we took out our nice neighbours this weekend for sunday lunch. this was to repay the nice things they have done for us, like giving us food when we had no pots and pans when we were first moving in. and for all the beers and wine they have given us when we have been invited to take an afternoon drink with them, such very nice people, that is Graham and Barbara.

Garlic Roast Chicken, Rabbit stew, Raost Oxtail, and a plate of wood oven roast Pork, really nice.





A nice day on the coast, just roasting again




This is the Pompano Park in central Benalmadina