Hill-Whitehead Family Blog

The chilly UK return

2008-10-29T23:20:00.010Z

View from the Micalet

Blogging has become rather a 'bottom-of-the-pile' priority in recent months, for which I apologise. I still have it in mind to do some serious video editing from our year in Spain and to post some more of the fascinating highlights, though time is simply not one of those available assets currently. One day... promise...

Well, since mid-August, a fair amount has happened. We had a great final month in Valencia - saw many friends and received our final few visitors before packing got underway, ready for the great return to the UK. Our wonderful landlord and his wife paid us a visit in the final few days, armed with gluten free brownies - took us nearly a fortnight to finish the tray, but the were delicious. Interspersed with visits from friends and fits of box-packing, we managed to make a final few visits to places we had unintentionally avoided during the previous 12 months. A trip to the Cathedral in Valencia and a hike up to the top of the Micalet tower next door. What amazing views across a full 360° panorama - the entire Valencia region in focus on a beautiful sunny afternoon. Sadly as the month drew towards its conclusion, the arrival of Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One coincided with our own departure on Sunday 24 August. Having got rid of the packed boxes to our wonderful mover - Jimbo the Scot - the previous week, we were left to pack the final oddments and stuff the last bags into our car - just as Hamilton was relinquishing his opportunity to win the European Grand Prix a mile down the road! Of course, packing the bags and stuffing the car was made all the more difficult by the fact that the grown-ups had been up the previous night until around 4am at a number of clubs and restaurants in the Barrio del Carmen area of Valencia, for a finale shindig with our great Spanish friends. Still, despite the cloudy minds and the sleepy heads, we finally departed late afternoon, just as the F1 traffic started moving for the city boundaries, but we still managed good time northwards towards Bilbao, where we stopped off at the Hotel-and-Go in Ribabellosa.

Departing the cold, wet and windy Bilbao, headed for Portsmouth

The next day, we made the final distance to a grey, cloudy and damp Bilbao in less than an hour. A further thirty hours or so later, and we were entering the harbour at Portsmouth - strangely, with marginally better weather!

So that's it. Back in Blighty! But for how long? Well, that's the 64p question. We're now ensconced back at work and play in Cambridge, but there's a desire to find our way back to Valencia at the very first opportunity... and we do have ways, you know!

Liz, Chris and Jo return to the UK with mixed feelings

In the meantime, I really must get back into this blogging lark again. Not only do I need to backfill our year in Spain, but time is marching on here in Cambridge and we have much to report on what's been going on for the past couple of months... back soon!

The Iberian tour continues...

2008-08-14T22:08:00.023+01:00

Wind- and Kite-surfing at Guincho Beach, near Lisbon, Portugal

Yet another age, I know. We're now back in Valencia - and for the final week or so at that, sadly. Well, the tour throughout Portugal and northern Spain continued through to the end of July, though internet connections became few and far between, hence the lack of posts for the past month or so (again!). Now I'll attempt a rapid hurtle through the final few weeks of the camping and sailing tour, and if time permits, a quick update on the story in Valencia. Whilst the blogs have sadly dwindled, I have been getting my full money's worth over at Flickr where our exploits continue to be recorded as digital images for time immemorial. They're reasonably neatly pigeon-holed into chapters throughout the year - I think there's around 3,500 images up there so far and the number increases by the day.

So to our grand tour, where I left you, cliffhanger-like, near Lisbon in Portugal. The beach at Guincho was stunning. Force 5-6 winds and great scenes of wind-and kite-surfers going about their business - morning, noon and night - sometimes even after dark.

The fairytale palaces of Sintra - how did they get it all the way up there?

We travelled from our Orbitur Guincho campsite slightly inland to the beautiful - and very English-looking - town of palaces that is Sintra the following day. You've probably heard the old line about how many people can one stuff into a Mini, telephone box ("What are telephone boxes, Daddy?", our children might ask!!) etc. Well, to stretch the cliché, how many palaces can one stuff into a town that is scarcely larger than a village? Well, we still don't know the answer precisely, but it is certainly more than a few, and we spent a day hiking through a number of them. Quite a fascinating place where royals and noblemen (and women) built their country retreats over the centuries. The views across the mountains from each of these magical buildings were quite something and well worth the visit.

On the beach near A Coruña, in a boat that was never designed to float!

And so, onwards towards the northern Portuguese border with Spain. We departed Guincho and headed northwards via a lunch stopover in the beautiful university city of Coimbra, just south of Porto. What a fantastic lunch, though with sweltering heat hitting the early 40°s, we decided, regrettably, it was not a day for lots of outdoor sightseeing, and we jumped back into the air-conditioned car and upwards past Porto to the town of Viana do Castelo, where we stayed for a further couple of nights before passing into northern Spain and the region of Galicia to meet our friends, Rick, Charlie, Ellie and Joe at a campsite in the titchy village of Santa Marta, just outside the city of A Coruña. Though we managed a nice day on the beach, the weather moved steadily down from the early 40°s to the early 20°s and a few cloudy and occasionally rainy days ensued. Still, despite the grey skies, we braved a trip to the tiny fishing port of Malpica and managed to convince a local restaurateur to permit us to spend the entire day eating and drinking on his terrace whilst the kids played on the beach directly in front of us. We must have been good for business in the circumstances as, despite the changeable weather our true British hardy spirit attracted a number of other fellow customers to brave the elements and order their lunch on the terrace too. The bars and cafés either side of us appeared empty throughout the day, whilst our for our chosen hostelry it was bonanza day!

A relaxing boat trip around A Coruña with Rick, Charlie, Liz, Joe and Chris

Another pleasurable day was spent in and around A Coruña. I've always been interested in visiting this great port as it seems to me to be the destination of choice for yachtsmen who cross to Spain from the UK, and is also often on the well-worn race circuit for various round-the-world yachting events.

Ayuntamiento (town hall) in A Coruña

Having been urged by everyone we know and by every guidebook ever written, we set off to Santiago de Compostela for its annual festival day. We decided that the city would be overrun with tourists and that rather than taking the car, we chose to drive into the middle of nowhere and catch the train. Despite numerous maps of the area - most of which were a work of fiction - we managed to find the 'one-horse' village of Meirama where we lay in wait for the daily train to Santiago

The train from nowhere to the 'aquarium' city of Santiago de Compostela

Sadly, the day was a real washout in every sense of the word. Not only had most of the festival finished (the fireworks having taken place the night before), but there was a political rally which appeared to be a heavily-policed fight between communists and whatever flavour of fascism is currently in vogue in Galicia. Added to which, we then experienced the heaviest rainfall of the year, so what was planned as a long day out turned out to be a severely curtailed event, though we did manage to get into the city's famous cathedral in between services.

With more than a week of camping to go including the final five days in Asturias, sadly the blog will have to pause for breath (or at least, I need to go to bed!), so until next time when I hope to conclude the trip and get up to date in Valencia...

A whirlwind tour of Portugal, southern and northern Spain, by boat and tent…

2008-07-17T18:29:00.003+01:00

Brian, Chris and skipper, Peter on board Tonia

Just a quick blog today – after a couple of months – a lot has happened in recent weeks and months, but I’ve either been too busy living it, or, more recently, we’ve been without internet access so have been unable to post anything. We are currently on our travels away from Valencia.

Yacht Tonia in Ayamonte border town on the Spanish side near Portugal (photo by Jo!

We departed a week ago last Sunday, 6 July, heading for the southern Spanish / Portuguese border town at Ayamonte (Spain) for a five-day sailing course for Liz and myself. This we successfully completed having sailed around 100 miles along the Portuguese coast to Tavira and then back up the Guadiana River to Foz. I now have my Day Skipper certificate and Liz has her Competent Crew one, so beware RNLI!

Liz, Chris and Jo at the beach in Guincho near Lisbon, Portugal

Since last weekend, we have started our Iberian camping tour which will be around three weeks or so. We started by driving back over the newish suspension bridge over the Guadiana River bridge at Ayamonte (we’d been sailing back and forth under it the previous week) and into Portugal’s Algarve coast. We headed on to a small town called Alvor, a few miles from the larger town of Lagoa, over yet another impressive suspension bridge at Portimao. Our first couple of nights were spent at Dourada campsite in Alvor (not to be recommended – quite expensive and every service after paying for the campsite was charged as an extra – electricity, hot water, swimming pool etc. All rather petty and annoying – why not simply charge an all-inclusive price? Anyway, I could go on…

Sunset over the horizon at Guincho - nearly the most western point of Europe!

We quickly tired of the Algarve, though we had a great day at the Splash and Slide water park in Lagoa. The thought of fish and chips and too many Brits forced our hand and we moved north to the Lisbon area on Monday. A great journey up the ‘B road’ equivalents, avoiding the motorway. I never realised how much wheat was grown in Portugal, but it is also surprising how behind the times the methods of agriculture still appear to be. The wheat fields seem to be heavily populated with a combination of cork and olive trees, which means that the more common combine harvesters would have difficulty navigating their way around a crazy maze of wheat, hence smaller machinery must be used. The entire drive was very beautiful and most of the land as far as the eye could see remains either entirely undeveloped or used for agriculture – no major towns and even the small villages seem quite basic in terms of buildings and services. The final drive over the impressive bridge Ponte 25 Abril was stunning. This bridge, similar to the Golden Gate in San Francisco, is a couple of miles long in total. Its sister bridge a few miles up river claims to be 17 kilometres (about 11 miles) long. The river Tejo is obviously wide and very picturesque from both sides. Next to the Ponte 25 Abril is a statue of Christ which, similar to Rio de Janeiro, dominates the skyline on the banks opposite Lisbon. We’ve spent the past three nights at the Orbitur campsite at Guincho, just up the coast from Cascais (pronounced Cushcaish!) which is a great site by comparison with the one in Alvor. Sadly the free wifi seems not to be working – half the staff weren’t aware it even existed and the other half claim it is working!). We’ve had a day exploring the beautiful towns of Cascais and Estoril and spent all of yesterday in Lisbon – more to follow if and when I get the chance. Today we’re planning to visit the town of Sintra and will try to grab a few minutes of broadband somewhere – someone here assures us that McDonald’s has free wifi locally. Now, can we face up to a visit for a gluten-free coffee and fries?!!

Sponsorship for Cubs

2008-07-04T09:47:00.004+01:00

Chris on about length number 75 and still going strong!

I've completed my sponsored swim of 100 lengths of my pool for Cottenham Cubs. I raised £106 and 5p all thanks to you!! The reason we are trying to raise so much money is so that we can buy things to camp in comfort.

It's been a while...

2008-05-28T21:07:00.029+01:00

Valencia's own David Ferrer smashing his way to victory, against all the odds whilst defending several match points against him, in the 2008 ATP Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana, April 2008

Well, it appears that over a month has elapsed since the last post on this site. Sorry, for those of you who faithfully check-in on a regular basis. I have a list of excuses as long as my exceedingly long arms.

Would you like the one about the numerous guests we've had in the past couple of months that have kept me away from the keyboard? OK, if that excuse doesn't wash (though it is true, and it would be very rude to simply keep blogging rather than showing people the sights of Valencia or cooking them tapas and paella!).

Then there's the other technology-oriented excuse - another genuine one - whilst results from my now-dead Dell PC. The hard drive, which stored by complete life (yeah, yeah, yeah... I did have a full backup!) finally died early last week - a clicking sound of the hard drive gasping its last followed by lots of blue screens and white type (why can't Microsoft vary the bad news with a bit of colour?!). Sadly, despite buying a lovely new hard drive - three times the capacity of the last one at 750GB - it wouldn't let me load Windows properly and so after crashes too numerous to mention, I have now recruited a computer-savvy person to come and bash it until it gets some sense about how Windows XP Professional is meant to just work right out of the box...

All of which means that we are now down to just three computers - one desktop, one laptop and this MacBook Pro. Lovely new Mac, but unfortunately, my life still exists on the backup hard drives and not on this little blighter, so whilst I'm able to just about cast my fat fingers around this titchy keypad, I don't have access to any pretty photos or video at the moment, so it's gonna be a few days more before I can crank something up which will spit out the necessary graphic images (though I've managed to grab one or two for the time-being).

Quite a bit has happened here in not-so-sunny-all-of-the-time Valencia over the past seven weeks or so. Firstly I took delivery of this shiny new Apple Mac and am very slowly teaching myself all the various graphics packages to enable me to be more productive in my 'virtual life', though I am so used to all the Windows shortcuts, I'm not sure if it will be in this lifetime or the next that I'll finally conquer the Mac shortcuts too!

We have navigated ourselves from one set of guests to another. It has been great fun spending time with so many people over the past year and in particular showing off this beautiful city to our friends and work colleagues. It is also simply so rewarding to spend real quality time with people when so often we communicate by occasional email, phonecall or the odd dinner. To spend 2, 3, 4 or more days with our friends - especially when the climate has been favourable - has been a real joy here in Valencia, and something we'll always treasure. Still, there has to be some benefit in all these visits coming to an end... Chris finally gets the chance to move back into his own bedroom, leaving Jo to get on with life in her own bedroom! What a star he's been, camping out, off and on, for the past nine months or so, in his sister's bedroom!

So then to events and activities - we've seen and experienced plenty during April and May. From my old fave, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (last saw them about 15 years ago at the old Sadler's Wells Theatre in London) to the finals of the ATP Open de Tenis Comunidad Valenciana, and from The Night of the Proms concert (one of the most surreal and weird evenings of our life!) to a long weekend camping with friends in Santa Pola (just south of Alicante), we've had an action-packed couple of months.

Going back to The Night of the Proms - we were warned in the advanced publicity within the local 24/7 Valencia Guide that the event would be a little on the strange side, and it didn't disappoint. Where else could you find the following: a 72-piece orchestra performing Land of Hope and Glory and a variety of Strauss waltzes, the Spanish heart-throb Miguel Rios, a male German singer, Galileo, who could belt 'em out in a combination of soprano and baritone - all in the same ballad (astoundingly talented), OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), Alan Parsons (yes, he of the original 'Project' fame - and a giant of a man), 1970's one-hit-wonder-but-stunning-pianist-and-vocalist, John Miles ('Music was my first love...') and the 1980's supergroup, Simple Minds... in a 10,000-seater echo-ey athletics velodrome? Musically, the evening was superb. With regard to the choice of musical programming - Strauss, Elgar, Simple Minds' 'Belfast Child', Alan Parsons' 'Psychobabble' and OMD's 'Enola Gay' - it all makes the strangest of bedfellows.

The island of Tabarca lies just off the coast of Santa Pola, and makes a great day trip, though it's best to go on a windless day!

Scarcely had we recovered our eardrums and reaffirmed that we were in fact still living within the early 21st century and not the previous one or two hundred years (music aside)... it was time for our first camping adventure. As it turned out, more by luck than by judgement, we picked the last few clear sunny days before an onslaught of April and May showers - nay, storms! Together with friends, we spent three days and two nights camping at Santa Pola, a few miles to the south of Alicante. Well, the good news is that the brand new Decathlon-special 6-berth tent worked fine. We even managed to set it up and put it away again in around 30 minutes on each occasion. However, the land mass required to fully erect the structure is equivalent to the area of Devon and Cornwall combined, so I am anticipating the need for multiple camping 'sites' on each occasion we plan to pitch it in the future. We are really looking forward to two or three weeks' camping up around the north west of Spain in the summer, and possibly some time in Portugal if we can organise things in time...

Chris, Jo and Liz show off that vast tent, and prove the fact that it did turn out just like the instructions said it would!

Of course, aside from all the concerts and camping, we have managed to pack in a number of great meals and parties with friends. A great night out celebrating Angel's 40th back in late April and Margaret's 50th earlier in May. Both events required visits to the best local bars and restaurants, and it strikes me that even if we stay here another decade, partying everyday, we won't have managed to visit every hostelry, though we might die trying!

Chris and Jo have also had their own busy and enterprising times. Both have had schoolfriends over to play; they continue to play football with other children from our apartment block; they've done well at their respective school sports days school concerts and Chris has managed not only to achieve his faith badge for cubs back in Cottenham whilst staying in Valencia, but he has just learned that he has achieved a 'Distinction' in his Royal Schools of Music recorder exam - something he chose to study for and put himself through. Jo was mentioned in dispatches at a school parents day last term for being a finalist in a competition to design a new logo for the parents association. We were subsequently invited to attend a meeting with the parents association but felt that keeping a meaningful conversation going in Valenciano was a step too far for all of us amateur Spanish speakers! Both children have had a great academic year at school and hopefully will continue to benefit from this Spanish experience long into the future. We are both in awe of their abilities to muck in with their Spanish friends, sharing communication between English, Spanish and... Valenciano, which they have both had to study this year. Term finishes later in June and then it's time for the great summer camping fest.

Meanwhile, technology permitting, we'll be back with further blogs from time-to-time throughout the summer. Oh... and I'm still promising those Fallas videos sometime!

Chris's work on the Faith Badge for Cubs

2008-04-23T19:45:00.003+01:00

My dad and I made a video for my Faith badge for 2nd Cottenham Cubs in Valencia around my house. Please Enjoy!

Música en familia: El barbero de Sevilla - for all the family!

2008-04-13T13:22:00.003+01:00

A quick post to congratulate the city of Valencia on its continued investment in the live performing arts at Palau de la Música. Yesterday afternoon for a one-and-a-half-hour performance of selected highlights of The Barber of Seville, we paid €3 each (€12 in total for all four members of the family) to see an orchestra of 26, a chorus of 12 and a cast of six principals perform some of the best known arias and musical excerpts from this Rossini opera. There were children ranging from babes-in-arms to older teenagers - plus their parents and grandparents - attending one of four sold out performances over two days in the city's premier classical music concert hall. With a potential gross income of, say, €3,000 per performance, including IVA (Spanish VAT equivalent), it is anyone's guess how much the city and region has chosen to subsidise performances of this quality and stature, but what a fantastic way to introduce children and young people to opera. Sure there was a fair amount of fidgeting and crying (that was just the parents!), but in a performance aimed at younger people, this approach to introducing the 'classical arts' must be preserved and promoted - preferably such lessons could be drawn from arts funders and organisations the UK, assuming Margaret Hodge MP doesn't think such work is too elitist or racially exclusive towards the white middle classes!

The only slight downer on the event was that it could have been slightly shorter - at ninety minutes without interval, some children appeared to find the length a little too challenging. That said, the entire cast - principals, chorus and orchestra - were of an extremely high standard - something which was appreciated by all.

Requena, Chera, Chulilla and Chelva

2008-03-27T07:54:00.008Z

We often find it surprising how many beautiful towns and villages we can find within an hour or so's drive of Valencia, considering 50% of the area surrounding the city is either sea or the Albufera lagoon!

A quick saunter down at the lakeside of the beautiful Embalse de Buseo

On Tuesday this week, we headed out via Requena (now quite a regular retreat when we have guests) to the villages of Chera, Chulilla and Chelva and some even smaller hamlets en route. On this occasion, we didn't stop in Requena - other than to search for a petrol filling station before going into the mountains. We headed on to Embalse de Buseo, a reservoir in the Sierra de Tejo mountains. The whole area - including the access roads to it - was completely deserted, but evidence shows that the summer season gets busy with a comprehensive camp site set up in the woods surrounding it. Chris decided he wanted to pitch camp there and then (our entire equipment for this day trip consisted of a couple of portable DVD players, cameras and a bag of snacks!), but we managed to get going again after a snack break, dropping into the nearby village of Chera briefly before continuing onto the slightly larger town (everything is relative) of Chulilla, near the banks of the River Turia which continues on down to Valencia.

Chulilla - the town on a cliff-edge

Chulilla provided a great place for lunch and a brisk walk afterwards. The town appears to 'hang' over a steep ravine along one side, with some buildings precariously perched, giving the appearance that a strong wind would send them over the cliff and into the valley below. In many ways, the whole area reminds me of Sedona in Arizona, and in some ways like a miniature Grand Canyon with the deep reddish soil and sedimentary rock colouring.

Reddish sedimentary rock much like Arizona - here a cliff-face hewn into a human face shape - made-made or natural?

Finding lunch was a little more problematic than anticipated as even the few odd bars and cafes that did exist appeared to be closed. Finally with some local help, we found a very small bar which was able to provide a decent three-course menu del día for €7.50-a-head - including wine and coffee! The post-lunch walk took us deep down into the ravine and along the valley floor for about a mile through a dense bamboo and pine forest to a natural diving pool which also appears to double-up as the source of a hydro electric station nearby.

Liz, Chris and Jo at the diving pool

Brian, Chris and Jo pausing on the way back up!

On the way back to Valencia we briefly took a detour north-easterly to the village of Chelva and on the way, an even larger lake, dammed for hydro-electricity, Embalse de Loriguilla. A pretty vista-filled day and a few mountain destinations for our planned camping breaks in the summer!

Video: The last day of Fallas 2008

2008-03-25T00:14:00.004Z

The end of Fallas 2008

As promised, a short (seven-minute) video of our last few hours of Fallas 2008. A trip into the city in the afternoon to let off fireworks and again in the evening - this time to take a final look around a handful of the 700-odd Fallas around the city before the entire collection was burned to a cinder.

Simply click below to watch the video.

There's more video to follow in due course when I get a chance to edit it, including the burning of our 'own' Falla in Avenida de Francia, and the Semana Santa procession from Easter Sunday...

Semana Santa... another day, another procession

2008-03-24T11:35:00.010Z

Semana Santa Easter Day Procession in full swing

Easter is a big thing here in Spain. We have seen the set-up for various Easter week processions in Andalucia in the recent past, but I hadn't actually experienced Easter Sunday in Spain since my childhood. It is purely coincidental that Easter week should clash with the end of the Fallas festival this year - one religious celebration rolled into the back end of another.

Jo making use of some of the many thousands of carnations thrown to the waiting crowds

Chris patiently waits in the crowd for his own carnation!

It is as if this city needs no pause for recuperation because scarcely had the costumes of the Falleras been put back in the closet and the trumpets and drums of the Fallas marching bands stowed back in their cases than an entirely new set of immaculate costumes were dusted off and the instruments brought back out for the annual Semana Santa processions. Processions took place 'in three acts' on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and culminating in the Resurrection Procession on Easter Sunday in the Marinera de Valencia - inland from the beach area a couple of blocks.

Marching band after marching band throughout the route

We only managed to attend the final parade on Sunday, but it was yet another show of true city-wide community proportions with thousands upon thousands of marching groups and bands.

All ages participating in the Easter Sunday Resurrection Procession

The costumes - every one of them immaculately detailed - looked stunning. Again, the questions ran through our minds as to who can possibly foot the bill for such sumptuous threads. The thousands of participants, carried hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of carnations in every colour - many of which were dispatched into the crowds lined up on both sides of the street for the 2 or 3 mile route. We also wonder where such vast quantities of carnations could have been harvested for this event.

Babes in arms - not one detail of the costumes was missed out

We stood in one position for nearly ninety minutes and the procession still took around an hour of that time to completely pass us by, underlining the sheer scale of the day's event. Yet again, all ages were active participants - even babes were carried literally in arms - in the full regalia of their group. This will be yet one more video to add to the growing backlog of 'editing projects'!

The night the city burns...

2008-03-23T09:04:00.006Z

The last view of our Falla before the ceremonial torching...

It was a most surreal experience right across the city. This yearly festival which, though only officially five days in actual duration, is in fact, a year-long labour of both love and money for many people. It ended abruptly in the very early hours of Thursday 20 March with the traditional burning of the Fallas across the city... a city which looked akin to the TV pictures of Beirut in my youth with burning pyres and thick black smoke rising across the skyline - accompanied by some of the most spectacular firework displays ever seen.

Wednesday evening, we headed for the city centre after dinner, to be accosted by young children throwing fireworks - a daily occurrence from 1 March onwards - arriving to view a number of the city's finest Fallas in their final hours of existence on this world...

Fallas in the city - the final few hours...

After a couple of hours of wandering throughout the streets, seeing the great works of art - each one caringly designed and built over the preceding twelve months - we ambled back to a side street near the market to see the some of the many marching bands returning from their own musical trips around the neighbourhoods - to set fire to the children's ninot - something which, every year begins at 10.30pm on the evening of the 19th.

The first lick of the flames for the childrens' Falla

Another Falla...

...another fire!

Returning back to the apartment in Avenida de Francia for the midnight burning of our 'own' Falla, we discovered that since the fire brigade (bomberos in Castilian Spanish; bombers in Valenciano) have to be present at every burning, the allotted time for Avenida de Francia was not in fact midnight, but 1.30am the next morning, so we managed to keep some very tired children up for another hour-and-a-half until the bombers finally arrived to assist the local association in the cremation of the Falla.

The biggest Falla this year - a €900,000 investment at Nou Campanar - and a great bonfire to boot!

None of the Brits present have ever experienced anything quite like the burning of a Falla. With hours of build-up, the final few minutes before 'lighting time' were conducted with a dousing of the structure in something highly flammable; fireworks kept going off all around us - many of them lit by myself and the children - totally legally, of course; the Falla Queens continued to meet and greet their followers; the bombers set up their firehoses; and the Valencian Anthem was playing steadily louder.

Outside our apartment, seconds after the Falla Queen lit the fuse... whoosh!

Finally, the TV cameras moved into position and the skies erupted with an amazing five-minute display of synchronised rockets before the Falla Queen was invited down to light the final 'fuse' - a string of exploding fire-crackers leading to the foot of the massive Falla. With an almighty bang and an instantaneous, searing whoosh of heat which left us and all the other spectators running backwards for shelter, the Falla exploded into a fireball of flames. As the fireball became an inferno, the bombers began hosing - not the fire - but the walls of our apartment (less than 3 metres from the edge of the flames) and the trees and shrubs surrounding the fire. This continued for much of the next thirty minutes or so until the final struts of the supporting frame of the Falla were reduced to a pile of burning embers and the bombers finally turned their hoses onto the fire itself, extinguishing the flames in a matter of a few minutes, turning the once-sweltering furnace into a giant pile of steaming charcoal and the Falla was no more.

As a footnote - the next morning, as promised - there was not a shred of evidence where the Falla had once stood, that anything had ever occurred. No scorch-marks. No burned embers. Just a simple road junction returned to its former state.

An amazing display of flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - creating a gigantic effigy of Our Lady every year as part of the Fallas celebrations. This year, the event coincided with Easter week

Yet more flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - their placement witnessed by tens of thousands of spectators - we could only get near nearly two days after the final flowers were laid

I now fully understand the explanations given of the Fallas festival in the tourist brochures. They talk about the history and tradition of Fallas and explain that Valencian people have learned to control fire. I have to admit, I was sceptical and thought this a bit of marketing bravado; however I now truly believe it really is the case. In many ways, 'our' Falla at Avenida de Francia was in one of the more 'open' locations - being plonked in the middle of a T-junction between a minor side street and the main avenue itself with only one apartment block on one side and pretty much open space on the other three sides. Many of the other 700 or so Fallas throughout the city and beyond, were packed into small crossroads and junctions with antiquated apartment buildings, shops and other ancient structures closely packed in on all sides. Every single one of those Fallas was burnt in the early hours of Thursday morning and I have yet to hear of any injury or 'mistake' which led to the accidental burning down of any of those buildings.

It does seem the strangest series of rituals - and for a 'tourist', quite a sad end to what must have been a protracted year-long programme of planning work, designing, building, fundraising, meetings and rehearsals. Perhaps for the people who create, celebrate and then burn these amazing structures, it is a simple repetition of a ritual passed down through the years in the same way as any other cultural practice. The Fallas year begins on 20 March each year - right after the last of the embers are cleared away from the previous Cremà.

I have video of many aspects of Fallas. I mean... I HAVE hours and hours of video! I will try to get some edited back to 10-minute slots as soon as I can in order to show off some of the highlights on this blog. In the meantime, Fallas has taught me quite a lot about what is and what is not a genuine community event - one which appears not to require a flood of public subsidy and government targets to ensure it provides value for the public purse, or the correct level of engagement and 'access' amongst its population. The event continues year after year - paid for by voluntary public subscription and private sponsorship. It truly involves everyone in some way or another - whether through participating in one of the 300 or more marching bands across the city, competing in the numerous Fallas Queen competitions, involvement in the Flower Offering at Plaza de la Virgen - even buying and throwing fireworks, eating and drinking the festive refreshments or participating in the many street events.

Day Three of Fallas

2008-03-17T22:54:00.022Z

Traditional Valencian Fallas costumes for the Fallera Queens and their courts

A relatively quiet day as far as we are concerned - probably due mainly to the fact that we have plenty of work to do this week and have therefore not spent too much time away from the apartment. [Indeed, the only time we ventured out this morning was when Liz walked over to the El Saler Shopping Centre at the other side of the riverbed to see if she could obtain tickets for the Valencia CF versus Barcelona match in the city this Thursday. After two hours of queuing, a déjà vu experience when it was discovered that the box office system wasn't working... then it would only issue tickets in 'ones'... then there were just a handful of single tickets left... no use to us - another wasted morning queuing in Valencia - just like the Three Days at the Opera last November!]

However, the sounds of Valencia and indeed the experience of walking through the streets must be something akin to walking through the streets of Beirut, although thankfully without the death and destruction - purely the ongoing noise and smell of explosives. We had a handful of mascletàs across the panoramic vista from our balcony at 2.00pm this afternoon. The despertà this morning was lively and as with the mascletà, it appears to get louder everyday. The sound of the marching bands mixed with the cracks and bangs of fireworks commenced at 8.00am. If anything, the fact that today was a Monday and nominally some people were apparently at work and not chucking fireworks, maybe the despertà fireworks weren't as loud as yesterday's, but this was more than compensated by the marching bands. Not being especially fond of brass brands or their music, there is something very appealing about Valencian marching bands. The music has a real appeal - possibly the repetitive nature of many of the traditional songs or possibly it's the beat of the drums. The children are now beginning to whistle some of the catchiest Valencian rhythms, and indeed both Chris and Jo are able to sing the Valencian anthem - in Valenciano. Must check out the copyright and see if I can use the music to accompany some of my many hours of video already 'in the can' for my Fallas record.

Later this afternoon , we ambled down to El Corté Inglés to buy some tickets for the ATP Tennis Open Finals in Valencia (incidentally, we managed to get front row seats for five people for less than the cost of a single ticket at Wimbledon - let's hope the final is between Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal! One successful ticketing story today at least!). The walk to El Corté Inglés is around 500 metres, but as we now know, during Fallas, it is a treacherous journey, safe only for non-combustible humans or the deaf and hard-of-hearing! The noise from the fireworks being lobbed, dropped and surreptitiously left in our path gave us whistling ears by the time we got home. Most of the combatants (!) were 5-6 year-olds and the effects of their parents' pyrotechnic budgets can be seen in the variety of new dances we are now all easily able to perform as we move gracefully up and down the streets avoiding the fizzing firecrackers.

Fallas: build-up to the biggest street festival in the world?

2008-03-16T14:35:00.009Z

One small piece of one relatively small Falla... out of around 700 Fallas currently installed throughout Valencia

We're already at day two of the official Fallas festival here in Valencia. It runs annually (officially) from 14 to 19 March each year, culminating in the celebrations of St Joseph's Day on Wednesday 19 March.

The Falla outside our apartment on Avenida de Francia. It's closest point is less than five metres from the apartment block. What will happen on Wednesday during la cremà when the whole lot goes up in flames? Better check the insurance policy!

Whilst we may be at only the second day, it seems that the festival has been going on, at least in part, since 20 March 2007 - the formal end of last year's celebrations mean the immediate start to preparations for the following year's events.

This festival is so vast in every sense of the word - it encompasses the true community involvement of all the city's residents (the city claims a current population just below 800,000 but this figure is said to swell to more than three million during Fallas); the sheer sums of money involved (all private funding - not a penny of subsidy!); the scale of the event - as many as 700 Fallas statues across the city, ranging in budget from €6,000 to €900,000 (rumour has it) - some of them as high as 20 metres; the marching bands (official figures state that there are over 300 marching bands in the city alone); the daily mascletàs at the Ayuntamiento (town hall square); and now across the city every day, the nightly fireworks in the Turia riverbed; the hundreds if not thousands of marquees set-up alongside each Falla - adorned with banners and hoardings from the Fallas sponsors; the temporary refreshment stands everywhere stocked with buñuelos and hot chocolate, horchatas with fartons (cold drink made from tiger-nuts with dunking doughnuts!); the hundreds of thousands of children as young as three or four huddled in groups with their burning wicks, setting light to the petardos, bombetas and on occasion, huge firecrackers, rockets and other explosive devices (rumour has it the EU tried to ban children from buying and throwing fireworks in Valencia, but somehow the legislation failed - the region has to amend its own legislation each year to permit children to buy and throw fireworks from 1-20 March), the daily deafening wake-up call at 8.00am of la despertà - a cacophony of marching bands and petardos liberally blasted up and down each street, giving a formal welcome to the day's festivities (firework-throwing seems to run to an approximate timetable of 8.00am to 4.00am the following day, though not everyone abides by the four-hour ceasefire!); the endless parades of floats, bands, horses and more... much more besides...

The sheer scale of these structures is mind-boggling. Las Vegas would rank a poor second to some of these giants!

We have never seen anything like it, and there are another three full days to go before a series of concluding events.

The mascletàs have been going off every day at the Ayuntamiento - and elsewhere - since 1 March, and this is set to continue up until Wednesday 19 March, when at 2.00pm, the final mascletà promises to be the longest and loudest series of explosions we have ever heard. So far, the daily events have averaged around 7-8 minutes, getting progressively louder with each successive minute - indeed each successive day! This is perhaps the most audible evidence that Fallas is just around the corner. Indeed as I write this on Sunday afternoon, the siesta is interrupted every few seconds with an explosion - and every few minutes, the sounds of a marching band. From 2.00pm onwards we were able to no only hear but to see around half a dozen mascletàs being set off across the city over the tops of buildings across a panorama from our apartment.

There's still another 10 hours of Sunday to go but we can now understand why they say the city doesn't sleep whilst Fallas is in town...

It's getting louder...

2008-03-11T21:51:00.011Z

Well, it's getting closer.

The Fallas season officially starts this Saturday, 15 March at midnight with Plantà, the erection of around 350 Fallas statues across the city, and ends with their torching at La Cremà at midnight on Wednesday 19 March - Saint Joseph's Day. The daily Mascletàs continue (after a brief cessation on Saturday as a mark of respect, following a terrorist murder in Northern Spain). Today's Mascletà appears below and they really are getting louder every day (though yesterday's may well have been an exception - admittedly we were standing much closer but the sound was absolutely deafening and the 'drum roll' effect continued for the best part of a minute - the buildings and the ground shook all around us). We cannot understand how any windows remain in their frames with explosions of such veracity continuing for around six or seven minutes daily. One thing though: having felt rather ambivalent towards Mascletàs before we saw our first one 'up front and personal', we now totally understand the excitement and the attraction as well as the artistry. God knows how much each session costs - or who pays - but fireworks seem to be the stock-in-trade of Valencia and it seems the pyrotechnic companies continue to outdo each other at every available opportunity. Even tonight another spectacular took place down in the riverbed - presumably another corporate junket.

I hope to find time to cover some of the history of Fallas in one of my subsequent blogs, but meanwhile there are a number of worthwhile online resources available including Fallas from Valencia, Wikipedia and the official Fallas.com website.

Fallas and the mascletàs are on their way...

2008-03-07T19:41:00.007Z

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. Something of a work and visitors glut which means time has been scarce online. However, we did finally manage to co-ordinate a trip to our Spanish lessons at Hispania Escuela with a visit to the daily 2.00pm Mascletà in the Plaza Ayuntamiento (town hall). I have also managed to edit the video down to around 6.5 minutes. Let's see if it works:

Well done Beckers and Pongo...

2008-02-06T21:36:00.001Z

Chris and Jo getting ready for another day at school

Well done Chris and Jo. Today was Carnaval Day at El Plantio International School in Paterna, Valencia and all the children were invited to dress up in a costume of their choice. Chris dusted off his David Beckham outfit complete with leather football (Beckham still seems to be currency in Spanish football eyes when anyone wants to make reference to the beautiful game without naming it outright!). A haircut last night and as much gel as his hair would absorb were part of the morning's preparations.

Jo managed to recreate the 'Pongo' outfut from 101 Dalmations - she's quite used to colouring in black spots on stickers, making tails and 'spotting-up' her face is mascara now - and this time, she won first prize in her class for the best fancy dress.

I don't remember ever being allowed to dress up in anything other than shorts, shirt, tie, cap and blazer when I was at school! Makes me sound like an old person!

No contamina, ni gasto gasolina!

2008-02-01T22:15:00.001Z

Holding up the streets of Valencia in support of the bike

Well it wasn't the Paris riots of 1968, but it was busy, loud and brought the streets of Valencia to a temporary halt. Yes, we've been out on a protest cycle tonight - pedalling slowly around the streets of the old city, delaying the rush hour traffic, though studiously avoiding entering the bus lanes (busses are OK in this anti pollution, anti-global warming, pro-bike new world here in VLC!). So whilst people in the UK have been brought to a halt in the city and motorway rush hours this evening due to blizzards and snowdrift, we've been bringing misery to the streets of VLC with our protect which must have been around 1,000 strong including children on bikes, babies and toddlers in bike trailers.

The chants, "No contamina, ni gasto gasolina!", frequent rounds of applause, a ghetto blaster, whistles and the occasional car horn in a half-hearted return protest added to the lighthearted nature of the evening. I for one cannot wait for the next bike protest... I hear there's another meeting in a couple of weeks, supported by the Valencia Metro where we can travel with our bikes on the tube - and get free sandwiches at the end of the gig. Sounds great!

From VLC to BCN for the weekend...

2008-01-31T23:30:00.001Z

The covered market off La Rambla offers its produce without the familiar processing and packaging

Rather a**e about face I'm afraid. Life moves on apace and if I don't get a blog off the stocks immediately, then I'm constantly running to stand still. In this case, the visit to the Formula One tests comes after our visit to Barcelona (BCN) for the weekend in chronological terms, but in purely blogging terms, it was quicker to dash off the F1 blog before the more leisurely look at BCN (could be something to do with the fact that I know little or nothing about motor racing and only marginally more about BCN!)

A horse and carriage parade down La Rambla... still not sure what it was all about!

So... to Barcelona a week ago last Friday evening at the beginning of a long weekend (a two-day bank holiday or festival for the children, to mark the martyring of Valencia's patron saint, San Vicente Martir Day). We decided to take the train rather than drive, in order to arrive relaxed and ready for action Saturday morning. Just like the UK, a fantastic, fast, comfortable service with complimentary headphones for the free movie on board, a punctual departure and arrival and of course, reserved and numbered seats. Just like the UK! Liz convinced me on arrival at BCN that our hotel was only two inches from the station and should be a 10-minute walk from the station - "why bother with a cab?". Ahem, OK, so it was 20 minutes and with a case full of cameras, a laptop, rucksack and travel pouch, I for one was knackered by the time the hotel finally came into view. However, en route, we did see the stunning Joan Miró art work in the park dedicated to his memory, so there was some benefit to the walk.

La Rambla boasts a range of art and artistes up and down its entire length

With our complimentary broadband all set up and the tourist websites suitably scoured for deals and bargains, we set off Saturday morning for a wander down La Rambla, checking out the heaving under-cover market, local art and artists (including the rather shocking surprise appearance of a street artist who burst out of a cardboard box as I was walking past it - why do these people think I'm going to give them €1 when they scare the living s**t [daylights] out of me?!!) and the pigeons which Chris and Jo chased mercilessly. The highlight of the morning was a visit to the free exhibition at the marquee for the current Barcelona World (Yacht) Race (no, we knew nothing about it either!) Both the exhibition and the event itself which is currently in its finishing stages, were fascinating, highly educational and very motivating for anyone interested in serious yachting. (House of the America's Cup in Valencia, please take note - these people really know how to create an exhibition that inspires and doesn't look like something out of a glossy magazine aimed at humouring your sponsors!). If the Barcelona World Race exhibition was great (it was!), then check out the website which is equally well-presented.

Outside Fundació Joan Miró

The afternoon was given over to a visit to the Picasso Museum (though for my money, whilst the Picasso Museum is set in a delightful building, Fundació Joan Miró which we visited on Sunday, was a far more inspirational trip. Miró seemed somewhat less up his own proverbial!). Later, at the insistence of the children, Liz and I went out for a superb Thai curry at the restaurant opposite our hotel. With mobile phones in place of baby alarms and less than 50 feet to the hotel reception, we were able to enjoy one of the hottest curries for many a long day - a complete rarity in Spain it seems, as there is not yet a Thai restaurant in VLC, though we wait with baited breath!

Bussing it around Barcelona

So, all curried out, Sunday came around and a brisk walk to Plaça España to catch the world famous Barcelona Bus Turístic for a two-day hop-on-hop-off experience around the city. The first route took us around Montjuïc - literally mountain of the Jews and our visit to Fundació Joan Miró. A couple of hours later, and much impressed, we departed for the next stage - back down to the sea front and a look at Roy Lichtenstein's Barcelona Head sculpture - created for the city back in 1992.

The Barcelona Head - Chris had studied Roy Lichtenstein's work at school in the UK and immediately recognised it - unlike his philistine parents!

The end of the afternoon was spent at the quirky Sagrada Familia or 'holy family' - Antoni Gaudí's strange masterpiece - still only 50% built, it remains under construction after 125 years. This is where fact is sometimes stranger than fiction - whether Gaudí's 43-year attraction to the creation of this magnificent building, or the fact of his tragic demise just days short of his 74th birthday - under the wheels of a tram. The only comparison I have - and the styles are a million miles apart - is William Randolph Hearst's Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California - another masterpiece created through the single-minded devotion of one, albeit extremely wealthy - media baron. I can only hope, (but am extremely doubtful) that the Sagrada Familia is finished in my lifetime, so I can pay a return visit, without the need for scaffolding and hard helmets!

Sagrada Familia - a mind-blowing experience

Back to the Bus Turístic on Monday and more views from Montjuïc , albeit slightly hazy. We left the bus with the intention of taking the Telefèric cable car out across the harbour from the mountainside. Sadly, whoever is responsible for the marketing and business development of this supposed tourist highlight is in need of lessons in both marketing and revenue management. We were asked for €36 for two adults and two children to travel one-way about 800 metres - this after we spent around half an hour with maps trying to work out precisely where the cable cars departed and how to buy a ticket. Thus a trek back to the bus stop without the cable car interlude - there are some things which are simply too overpriced for the tourist market and this is one of them! Mondays must be the day bus drivers take the longest tea breaks, because the usual 'bus every 5-10 minutes' became one bus after about 55 minutes.

The Barcelona cityscape from Montjuïc

So, to end the long weekend trip, with two children in tow, the highlight of anyone's visit to BCN must be a trip to the Museu de la Xocolata - how could anyone miss it. Distinctly not Cadbury's (not a single mention throughout the tour), it was nevertheless an interesting stop, with even more interesting purchases at the café afterwards. That said, it was another of those museums which seems to be pitched somewhere half way between some manufacturer's PR showcase and a genuine attempt at educating people about the history, introduction to Spain, and production of chocolate through the recent ages. The glass cases full of chocolate models of horse, battles, villages and everyday life were... well, pointless really. However, the three audio visual 'cubicles' were well worth the visit. Two-thirds of the way around the museum, it suddenly appeared to become a museum about something entirely different to chocolate - rather surreal really. To this day, we still don't know the subject or purpose - it was almost as if the chocolate curator (if there is such a thing) ran out of chocolate exhibits (perhaps they simply melted?), so stuffed a pile of whatever he or she had stuck up their attic out on display and hoped no on would notice. Ah well, the constant smell of chocolate did ensure a sale or two at the end of the trip and the surreal museum-within-a-museum was swiftly forgotten - until now!

A visit to the only gluten-free Mexican restaurant known to exist in Barcelona - Tijuana (how could it be called anything else?) and then the final twenty-minute footslog back to Sants train station (I'm really going to get a cab next time!), and we were on our way back to sunnier - and much warmer Valencia for our final day of the two-day Vicente Martir Day and a picnic on the riverbed, basking in the 28° January sunshine.

Life is such a struggle sometimes.

Formula One tests at Cheste - for a fiver!

2008-01-24T22:05:00.001Z

€5 buys a day at the races with the Formula One testing at Cheste near Valencia

Another day, another event.

Valencia never ceases to amaze with its constant barrage of new things to do, and today was no different. Usually my beef is that a great event was staged, but there was no advanced promotion so we missed it or we only found out about it at the last minute. Well, this event, we did find out about yesterday, through the excellent regular weekly email from Comunitat Valenciana, but we also got wind of it through a visitor who'd read about the Formula One testing and trials at Cheste (just outside Valencia) in the Daily Telegraph! A quick 20 minutes car journey towards Madrid and we were at the course - at €5 per person this must be one of the best value deals anywhere in Spain, and that's saying something. Mind you, the noise - if you haven't been before - is deafening and shocking as the cars whiz past (I once went to the trials at Silverstone and didn't like the noise - or pollution then either!). Out of around 200 photographs taken, only 50 are moderately presentable (available on Flickr to the determined viewer!) and that was mainly because by the time the camera shutter was depressed, the cars had moved on another quarter of a mile!

If the America's Cup Yacht Race didn't already do it, Valencia is set to really hit the big time in August 2008 with the first of a series of Formula One European Grand Prix - on a brand new (yet-to-be-constructed) course around the America's Cup Port

If this is the precursor to Valencia's European Grand Prix in August 2008, then it should be an exciting time for all people living and visiting here - there were several thousand spectators at the course today - just for the testing - so for the real thing, we can expect a serious throng!

Entire trailer villages are created to keep each racing driver on the road... this is the entourage for just one team!

Not normally an avid fan of motorsports, one can nevertheless see where the excitement emanates. For me, the real eye-opener is the absolutely obscene amounts of money that must be invested in these cars, the teams and indeed the entire motor racing industry - I only hope it has real benefits further down the foodchain with development of Vauxhall Vectras and the like...

How to make the yummiest hot chocolate ever

2008-01-22T11:41:00.001Z

Chris and Jo on a lion at Christopher Columbus' Column in Barcelona - January 2008

1. Melt some plain dark chocolate in the microwave.
2. Then get some whipped cream and put it on top.
3. Next stick a biscuit in the cream.
4. Then put some more cream on the top of the biscuit.
5. Then put a marshmellow on top.
6. Then burn the top of the marshmellow.
7. And then sprinkle chocolate all around.

On Monday we went to the chocolate museum it looked yummy.
There are sculptures made out of chocolate.

[This blog was written by Jo on the train coming back from Barcelona to Valencia - 21 January 2008]

The Best Christmas Present!!!

2007-12-26T18:13:00.001Z

Mummy and I opening our Christmas presents

This year on Christmas day I got a telescope, Chessman pro. (Computer chess), magic wand, leather diary and lots more. After we opened our presents we went to LA PEPICA with Gran, Diana, Laurence and Lena, where we ate at least 10 courses (I drank a bit of Champagne and Wine.)

Mummy at La Pepica

Feliz Navidad from Valencia

2007-12-25T20:39:00.002Z

Well, we've had a great Christmas with the family so far. We thought we ought to follow some Spanish traditions and some British ones. Probably the net effect will be that the children will end up with far more presents than they need and the parents will consume far more food or alcohol than they require...

Diana, Thayer, Laurence and Lena arrived at VLC airport on Thursday morning whilst Chris and Jo were enjoying their last couple of days at school. The usual mid-morning traffic through the outskirts of Valencia delayed our convoy trip back to the apartment, having already spent the best part of an hour trying to rent a car for Diana at the airport. Lesson for the holiday: book cars in advance or expect inflated prices, or worse still, no available cars!

We spent a leisurely morning at Cabanyal Market down by the beach on Friday and managed to locate a suitable turkey (dead!), fruit and veg for the Christmas festivities. Having selected the most suitably-sized turkey, the butcher was all for slicing the bird up like a bacon joint as she raised her hand with an enormous meat cleaver, readied for action. Surprisingly, roasting whole chickens or turkeys in Spain is still seen as something quaintly English, or more likely, viewed with complete disbelief. For the evening, a trip into town to see Circo Wonderland - one of the few remaining animal circuses still touring in Europe. We saw this show a few years ago further up the coast, north of Barcelona, and whilst there isn't the glitz of a Cirque du Soleil show (we saw the latest Cirque du Soleil show - Delerium - at Feria Valencia the week before - wow!), it is nevertheless an exceptional show where the animals all appear to be extremely well-treated, well-fed and happy in their roles. This may be a controversial view, but the animals are, in the main, rare species, and one wonders how some of them will ever survive if not kept in zoos, employed in circuses and exploited in no ways more sinister than trying to demonstrate to young children the value of these beautiful creatures to the wild, and their likely fate if we do not do more to protect them in their natural habitats. Sadly, constant rain after the show somewhat dampened our walk through the various plazas of the old city as we tried to count the numerous Christmas streetlighting decorations up and down every side street. Such reminders of the UK (not!). Unlike the UK, most European cities - not least Spanish cities - manage to celebrate Christmas each year with the most fantastic lighting displays up and down every street and plaza - and wherever there is room, flowerbeds are full to bursting with poinsettias and other seasonal plants. We don't see the newspaper headlines following yet another local authority or chamber of commerce complaining that it can 'no longer afford to make a contribution to the lights this year', because in Spain, it is obviously something which is regarded as the right thing to do. No self-respecting community, it seems, would permit the apathy and disregard shown for seasonal public displays, by some British towns and cities, to permeate here...

Handbags stands of the Requena market... how can one escape without purchase?
And then to Saturday, for the return match to show off Requena to the rest of the family. With the weather in the region not quite as bad as the UK at Christmas, it was nevertheless cold and rainy. With Requena up in the hills, preparing for a few degrees south of the weather in Valencia is definitely a good idea. Having arrived, the rain stopped and the temperature settled down to a damp 10°C or so whilst we tramped out to the Saturday morning market doing Santa's work, picking up the bargains of the day, before settling down to another first class menu del día lunch at Mesón del Vino - the town's fantastic Michelin-listed restaurant.

Museu de Les Ciències Príncep Felip

A trip to the Science Museum (Museu de Les Ciències Príncep Felip) at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia was voted the favoured activity for the children and mums on Sunday, whilst the remaining adults did some of the last-minute gift and food shopping. And yesterday, Christmas Eve was spent out and about at the famous concrete Gulliver childrens' park, and amazingly, despite the obvious lack of appearance (ever!) of any Health and Safety automatons, no child was seriously injured. Final, final last minute presents were obtained from El Corté Inglés and Carrefour, followed by a quick bike trip to show off Plaza de la Virgen to Diana. The evening was spent cooking and eating the first of our Christmas meals (this is where we follow Spanish and English traditions with Christmas celebrated on 24 and 25 December, plus the most important date of the Spanish Christmas calendar - Threes Kings Day on 6 January).

Celeb photos at La Pepica, taken by star paparazzi photographer, Chris Whitehead
[L-R] i) Laurence and Liz; ii) Diana and Lena; iii) Jo and Sandi; iv) Margaret

Today is Christmas Day and it has been a little hectic! There were tears late last night when some children found themselves unable to await Santa's call by sleeping through the night. This caused a near meltdown in Santa's schedule, but the evening was saved, because it appeared that Santa did visit after all, but was unable to deliver presents to the children's beds on account of them still being awake. They had to make do with Santa's delivery to the balcony outside on the ninth floor, but he didn't seem to deliver any less presents! Today, more presents continued to flow throughout the morning before we departed for a sumptuous multi-course meal at the ever-wonderful La Pepica restaurant with new friends Sandi and Margaret. La Pepica never fails to impress - a restaurant down on La Malvarossa beach which was the regular haunt of Ernest Hemingway amongst hordes of other others celebrities from across the globe, in days gone by. I think it is high time that the management awarded us some kind of 'frequent flyer' loyalty points as it is becoming a bit of a regular haunt of ours now - and we are very definitely not of the 'celeb' variety. A four-hour marathon meal with plenty of festive cheer and we were ready for a dusk walk along the beach before retiring back to the apartment to catch up with the day's Christmas TV. There are still plenty more days of Christmas remaining and with a week-long trip back to the UK and the 'Three Kings Parade' in Valencia to look forward to on our return, I'd better sign off for the moment and get some sleep... or another glass of wine!

A night at the opera... (nearly!)

2007-12-09T00:20:00.001Z

Audiences arriving for Carmen at El Palau de les Arts

[This blog was written but held over from 7 November 2007]

It's been a while since my last post and indeed I hardly have time tonight but will try to get a few words and photos out before sleep gets the better of me.

In the past couple of weeks, we have had a total of 12 guests staying with us - one after the other - ranging in age from 2 to... well, OK, I promised not so say, but certainly bus pass +!

As if visitors were not enough to keep us busy, we've been watching the development of our two new business websites back in the UK and another issue of the magazine appears to have put itself out to the readers (only joking team!). We've been helping with the English translation of a Spanish academic paper about women entrepreneurs, written by a friend here in Valencia. And then we've queued for some opera tickets. Oh yes, that was it. The time-consuming part of the past fortnight or so has been what to most people, should have been the relatively simple exercise of booking 4 tickets for the opera - Carmen at the Palau de les Arts in the City of Arts and Sciences - for this Friday evening...

It's really quite a long story, and it starts off 50 years ago almost to the day when the City of Valencia woke up to one of the worst floods in its history. The River Turia, which, for most months of the year remained a dry riverbed with all but a trickle of water to be seen, burst its banks following torrential rainstorms. Over 100 people were drowned as a result and the City finally took a decision which had been kicked back and forth for most of the previous century - that is to divert the river to run south of the city. Indeed not only was the river subsequently diverted, but for good measure, the new river wall on the side of the City was built at a higher level than that on the outside, meaning that if ever such another flood were to manifest itself again in the future, sadly the folks living beyond the southern perimeter of the newly diverted river would bear the brunt. Anyway, I digress...

Thus having dug a whole new riverbed, the good citizens of Valencia were offered the opportunity to replace the now completely empty riverbed with a late twentieth century six lane motorway, taking traffic all the way into and back out of the historic city centre. Can you imagine such an opportunity? Can you then possibly understand how such citizens then simply rejected out of hand this generous offer, instead deciding to convert the old riverbed into an area of peace and tranquility through the development of 9km of sports, leisure, parks and open spaces? How could they?!

Roll forward to the 1990s and the grand plan for the area just to the north of the beach and the port areas, which was handed over to, amongst others, Valencia's own son, the world-class architect phenomenon, Santiago Calatrava (see earlier posts) for the creation of a new science museum, planetarium and IMAX cinema and opera house (plus a couple of bridges, stunning gardens, car parks and other incidentals). The past decade has seen the creation of these masterpieces which have of late, put Valencia squarely on the 'cities to see' list for millions of weekend tourists from across Europe and beyond.

The opera house - perhaps his pièce de résistance, is still an unfinished project, though has completed its first full opera season earlier this year despite a number of modifications and other ongoing construction works which continue to this day (cranes and engineers seem to come and go as frequently as visitors to the box office). As you can witness from our many photographs, the opera house building itself is of world class standard and seen close-to is quite an amazing sight - a feat of human imagination and construction skills. With such a stunning building filling much of the view from our apartment terrace, we could hardly fail to attend at least one performance of an opera, and what better than to pick out that Spanish (well, French, actually) classic, Carmen. Thus, we watched for announcements on the opera house's website and scoured the local press to find out when the single tickets would go on sale (with opera seasons featuring numerous productions over a number of months, it is customary for subscribers - regular bookers who purchase a season ticket to many or all of the productions - to buy their tickets first, before the organisation allows mere mortals such as ourselves to pick over the scraps of any remaining tickets!). Eventually, through our own investigative efforts and those of our friends and acquaintances, we discovered that the box office would open for single ticket sales at 9am on Monday 23 October (in the UK, a management process known as 'marketing' is employed when an organisation wishes to communicate with its potential customers - here it seems, in both arts and other related leisure activities, the process has yet to fully take off - one of only a very few gripes we've had so far in relation to our overall experiences of living here, and something which seems to fail to happen with alarming regularity. Often the lack of advanced information about events leads us to wonder how organisers ever achieve an audience or participants at all - such a pity in most cases, when the events themselves are of such high quality). Anyway, another digression...

So there we were a few weekends ago during the opening few days of a very moving exhibition at MUVIM, Valencia's museum of the enlightenment, in which the events surrounding the flood of fifty years ago were on display in La riada que cambió. Less than a week later, the skies clouded over, torrential rains ensued, and a repeat, albeit on a far smaller scale, of the Turia flood was back on the cards. Cue much gnashing of teeth amongst the city fathers as the entire Calatrava river development took a deluge of floodwater. L'hemisferic lost several days of trading and much equipment, the science museum took an early bath, but the opera house fared worst of all with major floods in the lower areas and the loss of the auditorium's hydraulic lifts, the entire box office computer system, costumes, sets and more besides. With the new opera season about to kick-off, complete and utter chaos ensued for several days whilst Calatrava's team tried to figure out what to do; customers with tickets for the forthcoming season wondered what would become of their season, and, those without tickets (us!) made desperate attempts to figure out whether any performances would be going ahead this year - or even next - and even, whether or not we would be able to obtain tickets!

Several days after the rains, and with no news forthcoming from the opera house, Liz made her way across the riverbed bright and early at 7.30am on 23 October, to be amongst the first in what we anticipated to be a lengthy queue for Carmen tickets. People began joining the queue throughout the first hour - arriving by taxi, on foot, by car. Many had taken the morning off work in order to ensure they achieved their ambition of seeing the show. At around 8.45am, the front doors of the opera house opened and a man in a suit walked outside with a sandwich board which he carefully plonked in front of the now lengthening queue and walked back inside, locking the door behind him. The sign announced that the box office would be closed until further notice 'due to the rain', and that was it! No apology, no proper explanations, no preparation for any future announcements. Those gathered - many of whom had travelled from across the regions - and at great expense - were furious but quietly went off their separate ways.

Some days later, when a clearer picture of the flood damage had become emerged, it was announced that one entire production had been cancelled and that performances for other productions had been rescheduled. On the grapevine, we heard that, despite announcements to the contrary, costumes for at least one production - and some of the sets - had been damaged (we saw costumes outside the opera house, drying in the sun). We also heard that orchestra rehearsals were taking place in stinking flood damaged rooms and that some musicians were doubtful as to whether any production could go ahead. Finally, it was announced that the Carmen production would go ahead and that single ticket buyers (us!) could go along and queue for a repeat performance on Monday 29 October at 9am sharp. This time, the announcement, which was publicised across the region, stated that the first 300 people in the queue would receive a numbered voucher, and this would give them an opportunity to buy up to 4 seats for one performance of Carmen on one of three specified box office days. Oh, and the other item of 'news' was that during the rains, the entire box office computer system had been 'lost' and that a new system would be installed within a further month... and that all single tickets for the immediate production of Carmen would be 'manually produced' (that is, hand-written onto the auditorium plan and the tickets hand-written in exchange for cash only payments!).

Queuing for Carmen tickets

Expecting something of an adventure, Liz duly arrived for the queue at around 7.30am, to find there were already the best part of a couple of hundred people already in the queue, with more arriving by the minute. The newly-arrived were all being carefully placed throughout the queue by a casually-dressed but official-looking man with a clipboard. The people arriving all appeared to have been 'pre-booked' into what we had otherwise thought was a 'first-come, first-served' queue. When I joined Liz half an hour later, the queue was growing by the minute and the man with a clipboard had apparently organised everyone into their pre-agreed places. I decided that, even with our limited abilities with the Spanish language, I had to learn how a supposedly free and fair queuing system appeared to have been pre-arranged and what the opera house thought it was doing running such a shoddy operation. It might have been better if Mr Clipboard had been unable to speak or understand English, because he quite clearly explained to us that he was 'just a member of the public' who thought it would be better to do his public duty by 'organising the queue' so that people didn't have to arrive too early and that when they'd called him on his mobile or arrived in person, they'd simply given them his name and he'd numbered them and placed them in the queue. We were furious and explained that, in Liz's case, she'd already been waiting more than an hour and that probably more than 100 people had arrived after her and been 'placed' in the queue. We were joined by a lovely German lady who had driven up from Denia (an hour's car journey away), who also failed to understand the helpful organisation of the queue, having waited for most of the past hour herself. With a bit of supportive jostling from others in the queue, we were 'allocated' number 307 (out of the limited 300 places!), and the German lady stayed with us despite not having been allocated a number. Finally at around 9.30am, the queue started moving and this continued for 45 minutes. We continued to see new people arrive and join the queue ahead of us (others had obviously been phoning friends on mobiles and others had been 'holding' places open for colleagues. We saw some people complain to the opera house security staff that they had 'official' numbers in the queue, but the security staff, rightly, ignored these pleas as the 'organised' queue had not been officially sanctioned. Finally at around 10.15am we got to the front of the queue to collect our official 'turno' ticket - number 286 (quite what happened to the missing 21 people we still don't know!) and our German friend got number 287. Since the box office was only able to deal with 100 numbered 'turno' vouchers per day and our number was in the final 100, we were told to come back at 10am in a couple of days - to repeat the entire queuing process for a third time - only this time, for actual tickets!

To make a long story only very slightly shorter, the process was duly repeated on Wednesday, two days later, and we waited for a further 2½ hours before being relieved of the best part of €350 - in cash - for four (hand-written) tickets to Carmen some 9 days later.

Having expended so much blood, sweat and (nearly) tears for our tickets, there was plenty of excitement and anticipation (talk of the need for new clothes, shoes etc) prior to the performance in the intervening week. When the big day finally arrived, we turned up at the opera house appropriately attired for what was a sell-out occasion - only to discover that Mr Clipboard had managed to secure his own tickets for Carmen - for the same night - and had carefully plonked himself one row ahead and five seats to the left of mine. I have never (since childhood) so desperately wanted to sit right behind someone so much just so I could simply flick his ear throughout the evening! The performance itself though, was great.

Sometime in a future post, I may ramble on a little about the inside of the great opera house which is strange, to say the least, though what it lacks in some of its design features it more than makes up in its (unintentionally humoured) use of graphic icons to explain the do's and don'ts of acceptable behaviour within the auditorium. Our favourite was the sign which appears to direct people the 'his 'n' hers' shared bathrooms which appear to insist on a communal squat - or maybe we misunderstood?

Home shopping in Lliria, lunch in Segorbe

2007-11-24T22:25:00.002Z

The sights at Segorbe

Being Saturday and being sunshine and rich blue skies means time for a little exploring. Today we started with a shopping trip to Lliria, some 20km north of Valencia on the motorway towards Ademuz. We came across Lliria and indeed its British supermarket, Spainsbury's (yes that's right, Spainsbury's - I cannot believe the lawyers have let that one get away) through the British friend of a Spanish friend who assured us that this was the supermarket to get all those 'hard-to-find' products from good old Blighty. He turned out to be as good as his word, for Spainsbury's did indeed stock all those essentials from Marmite and PG Tips to Christmas puddings and custard powder (as well as those other traditional British ingredients including Chicken Korma and Tikka cook-in sauces!). It turns out that Spainsbury's does home deliveries just like like its UK nearly-namesake - we might be clicking some more online orders soon!

View of Segorbe looking across from its castle

Then, aiming for the town of Segorbe, we drove cross country on one of the most stunning mountain drives so far (there have been several and they've all been stunning). This trip included some of the windiest roads we've driven for a while and from the village of Gatova onwards, the roads were narrow and look like they've hardly been resurfaced for many a year. The scenery was breathtaking - similar in parts to the red rock canyons of Sedona in Arizona. Along the first part of the drive, the roads had very definitely received a recent investment - considerable sums. However, the most interesting aspect of this was, to us, the fact that a cycle path, several kilometeres in length, had been buit alongside the road - some 20 metres or so away - painted green and with white markings along its entire length. Apparently the cycle path serves no useful purpose, since for all the time we drove alongside it, I saw only one cyclist making use of it - and around 100 other cyclists competing with the cars on the main carriageway.

Chris and Jo believe that they are the first British children ever to drink from all 50 'Fuente de los 50 Caños'. Is this a legitimate Guinness Record?

Arriving at Segorbe in the late morning, we were treated to pleasant late autumn weather (similar to recent visits to Requena) which though brightly sunlit, was mitigated by the coolness associated with being at a higher altitude than Valencia (though still probably somewhat lower down than Requena). A brisk walk up the hill to the incredibly helpful Oficina de Turismo to get our bearings (plus town map and colour booklet guide of places to see) and we were off to discover what was left of the town's castle. The views from the top are stunning throughout the 360° sweep. We stopped at the small Bar Valencia in the town centre for an excellent menú del día and then off back down the hill to discover the Fuente de los cincuenta caños - 50 taps out of which permanently gush the town's natural mineral water. The fifty taps represent each one of the fifty provinces of Spain. We saw several people filling their plastic bottles and water carriers while we were there - before Chris and Jo got the bright idea of sampling the produce of every one of the fifty taps - before getting back into the car, soaking wet, for the 50km toilet-less trip back to Valencia! A very pleasant day out, and having missed the town's current 'foodie' celebration - I Muestra Gastronomica de la Seta y el Cordero which is coming to an end, and arriving at the wrong time of year for its most famous annual shindig, Entrada de toros y caballos (entry of the bulls and horses), I can feel one or two return trips in the offing.

Batman (and woman!)

2007-11-11T08:35:00.001Z

Any experts on bat removal out there? How does one deal with a bat in the bedroom at 7am on a Sunday morning... on the ninth floor?

Well, this is a problem in which, as of this morning, we are now experienced! Liz awoke to the sound of frantic flapping and a black blob squeezing it's way through the gap in our bedroom window. The blob, once successful in its attempt to enter the bedroom, promptly fell to the floor and scurried under the bed to continue flapping... at which point, Liz's own flapping awoke me too! "I don't want to worry you, but there's a bird in the room!", she said. Not quite fully conscious at this point, I soon was as I saw the blob scurry across the bedroom floor. "It's a bat!", she said. "Er... throw a towel over it to stop it moving!", I said. At this point, a video camera would have been useful to capture the comic element of the situation. Having thrust the towel across the bat, we decided it must have been seriously injured during its arrival in the bedroom as it was no longer moving. We then scratched our heads trying to work out how to get the bat back outside without having to touch it (secretly, I was wondering how I was going to convince Liz to do the deed!). "Get a cardboard box and a piece of flat card!", I said, vaguely remembering seeing this trick done on TV, though probably not by Paul Daniels!

The method: Now, don't try this at home children (unless you need to rid your bedorom of a panicked bat!). With cardboard box suitably trimmed and a sheet of flat card at the ready, carefully slide the card under the towel whilst gently dropping the cardboard box on top of the whole pile. Don't panic and scream when you hear flapping and scratching coming from under the box and especially when you see bits of wing and leg protruding from the edges of the temporary cardboard cage, because you really are bigger than the bat and believe it or not, the bat is more panicked than you will ever be! Ending up with a bat in a box, you will the realise that, being situated on the ninth floor of an apartment block is not the easiest (or safest or most honourable) way to release a potentially damaged bat back into the wild. Being 7am (well probably 7.10am by the time you having finished panicking and scabbling around with towels and bits of cardboard!), and not yet having dressed for the day, is not the ideal situation to find oneself with a bat-in-a-box! Thus the method at this point is for one's wife and children to get dresed rapidly and after gingerly assigning responsibility for the cardboard cage over to the rest of the team, to retire gracefully to the shower.

The rest of the bat rescue team then took the package downstairs in the lift with the strains of Born Free ringing in my mind, whilst listening to Liz's fading instructions as the lift descended, "Be careful not to nudge the box or all three of us will be trapped in this lift with a panicked bat flying around us!"

Having reached ground level, the box was carefully placed on a flower bed at the front of the apartment block and swiftly opened, at which point the bat fell out, dusted itself off and flew away, hopefully never again to be seen in our bedroom!

Apologies for those of you who were looking forward to the photographs or video - this is one of those emergency situations where, in the heat of the moment and whilst running for cover, we were unable to locate cameras for this breaking news story. However, the children have drawn their own pictures and will be recounting the entire episode to Blue Peter in the hopes of winning their Gold Blue Peter Badges for saving an endangered animal.

Duxford eat your heart out...

2007-10-23T22:43:00.002+01:00

Eurofighter Typhoon

A very pleasant if noisy day on the beach on Sunday with what I believe is now the annual Air Show at Malvarrosa Beach - well it's the fourth one so far. I'm sure I'm going to have something to say about arts and tourism marketing in a future post - and it may not be 100% positive - but to set the scene for that future post, we only knew about the event through one friend and through a thirty-minute concerted information-drilling exercise on the otherwise excellent Communitat Valenciana website. That all aside, the air show was excellent and featured a range of military and exhibition aircraft undertaking a number of daring and complex acrobatic manoeuvres throughout the day. For me the highlight was the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft which was not only by far the noisiest beast of the day, but was a spectacular sight. Other highlights included skywriting vapour trails, synchronised helicopter manoeuvres, seaplanes, parachute displays (interesting that by far the biggest round of applause was when one parachutist unleashed a huge Valenciana flag - the applause for the Spanish flag when unveiled in a similar manner, seemed, to me, a little more muted).

Patrulla Aguila flying in formation

The final highlight was the equivalent of the Red Arrows - Patrulla Aguila (Patrol Eagle) with their aerobatic exhibition, courtesy of Ejercito del Aire (the Spanish Air Force).

Requena

2007-10-20T22:00:00.001+01:00

Saturday market at Requena

Thirty minutes drive inland from Valencia is wine country and until you exit the E3 motorway you would never have a clue about the surprise that awaits nearly 700m above sea level. We discovered the town of Requena in various guide books - whether it was the thought of the locally-produced, full-blooded red wine, the picturesque streets or the caves below the town which attracted us is anyone's guess. The promise of great weather also helped in our decision, and having set out by car reasonably early this morning (OK, it was nearly 10.30am, but we are adapting to Spanish time!), we headed in the direction of Madrid. Once having left Valencia and entered the countryside, the beautiful blue skies rapidly turned to very low cloud and plummeting temperatures (dropping from nearly 20° to around 13° in 10 minutes) and we finally turned off the motorway towards Requena some thirty or forty minutes later. From the outskirts of the town, Requena really is a well-kept secret (aside from frequent mentions in the tourist books), but having managed to find a parking slot in a side street, we were within 50 yards of the town centre and the Saturday morning spectacle of an extended open air market right the way down the town's main tree-lined avenue.

Restaurants on the Requena town square

Walking up the hill into the historic part of the town, the weather took a turn for the better. At first a hint of blue sky through the fast moving clouds, but within minutes, and as fast as the clouds had moved in earlier, the entire sky had cleared, leaving pure strong sunlight and deep blue autumn skies for the remainder of the day, though the altitude of the town at 700m kept the temperatures a few degrees below those back at the beach. From the top of the hill, the town square is not advertised, but wandering through the narrow cobbled streets with typical Spanish whitewashed buildings, it appears that all routes lead, ultimately, to the centre.

Touring the caves

After a brief wait, we took the 40-minute tour of the network of caves that run below the town, used since the 8th Century, for a range of purposes including food and wine storage, burial pits and, in times of strife, to hide people.

Artefacts from the Requena Caves

The size of the earthenware pots is impressive, standing at around 7 feet tall and almost up to the roof of the cave. Quite how people managed to either fill or extract produce from those enormous works of porcelain art is anyone's guess. However, for me the most interesting facts concerned the use of the caves as communal burial pits. The crypt was only discovered 25 years ago, and over 40 lorry-loads of bones were removed for re-burial. That must have been some exercise. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the caves were used mainly for wine storage - a much more pleasant prospect.

Having followed our guide book to the letter, after a stroll through the open-air market (with relatively few Euros spent on jewellery throughout the process!), we ambled into Meson del Vino, a Michelin-recommended inn, for a wonderful salad and seafood paella, washed down with the restaurant's own locally-produced red house wine. All in all, a great day trip, and one I'd be quite happy to repeat with any friends who care to visit us over the next few months...

Castles (and smoke!) in the air

2007-10-14T22:50:00.001+01:00

Xativa Castle

Recovering from the mid-life crisis of my birthday the previous day, might best be described as 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'! Sunday last, we decided to pay a visit to 'Titanic - the Exhibition' - a more-or-less year-long audio-described tour of photographs and 'memorabilia' from one of the world's most notable human catastrophes of the last century. Situated underneath l'Umbracle - yet another Santiago Calatrava architectural masterpiece in the City of Arts and Sciences - the Titanic tour was a triumph of presentation and fascinating for people of all ages, as the whole event was seen through the stories of those who survived and perished on that ship. A great way to spend a couple of hours. In the evening, we returned to the nearby Hemisferic, Calatrava's IMAX cinema-cum-planetarium to see the documentary film about the rediscovery of the Titanic wreck and the first few submarine trips down to the bottom of the ocean to recover some of the many artefacts. All in all, a thoroughly worthwhile event and the exhibition remains in Valencia until March 2008, so any of our guests visiting us before Spring next year will be offered this treat!

It's been an interesting week for several reasons. Firstly, unlike the UK, Spain seems to plonk its Festivals (Bank Holidays) wherever they fall in the calendar and in this case, we celebrated Valencia Day (Día de la Comunidad Valenciana) on Tuesday and Spain Day (Día de la Hispanidad) on Friday, so with two non-contiguous holidays, the children have had a disjointed school week. On top of this, it is 50 years this week since the great River Turia Flood (13 and 14 October 1957), and as if to mark the event (we did, but more of that later), Thursday night saw the heavens open and torrential rain, thunder and lightning storms over many hours on Thursday night to Friday morning, with the resultant flash floods and on-going blustery weather. I should hasten to add that, having watched archive footage of the '57 flood, the squalls of this week bore no comparison.

Chris, Sandra, Jo and Susana at Xativa Castle

So, Valencia Day: With our friends Manoli, Angel, Susana and Sandra, we made our way inland to the city of Xativa, around 40 kilometres from Valencia, to walk around the castle which provides both a beautiful vista of the city below, and is itself, a stunning, restored and well-maintained gem reflecting Xativa's past importance as a major city from the Valenciana region.

Now, we drove to the castle after deciding that the festivities of the day would not be overly grand in the city of Valencia itself. We heard later that, well, "they sort of blew up the city centre at lunchtime!" which seems to be code for the local practice of igniting fireworks whatever the time of day or night. Mascletàs (as the daytime fireworks are known) are let off around 1pm or 2pm at various times of year, notably Fallas in March as well as Valencia Day, and, it seems, almost any other day when there are a few spares kicking around. They are loud - deafeningly loud - and we didn't miss out by being 40 kilometres away in Xativa - they've heard of them there too!

Marching bands celebrating Día de la Comunidad Valenciana

However, if disappointed not to have been "blown up" in Valencia at lunchtime, we ambled our way down to the Turia riverbed by the Palau de la Musica at dusk for the finale celebrations of the day, to see local dancing, marches and music. We did wonder why we appeared to be going in the opposite direction to the children and young families who appeared to be leaving the festivities. "It's over", said Liz. "Let's just go there for the walk then", said I.

We saw the knights on horseback

A colourful and eventful evening was obviously on the cards, and pretty soon we discovered why the young children and families had beaten a path home not twenty minutes before we arrived...

Human sparklers like you've never seen before

Quite who had been employed to walk around as human incendiary devices, I am not sure but it made the most spectacular sight, though the acrid smoke was more than many could take after a couple of minutes and I found myself diving for fresh air after every few camera shots. I kept thinking, "I wonder what the Health and Safety Reps back in the UK would make of all this. Has anyone done a risk assessment?!"

Birthday treat: mid-life crisis or mis-spent youth? You decide!

2007-10-10T22:38:00.001+01:00

Brian, Chris and Jo celebrating someone's forty-something birthday on roller blades!

OK, birthdays only come around once a year and although not a particularly special milestone this year, there is something nagging at me about still being able to do most things a nine or seven year-old can do. Thus it was that this year, after promising myself for several years, I finally got myself a pair of roller-blades for my birthday. Laugh, you may well do, but I did manage to stay vertical the entire day whilst 'blading' around the Palau de la Musica in the Turia riverbed and later in the day at the America's Cup Port which has an amazing expanse of tarmac and no one on it for the majority of the time. Chris and Jo have also become quite proficient at skating now, having spent a similar amount of time on their new respectively blue and pink rollerblades - all courtesy the dear-old Decathlon sports hypermarket on the outskirts of Valencia.

The rest of my birthday was equally rewarding. In the evening, our friend Lisa kindly babysat the kids whilst we disappeared off for a meal followed by a trip to Babel, Valencia's answer to the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, to see Christopher Zalla's new Sundance Festival-winning film, Padre Nuestro. As somewhat long-in-the-tooth marketers, the marketing of events never ceases to underwhelm us, and this was no different. We spent most of the previous week trying to search out a film of sufficient quality, preferably with some subtitles so we could improve our Spanish, secure in the knowledge we could at least understand the plot. Padre Nuestro was firstly advertised - deeply within one website - with only a starting date and no times. A cycle ride to the cinema two days in advance resulted in no further information as the place was shut up and no publicity material was posted in or outside the venue. On the evening of the performance, the times were suddenly posted, plus the fact that the film was in 'Inglés / Español'. Having committed to the event, we duly sat down to discover about 10 lines spoken in English (and subtitled into Spanish) and the rest of the film spoken in Spanish with no subtitles in any language! What we really need her is a local Trading Standards inspector! Still, we enjoyed the movie and managed to figure out the majority of the plot. I'm still not sure how good the film was though, because without more identifiable language, it's hard to tell!

With the movie beginning at 11.00pm - considered only early to mid-evening here, we departed for home around 1.15am, with several more movies due to start well into the early hours of Sunday morning, and the temperature around us - in early October - in the mid-twenties. Now that's what I call ideal weather for a great autumn birthday!

Lessons for the UK: No 2 - the bike

2007-09-29T14:40:00.001+01:00

Brian, Chris and Jo at XI Día de la Bicicleta - Valencia

In many ways Cambridge and Valencia are similar. Well, they're both flat!. OK, that's the end of the similarities. Or its it? Valencia seems to fancy itself as a competitor to Cambridge if only in it's apparent new-found love of 'la bicicleta'. The newer parts around the City of Arts & Sciences, the America's Cup Port, the beach and some areas within the old city itself have been transformed by the creation of cycle paths. The Turia riverbed which runs from the port all the way up to the north of the city contains an intertwined string of cycle paths with exit and entry ramps and most of the bridges along its entire length.

Some of the thousands of families taking part in the XI Día de la Bicicleta

More than that, Valencia seems to be catching the cycling bug in a bigger - and, some would say - more creative way than the UK. Just off the Turia riverbed about half way along its length are the beautiful gardens of Jarines del Real (the Royal Gardens - also known as Los Viveros) which surround the Museo de Ciencias Naturales. One particular area of the gardens is memorable for all children under the age of twelve or so - it has been constructed as a mini-road layout for bikes, complete with traffic signs, roundabouts, motorway flyovers and childrens play areas dotted around throughout the entire road system. Our kids absolutely love the park - as much for the cycling and learning basic road sense - as for the swings, slides and tunnels. What an original and creative way to encourage kids to enjoy the open air, practice their cycling in a safe environment, learn road sense and play on the various park apparatus - whilst mum and dad catch up on the latest issue of the international Guardian! Having seen the recent campaign to keep open the local Milton Country Park just outside Cambridge - a perfect place for outdoor family activities which are sympathetic to the environment, I think this is one trick that has been missed to date!

The mini-road layout is not a total oasis in Valencia. Last weekend we heard about an annual Día de la Bicicleta (Day of the Bicycle) event, due to take place on Sunday. We heard about it with twelve hour's notice late on Saturday night, and despite digging around on the Internet and paying an unsuccessful late night visit to the Day's sponsor, El Corté Inglés to register (registrations having closed the previous Thursday!), we turned up at 9am on Sunday morning to find somewhere around 5,000 families and their bikes queueing up, ready to set off on a 12km ride through all parts of the city - old and new - down to the America's Cup Port and la Malvarrosa beach and back. Again, what a fantastic event and what a great way to involve such large numbers of families in a truly community-oriented event on a Sunday morning. With all the messages about leaving cars behind, finding alternative means of transport for work and recreation, reducing the carbon footprint, staying healthy and reducing obesity - why has this idea not taken off in the cycling visits of the UK? Día de la Bicicleta is now in its 11th year. It is sponsored by the El Corté Inglés, the leading department store of Spain - again what a great brand link. Within Valencia, the event is organised by Bici Club Valencia and supported by the city and the tourist board. Surely an event such as this could easily be rolled out once a year in towns and cities where cycling is already a major mode of transport and this could be held up as an exemplar to those who should be following suit?

Lessons for the UK: No 1 - looking after the environment

2007-09-26T12:19:00.002+01:00

The midnight run

It never ceases to amaze us. Everywhere we seem to be, day or night, sunshine or cloud (a rare occurence!), we are confronted by the sight of dustcarts emptying bins, roadsweeping vans washing and scrubbing pavements, mowing public lawns, trimming trees, emptying drains and other public works designed to maintain the appearance of the city. It's not simply the city of Valencia - we noticed it last year when visiting smaller towns and villages. It has become something of a joke between us. Every road and every pavement outside our apartment (and there are a lot, believe me) is swept at least once every 24 hours - without any exaggeration. The usual utterance from one or other when the sound of whirring brushes starts is: "Well, they haven't swept since breakfast time!"

Street cleaning by hand

I have finally decided that it deserves a mention on the blog. OK, so the noise of srubbing brushes is a minor irritant when it starts to compete with the delightful sounds of the nightly (occasionally daily) firework display, but what has really forced comment this morning is the sight of a city employee scrubbing the inside and outside of our bus shelter downstairs. Now precisely how often does one see a sight like that in the UK?

Street cleaning by machine

The whole of the City of Arts and Sciences (and the city centre of Valencia itself) remains permanently spotless (apart from the piles of dog s**t randomly and occasionally subtly distributed along pavements - something of a paradox when one considers the mown, trimmed, bleached, scraped and scrubbed landscape that surrounds it) and it seems that people have a basic pride in how things look. Gardening in the Jardin de la Turia is an on-going daily activity on an industrial scale.

Within any kilometre stretch of the Turia riverbed on any weekday, you'll see upwards of 30 park staff cleaning, mowing, trimming, strimming or tidying the beautiful surrounds

It's not a complete paradise though. Aside from the regularly-cleared excrement, spray-painting artists provide more than their fair share of 'contemporary art' throughout the city and surrounding area, which is something of a pity when set against the "it's-so-clean-you-can-eat-off-the-floor pavements".

And the same to you, too!.

It's even more of a pity when some of the abuse has been carefully crafted in English - now is that a Spanish student trying to perfect their mastery of international linguistics, or is this the result of one of those cheap Luton-Valencia lager-fuelled stag weekend trips?

Sagunto? Sagunt? Saguntum? My Arse...

2007-09-16T15:10:00.001+01:00

The controversially refurbished Roman amphitheatre at Sagunto

A beautiful town that boasts a range of names over the years - from the 'Roman 'Saguntum', the Valenciano 'Sagunt' and the Castilian 'Sagunto', this settlement, famous for it's sprawling castle, was once known only as Arse! Try telling the to seven and nine year-olds with a straight face! Only yesterday, we were visiting the 'Colon' district of Valencia (more later), so we're unsure as to which parts of the anatomy are next, and whether they will follow the slang or medical terminology!

Brian, Chris and Jo - spot the ruin!

So, Sagunto (since we are attempting to learn Castillian Spanish at the moment), or more precisely the castle ruins, was the destination of today's visit. Inspired by research for Chris's Roman project at his new school, we drove 25km up the motorway from Valencia to pick our way through the town and into the hills where the ruins remain to this day, covering a stretch of around a kilometre, and seven sections representing different periods in the castle's history. We were even tackled by local gypsies on our descent, who explained that this castle was where the battles with the real El Cid had taken place, not the castle of Peñiscola, used as the backdrop for Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren's 1961 film of the same name, some 100km or so to the north (and which we had visited last year).

Liz and Jo amongst the ruins

Around half way up the hill stands the recently refurbished Roman amphitheatre, which remains a controversial building since the original ruins are more than dominated by the twenty-first century brick and concrete that now encase the original, turning it once again into a working open-air theatre. As with most people, we were in two minds as to whether the building should have been upgraded, but contented ourselves with the fact that there are plenty of other examples of Roman amphitheatre ruins around Europe, so turning one into a functioning building again is, perhaps, acceptable.

Definitely a worthwhile visit - and the views from the top, looking north towards Castellon and south back towards Valencia, are truly stunning.

The rest of the week

IVAM - the contemporary art museum

With Chris and Jo at school all week, we've been out exploring when not engrossed in work. We managed various trips to pick up necessary items of shopping - schoolbooks for Chris and Jo and other household items for the apartment. On occasion we have managed slightly more cultural trips including a visit to IVAM, the contemporary art museum (aka Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno). We felt the building somewhat over-compensated for the art, but it looks like we managed to visit in between exhibitions as a couple of the galleries were roped off. However, a future visit might be needed!

Museo de Bellas Artes

We also managed a cycle along the Turia riverbed one evening after school to the Museo de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts) which houses a spectacular range of artefacts and paintings. With only an hour or so of daylight (and a dodgy rear puncture on Jo's bike - now repaired!), we felt a little rushed and will return again soon. In this case not only were the objects and paintings fascinating, the building itself has undergone a stunning renovation - worth a tour in itself.

Mercado de Colon

Yesterday we managed to discover another little gem quite close to the apartment. the Colon Market is another stunningly revamped building (style and money seem to be in great abundance wherever we look) which houses an impressive-looking food court at ground level, with the ever-present El Corté Inglés filling up much of the below-ground level. And what's more, Colon Market is right in the centre of the shoe-selling district. Why do I get the feeling we'll be paying frequent visits back to the area in future?!

A trip up the coast to Port Saplaya

To round the evening off, we met up with friends, Manoli, Angel, Susana and Sandra for a short drive up the coast to Port Saplaya. Yet another hidey-hole of creative genius, Port Saplaya is a residential district out on the coast, with a range of attractive apartment blocks built up around a series of man-made canals, all of which lead out to the sea. For boat-minded people, what better place to have a holiday or weekend apartment and a mooring outside the front door than Port Saplaya? There's a small sailing club at the entrance to the canals, so again, another visit is called for during office opening hours, to see if there's a chance we might get some sailing practice in.

Looking forward to the week ahead, Liz and I are looking forward to a concert at the Palau de la Musica tomorrow evening, featuring Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition along with Mozart and something more contemporary. It will be our first venture into another of Valencia's great iconic buildings - again, a stone's throw from the apartment. Just what we need during an otherwise busy working week!

Renault rocks

2007-09-10T22:00:00.000+01:00

L'Hemisferic set for the Renault show

We've been wondering what the constant partying has been going on over the past week or so down in the Turia riverbed and tonight we got our answer when we wandered down to check out the noise and coloured lights. Still can't work out exactly what's going on but several bus loads of executives and their wives (yes, I think it probably is that way round!) were dressed to the nines (aka penguins) for some big shindig - billed as a 'product convention 2007'. A great place for a corporate bash if anyone's thinking along those lines. The caterers seem to have set up a cordoned off area by the Science Museum and are scuttling back and forth to L'Hemisferic with trays of plates and glasses loaded up with an array of exquisite-looking food and drink.

Along the Science Museum at dusk

We managed to get a few piccys whilst the coaches were arriving - looked like something from the Oscars only without the red carpet - but I doubt the fireworks, light and water show will kick off until at least midnight (it was 1am last night!)

Across to El Corte Ingles and Aqua Shoppping Centre from the Science Museum

In the meantime, Chris and Jo have now had their second day at school and today for the first time, they ventured back and forth on the El PLantio school bus.

Chris and Jo return from school

Independent or what?! Their uniforms seem to fit and so far everything they went to school in or carrying has been returned home. Day two and nothing lost, damaged or stolen!

Back to Renault - spoke too soon. The music and lights have kicked off and it's only 11.20pm! It's 500m away from us but sounds like the music is next door. I haven't seen the little man from environmental health with his traffic light and clipboard about measuring decibels and... presumably exceptions are made for this part of town!

A nightly occurrence

2007-09-06T23:34:00.001+01:00

L'hemiferic at night, originally uploaded by snowgoose1.

There I was around an hour ago, minding my own business (re-building my computer for the umpteenth time - this time, relocating it on in brand new furniture which arrived today [mainly] ahead of schedule), when an almighty explosion and sharp bursts of light caught my curiosity. Once again, they're partying over the way at L'Hemisferic in the City of Arts and Sciences. Tonight, like last night, a fantastic music, lights, water and laser show, but to end the evening, we were treated to a bunch of paragliders descending on the event with flares strapped to their boots and the most amazing array of fireworks we've seen all week!

Quite whose budget gets plundered for these spectaculars - which seem to happen on a regular but impromptu basis - is anyone's guess, but the free light and sound show from our balcony is much appreciated!

It's now 12.30am and there's still music outside and L'Hemisferic is still changing colours at a rapid rate - must be an all-nighter! Very pleasant entertainment, but I suppose I ought to call it a day soon as we have to be up bright and early to take the kids to school for their first day...

A busy few days with work and play

2007-09-05T22:34:00.000+01:00

Puente de Calatrava in Jardin del Turia

My original ambitions for this blog were for something approaching a daily paragraph or two. Perhaps not quite the hourly update with full streaming video, but whatever the preferred frequency (for both writer and reader), it is proving a struggle to generate an update more than once or twice a week at present. Perhaps once the children have started at school, in a 'non-magazine week', when we're not having our furniture ripped from under our feet (see below)... and when there's a 'Z' in the month, we'll get to a more regular post!

In the meantime, I am sitting here in a rather empty apartment - everyone has crashed out for the evening; Newsnight is on the TV here in Valencia (via the amazing Slingbox over the internet from less-than-sunny Cottenham, through the Dell laptop and by cable onto the apartment's TV set). There's something of an echo around the room tonight as nearly all our furniture has been removed and sold by our landlord who has promised to replace it all with a brand new range tomorrow morning! We're slightly nervous that if the dovetailed removal/replacement schedule doesn't work out precisely, we could be sitting here at the weekend on four plastic deckchairs with our plastic garden table as the sole remaining serviceable furniture. We have had a steady stream of buyers traipsing through the apartment tonight, like vultures circling their next meal. With Chris and Jo trying to watch a DVD before tea, they were constantly being moved around the room as people dismantled and removed the two sofas, dining room chairs, a sideboard, dining room table and more besides!

So, to the last few days which have been as busy as ever (thoughts of an easy life once we left the UK has fast dissipated!). After a fabulous day in and around Cullera last Saturday, we had a slightly more relaxing day on Sunday when we cycled all the way along the Turia riverbed (Jardin del Turia) from our apartment alongside the old city and almost up to the point where the old riverbed meets the actual River Turia, diverted around the city after the great flood of October 1957. It's around 6-7 kilometres in distance from our apartment, but the entire length is filled with an array of fascinating mini-parks, sports grounds, recreational activities, games, cafés - even a doggie-toilet for, presumably, well-trained pooches!

The doggie-toilet - complete with graphic sign - presumably for illiterate dogs?

Sunday evening, we had planned to make it to the final performance of Robert de Niro's 'The Good Shepherd' at the Filmoteca open air cinema. However, the event didn't start until 11pm, and with food and drink first, followed by a film of nearly three hours, we chickened out before leaving at around 10.30pm, and stayed in to watch one of our new Pedro Almodovar DVDs (we managed about 20 minutes!).

Filmoteca outside Palau de la Musica

This week has been a 'mag week', so we have managed to intersperse shopping, swimming with the kids and cycling with proofing and editing. It's the last few days before Chris and Jo start at their new school, so we have been spending time with them in between calls and emails to the office! Of course, the main purpose of our shopping has, over the past week or so, been concerned mainly with the acquisition of school uniforms. The last two items - school bags - are now on order from the wonderful El Corté Inglés - hopefully they'll be here by the weekend. No one mentioned the need for a mortgage when buying two children's school uniforms. With a full summer and winter uniform required for each, together with winter and summer sports kit, overalls, school bags and all the text books, we'll all be on (gluten free) bread and water for a while!

Well, the magazine has gone down - the first issue since arriving in Valencia, so it's something of a triumph (the technology worked and the team back in Cambridge did a sterling job, as ever), and so we hope to visit Chris and Jo's new school tomorrow - just one day before the start of the Autumn term. Both children are excited (we think!), though they do miss their friends back in Cottenham and have managed to phone some, email others - and publish a blog for those who just happen across the site. Fingers crossed that the new furniture arrives in the morning or it's back to the plastic suite!

Spain is FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-09-05T07:39:00.000+01:00

Chris climbing (again!) near the Gulliver park

Hello 3 days ago we went to an apartment on the beach with a swimming pool deep enough to dive.......... How Coooooooool is that.
The next day we went to Gulliver's again which was really fun.

Spain Glorious Spain

2007-09-02T13:47:00.001+01:00

Here's the beautiful view from our apartment
(photo by Chris)

Hi! We are in Spain at last, here are a few of our photos of the apartment and of Valencia.
Yesterday we went to a BIG Rice Field that went on for miles.
Over here the main religon is Catholic and we went to some of their chuches.

Jeremy and Teddy lying in my bed
(photo by Chris)

The rice fields and Cullera

2007-09-02T09:29:00.000+01:00

Rice paddy fields of Valencia

If you thought rice growing was particular to Asia, think again! With Valencia the home of the paella, it would require an awful lot of shipments to keep this dish on the menus and dining tables of millions of people. Take a 20-minute drive south of Valencia and you're into an almost Fen-like vista of rice paddy fields as far as the eye can see. The fields are irrigated through a network of waterways and the growing area extends several miles down to Cullera and beyond. Within the midst of the sea of green lies a small hillock which is home to a beautiful church and an amazing view of the entire 360° rice-growing district. Apparently the mound was formerly and island during Roman times before the local population decided to drain the area in order to plant what is today the staple crop of the region. The view and visibility is so good, we were told by the church caretaker that, last week, a major fire in Castellon, 100km to the north, could be seen clearly from the church!

View from the church

With a morning spent on the beach, a cool-off in our friends' pool and a sumptuous spicy rice and seafood dish at a local restaurant, our trip via the rice fields took us to Cullera - a town we have visited a couple of times before. Indeed, last year, we had considered relocating to Cullera because of its beach, tennis and sailing clubs - that is, before we discovered Gandia and Valencia!

Looking out across Cullera

The city is buzzing during the summer months, but as we found on a visit during February this year, it's a pretty quiet place outside the season. Still a pleasant way to end a summer's day with an ice cream at a local café, while the children burn of some excess energy in one of the mutlitude of kid's play areas!

Arrival in Valencia

2007-08-28T10:15:00.000+01:00

Chris, Jo, Liz and Brian on the apartment terrace

We all arrived safely here at the apartment on Sunday afternoon around 4.30pm, closely followed by Tim from and his wife, Diana, to show us around and hand over the keys (thanks for the bottle of bubbly!). Around two hours later, Jimbo the Scot arrived complete with around 30 boxes of our stuff plus kids bikes, folding bikes, kitchen sink etc. After filling the hallway to the point of bursting, we all managed a plate of tuna and pasta with the remnants of the bubbly.

Yesterday was an early start for most with the decanting of thirty boxes into thirty neat piles (Chris says 29 because his didn't end up in a neat pile!) and the children both went down to explore the swimming pool a couple of times (see below)

The 'piscina' (swimming pool)

Chris and Jo both made some English friends at the pool. Meanwhile, Brian spent the day fizzing over a problematic broadband connection. Despite the engineer from ONO (cable broadband company) turning up around 4 hours early, after he'd left, it was a further half day trying to get anything to work!

Of course, the biggest celebration of the day was Liz's birthday (I'm thinking of running a poll on the blogsite for people to guess her age!). Having failed to provide her with a birthday card, Chris and Jo both designed one for Brian, but then forced him to hand over 1 euro each for the results (Chris reminds me I'm operating on a line of credit as I have yet to pay!)

To round off the afternoon, a Skype call with various members of the family followed by a long cycle along the old Turia riverbed, past several playgrounds, crazy golf, past the Palau de la Musica and the Gulliver (a children's drop slide and climbing frame in the shape of a giant concrete Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels).

Some of us were up nice and early this morning, though we discovered Chris sprawled out, fast asleep on the sofa in the lounge (just like a teenager, but without the booze and fags!), but when he finally came to, he discovered a series of mosquito bites all over, so he needs a day of cold swimming pools and salty sea water to calm the itching down!

Cottenham to Valencia

The trip from Cottenham to Valencia was lots of fun and surprisingly the ferry trip from Portsmouth to Bilbao was calmer than anyone could have expected (a previous ferry trip northbound last Tuesday has seen Force 10 gales so we had anticipated a swell at the very least).

Arriving in Portsmouth on Friday evening, Chris and Jo were told off for taking a photo in the port itself (for security reasons!) which I thought was a little unfair, so I took one instead!

Portsmouth ferry terminal

The ferry was due to leave at 9.15pm, but because of the weather shenanigans earlier in the week, we finally departed at 11.30pm, by which time we were all very tired, though we still managed a three-course meal in the carvery (despite the dissuasive efforts of one of the restaurant's managers who seemed a little 'unsure' as to how to deal with people with special dietary needs - it reminded me a little of some of the better episodes of Fawlty Towers - can't remember if it was the goose-stepping episode or one of the ones where Basil abuses the diners when they ask for any particular item on the menu!). Still, the rest of the catering staff were absolutely fantastic and provided an A*** service, as if by way of an apology!

As we've said, the crossing itself was so smooth, we hardly knew we were moving. Perhaps the funniest aspect of the trip was the huge number of whale 'twitchers' (as I referred to them) on board. These folks - hundreds of them - were up on deck at all times of the day and night with cameras on tripods, binoculars, deckchairs and other gear, dressed in a weird array of clothing, eyes permanently fixed onto the horizon. I'm not certain a single one of them spotted anything other than a very occasional fin, but it was highly entertaining watching them run from one side of the ship to the other as someone called out "whale at 11 o'clock" or similar. I was dying to shout out a few false alarms just to see them all get some exercise!

Chris, Jo, Liz and Brian on board 'Pride of Bilbao'

With nothing much to do on board, we did watch a movie in the ship's small 'cinema' - more of a lecture theatre - Evan the Almighty. Very funny if you haven't seen it already.

Sunday morning we were up with the seagulls and after a rushed breakfast, we were amongst the first to depart the ship. Jimbo the Scot kindly navigated us to the motorway just outside Bilbao before we overtook him and started on our eight-hour car journey south. Coincidentally, we bumped into him again at a service station a couple of hours later before we arrived ahead of him at the apartment on Sunday afternoon. The bikes had managed to stay intact on the back of the car and within a couple of hours we had been reunited with all our luggage as Jim hit Valencia. In fact, Chris reminds me that Jim went a bit 'off course' when he got into Valencia, but one of the benefit of a 9th floor apartment is that we can see most things with a bird's eye view, so when Jim put his warning lights on,we were able to spot him and navigate him down to the apartment from over 500 metres away.

Arrival of car and bikes at the apartment

For boxes and bikes, the journey begins...

2007-08-22T22:30:00.000+01:00

Jimbo the Scot arrives in Cottenham

A completely mad panic late last night as Chris and Jo were off to bed (oh, yes... and we were in the midst of trying to get the next issue of the magazine off to bed too) when the phone went...

Jim aka 'Jimbo the Scot' called from the ship, Pride of Bilbao, as it was due to dock in Portsmouth from its Bilbao trip. Force 10 gales had delayed the ship en route, and for reasons I still cannot fully fathom (though they make perfect sense to everyone else!), he would need to alter his route around the UK for his numerous pick-ups for the journey back to Spain. This means that he would like to do the Cambridge pick-up sometime Wednesday afternoon... that is today! Well, with around 18 hours notice and a full 24 to 36 hours before he had been due to pick up our stuff, Jim arrived - thankfully to around 20 fully packed, taped and labelled boxes, 4 bikes, 4 deckchairs and our little emergency pine table which has been put up, taken down, put away, lent, lost and returned to base more times than I've had hot dinners. Well, the table and all the other weighty contents are now on their way round a quick circuit of the UK before meeting up with us again - and Jim - at Portsmouth on Friday night for the sail to Bilbao.

Jim aka 'Jimbo the Scot' packs 'em in

I spotted Jim whilst I was driving back to the office in Histon. You cannot miss the lorry! I called Liz to forewarn her and Chris and Jo were then dispatched, camera in hand, to flag him down as he arrived at the bottom of our street. I think Chris might make quite a good photographer as he gets older...

Chris and Jo inspect the lorry

Not so sure about Chris and Jo's abilities in the lorry-packing department!

Now we just have a further day-and-a-half slog packing up the car, sorting out the house - oh, and mentioning plans for our departure to our wonderful staff! Actually, the staff have - as ever - been great. We had a lovely evening out with them last week - drinks and a curry - and we were presented with a set of Pedro Almodóvar DVDs. We cannot think of anything more appropriate for our time in Spain than the collected works of Spain's foremost film director (thanks for the suggestion Emma!). Of course if the staff start misbehaving, then rather than carry out our threats to place webcams throughout the office in our absence, I'll just post evidential photos from last week's curry night on the blog!

Meantime, back to that packing...

The apartment, the planning, the packing...

2007-08-10T21:11:00.000+01:00

We'll be in the centre tower - 'Torre 2' - a four year-old apartment block, with the stunning view shown in the post of 1 August. Now all we've to do is to pack, load up the stuff for freighting - courtesy 'Jimbo the Scot' - pack the car, horsewhip the children (and staff!) and set off for Portsmouth... two weeks today.

We're all very excited at the prospect of the next few months of our adventure, but the workload prior to the journey seems never ending. Being one for lists, I am in my element with spreadsheets and bits of paper, but the problem is that the lists are ever-lengthening whilst time is shortening!

Jimbo the Scot was a lucky find through the Spain Expat website - a chance sighting of his email address and absolute luck that he had a trip scheduled to coincide with the very days we will be travelling to Valencia. On top of that, he's booked on the same ferry and has offered to lead us out of Bilbao and onto the motorway. Some things appear to be too good to be true!

We seem to have sorted out our technology, so the VOIP phone (Internet-enabled to you and me!) is already working fine so our friends can call us on a local UK number - and no one will ever know that we're sitting on our balcony in eastern Spain, sangria in hand! The only real concern now is that the broadband connection works from day one. If someone should switch the Internet off one day, it'll cause us more than a few headaches...

The school books are piling up for Chris and Jo! Several online orders have elicited the majority of the English language books required for their new school. Chris's curriculum must be interesting - he requires a book on the life of John Lennon as well as Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - one end of the spectrum to the other! Liz and I are both wondering how they'll feel in their new school uniforms. Cottenham Primary School is, by comparison, a far more casual affair - uniform-wise, you understand!

We keep reminding ourselves that we'll have a clear fortnight before Chris and Jo start school to run around buying school uniforms and other essential items, as well as enjoying another two or three months of great weather in sunny Valencia, before the 'winter' sets in.

Can't stop thinking of the swimming pool (and gym!) ...

Avenida de Francia Panoramic view from our balcony

2007-08-01T16:41:00.001+01:00

Avda de Francia Panorama, originally uploaded by snowgoose1.

We finally made it to Valencia last Thursday and spent a couple of days looking at apartments. Whilst the very first apartment was a little depressing - four bedrooms in a rather grim layout on two floors with prison cell-type windows and a rental price which would not look adrift in Park Lane - we managed to find far more likely accommodation on Friday.

This apartment, on the ninth floor of a 4 year-old luxury building overlooks almost every important area of Valencia, and within 200 metres, boasts a supermarket, bars, cafes, two restaurants, a tennis club, a free car park, its own swimming pool, gymnasium, sauna and meeting rooms. Additionally, there are two cycle rental places, several children's parks, crazy golf and the world's most stunning performing arts centre all within five minute's walk. As if that's not enough, the number 19 bus stops directly outside the entrance to the apartment block, giving a 10 minute journey time to either the old part of the city or the beach - equidistant on both directions.

There are abundant cycle routes throughout the city, including the area of the City of Arts and Sciences, the beach at Malvarossa and the America's Cup Port, which means that no where is more than 10 to 15 minutes away from anywhere else - and it's as flat as Cambridge!

So when is everyone coming to visit?!

We now have less that four weeks remaining in Cambridge to sort out all the household and business affairs - our ferry leaves at 21:15 from Portsmouth on Friday 24 August, arriving Bilbao at around 08:00 on Sunday 26 August. By Sunday evening, we'll have arrived in Valencia and the 'vacancies' sign will go up, unless our many friends have pre-booked the year ahead!

Looking for the archetypal Valencia photo

2007-07-20T00:08:00.000+01:00

El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía

L'Hemisfèric and

El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe

L'Oceanogràfic

I searched my database of photos of Valencia this evening, to find a photograph suitable for our 'moving card' to give to friends with our communication details before we depart. I could find no better than the stunning new performing arts centre, El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, designed by Valencia's own son, Santiago Calatrava. This is but one of a string of buildings for which he is famed in Valencia alone, including L'Hemisfèric, El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe and L'Oceanogràfic. However, his talents are now marked worldwide with, amongst others, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Chicago Spire which is currently under construction. OK, so we found our photo for our moving card, but have we convinced anyone else to visit us when we move? If not, stand by for some photos of the beautiful old city itself...

The first of the goodbyes...

2007-07-18T21:17:00.000+01:00

Well, we have over a month to go before packing up in Blighty and shipping out (literally) from Cambridge via Portsmouth to Barcelona and thence to Valencia.

And tonight, Chris has said his goodbyes to Cubs, following a BBQ at the scout hut. With a year's sabbatical, he is assured of a welcome back when we return to the UK next year. School breaks up later this week, so that'll be the next watershed event.

The next 'goodbye' was interesting, but for a different reason. Gema, our fantastic Spanish teacher - herself a genuine Valencian - is off 'home' to Oropesa (near Castellon, Spain) with her family in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Somewhat heroically, she came along to our office tonight to give us one final Spanish lesson - supposedly to revise what we had learned this year. To Liz and I, we feel it was more to highlight what we don't know! Well, Gema, now we must fly solo when we finally hit the Spanish mainland, though we're really rather hoping to meet up again when we both travel to Valencia for a long weekend next week in our last minute search for accommodation! Just one more run through of those verbs, tenses and vocab, por favor!

Now, we really need to get all our communication details out to our friends and those of Chris and Jo if we are going to have a hope of staying in touch. We have our new, working VOIP phone, Skype and Windows Live Messenger are a godsend - now we just have to teach our friends and elderly relatives how to use them!

It seems to be hitting home that we really are at the beginning of our adventure, not least due to the increasing workload both at home and in the office. At home, we need to sort out all the various insurances and other paperwork both for things here in the UK and whilst we are in Spain. In the office, we have a lot of the usual workload which we are gradually going to have to either pass over to colleagues or work out how to translate into a 'virtual' workload from Spain. God how we pray for a good broadband connection in Spain or we're stuffed!

And then there's a shed load of new work initiatives which will be launched a month or so after we depart (codenamed 'AJF' for those involved!).

Sculpture in the City of Arts & Sciences

2007-07-17T21:48:00.001+01:00

Sculpture in the City of Arts & Sciences, originally uploaded by snowgoose1.

Here is one millionth of the one reason for the move to Valencia. Public art on virtually every street corner - this example in the City of Arts and Sciences where we are hoping to live for the year.

Preparing to launch...

2007-07-17T21:18:00.000+01:00

This web 2.0 is a whole new ball game. Not only do we need to pack for our trip to Spain in August, sort accommodation, find out when schools start in September in Valencia, but I'm also trying to figure out a whole new bunch of technologies so we can keep in touch with the folks back home and show off our adventure.

So I think the first few posts may be an amateurish affair, but hopefully we'll be 'pro' by the time we depart...