Home shopping in Lliria, lunch in Segorbe

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!)

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...

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

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

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!

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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

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

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...

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...