The Last two weeks in Spain

Here the weather has turned from roasting summer to cool blasting winds from the north, I have even had to put on long trousers. When I got back we have been preparing things for the building work on the third floor extension, talking to the builders and trying to decide how to do the stairs up to it, we have decided to make a spiral staircase as it takes up much less room and looks prettier, but is more expensive. We have been travelling about to enjoy what was left of the summer weather. We decided to walk up the old hermitage site in a local town called Archidona, the views are fantastic from up there and the weather was brilliant, you can probably see for about 50 Kms, and with the clear blue skies it is so nice, we even took a small Picnic to make an event of it with the little girl, they get so easily bored, also even at the end of October the butterflies were playing around on the top of this hill, I think the altitude is about 5-6,000 feet, so when the night draws in you can feel the night air coming in fresh, little did we know the weather was about to turn,

The surrounding Olive groves




More Olive Groves, there are a lot in spain




Looking along the mountains




Great Views from up Here




The King of the Castle




We had to wait until the next weekend to go out for another event, being away for so much of the time, I had forgotten how hard it is to do anything with the little girl at school, I am the proxy English teacher, she can talk perfect North Derbyshire English but she cannot read it very well, but surprisingly after three weeks of intensive work she is connecting the written word to what she already knows, she will be reading Harry Potter within a few weeks I hope.

So this last weekend we went out for a drive through the Sierra Nevadas Mountains along the southern coastal region: We live about 100 miles from Grenada which is ancient capitol of the Moorish Arab Empire than ruled this part of Spain for 800 years. So the area is dotted with old fortified towns, all the houses are clustered together, this mentality still continues today, even my little town all the houses are side by side, pretty but no gardens, not that you can grow much here in this semi desert.

The town we went to was called Alhama De Grenada, it had a lovely town square and a fortified walled house by the square, it was teetering on the top of a cliff overlooking a large river, the houses were mainly very ugly and there were even some falling down ones, which is unusual for these little towns, perhaps it was the fact they were overhanging the river gorge, I wouldn't have lived on that cliff, we walked down into the river valley and looked around all the derelict water mills in the river bottom, we walked along the river and across a bridge to the old fortifications where water was taken from the river via a hidden tunnel, we climbed the cliffs and up to the old part of town and found some old dungeons, I felt no spirits hiding in them,

sitting on the cliff wall overlooking the river




Me looking in the ruined water mills




The local horse watering hole




The old dungeons




The immense reservoir




The end of the day trip out, very successful




we then drove along some back roads to a large reservoir, it was impressive for this part fo the world having very little rain, it was old and pretty for such a structure, probably built by General Franco as a job creation exercise. The name of the place is Arenas Del Rey, the Kings Sands, a little bit pretentious isn't it, it was a nice place, would have been nice for camping but quite remote, sometimes that is a benefit.

Dont forget it was halloween here, the little girl had a great time walking about in the nice warm evening air with some local kids, that was here in the Green Face