Just another Sunday – 17 March 2024

A dull day with some rain and some sun. If you hit it right, it was good and if not you got wet. I, for once hit it right.

Scamp was desperate to get stuff cleared out in the garden. She cut down the Hydrangea because there were new shoots starting to appear at ground level and she wanted to encourage the growth. Next on the chopping list was the Penstemon which got a quick haircut because it was getting untidy and needed the crop.

I was more adventurous and went for a walk through the woods down by the main road and found some cherry blossom on the trees. I thought I was going too early, but it turned out I was almost too late as the petals from the flowers were covering the ground. I did get some photos, but I was kicking myself that I hadn’t taken the LensBaby 35 because the distortion it produces works well with blossom. Maybe tomorrow. Startled two deer on my walk too, but they saw me long before I saw them. PoD turned out to be a Larch Pineapple with a raindrop right on top!

Spoke to Jamie later in the day and heard about the progress on the house. It seems to be going well, despite the best efforts of English Heritage. Good to hear that the roof is now on and it’s mainly the internal plastering that need finishing.

No real plans for tomorrow. Well, I have a secret plan and Scamp is out for coffee with Isobel.

 

 

Foxtrotting – 16 March 2024

We drove over to Brookfield hoping for a new start in the ballroom dance class, but were pleasantly surprised by the appearance of an old friend or two.

The dance that was chosen to get us on our feet and started was Mambo Marina. A very old favourite that we learned a long, long while ago. It was buried deep in my memory and the first dance was a bit of a struggle, but after the second track most of the wrinkles were ironed out and it flowed like it should … almost.

Next was the Foxtrot, the old foxtrot we’d learned yonks ago. At first, like the MM it was a bit of a blur, but gradually with help from Scamp the figures fitted together and even the Continuous Hover Cross which was my nemesis in dances gone by was recovered from muscle memory and we went through with hardly a mistake by track three or five!

The Mayfair Quickstep was next. Two tracks to dust off the cobwebs of this well known and oft dance sequence and we were almost two thirds of the way through the class. Jive was next on the agenda and it was a refresher course on figures we’d already dances and which were fairly fresh in our memories as they were similar to some of the jive routines from many years ago.

To finish off, we were invited to dance any Waltz. We started on the Spring Waltz, but fumbled our way through it before we changed to Kirsty’s Waltz Nioli. It’s shorter and simpler and we did manage to finish it and then restart it again.

That was it for the ballroom class. Drove back home feeling that we’d accomplished something today.

After lunch I went for a walk in St Mo’s and just as I left the house, the rain started. I was concentrating on getting some photos of the Larch Pineapples I saw the other day. I found them and although the light was a bit low, so was the wind and that allowed me to get some sharper photos. One of them made PoD.

Dinner came courtesy of Golden Bowl and it was delicious. Lovely and fresh for both of us. Mine being a Special Chow Mein and Scamp’s was her usual Chicken Chop Suey and Fried Rice. Amazingly it was still light and about 5.15 when I went to collect the food.

That was about it for today apart from trying to send some photos to Alex and them bouncing back to me. Similar to my previous Google problem, but not the same. I’ll worry about it tomorrow … or the next day.

No plans for tomorrow apart from worrying about things that cannot be fixed.

A day of two halves – 15 March 2024

Rain in the morning and a bit of sunshine in the afternoon

The morning had light rain to start with but soon that turned to heavy persistent rain. Scamp was out to go to FitSteps, only to return half an hour later because nobody appeared. No teacher, now FitSteppers, nobody. We can only surmise that Kirsty, the teacher, had a hospital appointment to check her wrist was setting well. I’d just started reading the last few chapters in my latest book “To The Dogs” by Louise Welsh, but now it was put to the side.

Lunch was the remaining half of yesterday’s Ginsters pasty, baked in the microwave. That sounds awful, but with a combination of microwaving at ‘warm’ setting and convection heating at 220º is part microwaves, part bakes the pasty. An hour after lunch the rain stopped, but it was still cloudy. Half an hour after that, the sun shone. I’d been processing some of my favourite holiday photos to pass on Alex, but I knew the sensible thing to do was to put my boots and get out while the going was good.

The frogs that had been so busy making babies a couple of days ago seemed to have left en masse. I did find a small group at the far corner of one of the small ponds, but the biggest contingent had gone. I probably missed the big love-in when we were on holiday. It didn’t matter, because I did get some shots during the week, so I didn’t miss it all.

Instead of walking round the pond, I went looking for frogs in some of the tiny wee ponds in the woods, but didn’t find any, nor did I find any frogspawn. What I did find was a couple of sixteen spot orange ladybirds (Halyzia sedecimguttata). They were still hibernating, one tucked under some moss high in a birch tree and the other in a crevice from a broken branch in another birch. I hadn’t seen any earlier in the year, so maybe the recent warmer weather had tempted them out and then the colder weather had sent them back under cover. One of the ladybirds got PoD.

Dinner tonight was an old fashioned home made stir-fry made by Scamp with what we had in the fridge. It was really good. I’d forgotten how good Scamp’s stir-fries were.

Tomorrow we’ll probably be driving to Brookfield for a dance class. No confirmation that the class is on yet, but we’re hopeful.

 

Starting to get back to normal – 13 March 2024

Whatever ‘Normal’ is.

Task for today was to purchase a new SSL which as you probably know is the bit of code that turns HTTP into HTTPS. I remember the mess I got into trying to install it. This time, all I needed to do was hand over a few quid to someone at my hosting company and they installed the software for me. I’d been dreading going through all that rigmarole again and according to my receipt, it’s solid until 2025.

The next thing to do was to put fingers to keyboard to flesh out the notes I’d made during last week about where we went and what we did. That took up most of the morning and half of the afternoon. It’s still a work in progress, but there has been progress in the work, if that makes sense. If it does, it will be a first.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun was shining, I thought it would be a good idea to put the boots on and go for a walk in St Mo’s. It was indeed a good idea because the frog influx had started in earnest and two of the ponds were full of them and their jelly frog spawn. That gave me a potential PoD. Further on in my walk I found some Alder catkins glowing in the sunshine and they just beat the frogs to the first place and PoD.

Dinner tonight was ‘red Pasta’ or Pasta with a Tomato Sauce. I used some strange round pasta I found in a cupboard and it took a long time to soften, but it was voted a success by Scamp. I wasn’t so sure.

First night dancing at Kirsty’s class for almost two months since her tumble just after Christmas. Tonight it was Foxtrot and when I settled in to it, most of the figures that made up the dance were fairly well known to me. It was just a case of fitting them together like a jigsaw. Of course, as with all jigsaws, there were pieces missing. Hopefully I’ll find them by next week.

Weather looks really wet tomorrow. That might be a good thing because it will let me get on with fleshing out the remainder of last week’s blog posts.

Scamp is out to lunch tomorrow and I have work to do.

Mother’s Day – 10 March 2024

Mother’s Day in a warm place.

In the morning after breakfast, we went out for a walk along the promenade because the sun was shining and the breeze was light. The walkway was busy, probably because it was Sunday and the walkers were mostly families relaxing on the weekend. They go to the beach like we go to Drumpellier separated by about two thousand miles and about 15 degrees centigrade.

By the time we got back it was lunch time and Scamp had replied to her Mother’s Day messages. We cleared both the beds and started sorting out the clothes that would need to be packed in to the cases tonight in preparation for going home tomorrow. Just a rough arranging everything into bundles, nothing too serious at this time.

The sun was still shining after lunch, so Scamp went for a seat by the pool while I went for a last walk in the wilderness. I didn’t see anything very interesting, but I took my usual photograph of shells on a raised beach metres above the high tide mark. How they got there is a mystery. Presumably the land I was walking on had been under the ocean thousands of years ago and these little wee shells had survived the changes since then.

When I got back, Scamp was ready to get dressed for dinner and it was my time to relax on a saggy sunbed. We had been arguing about the exact placement of our balcony in the hotel and when my phone rang, it was Scamp to tell me that she was waving to me from the balcony. Brilliant idea. I took a few photos that solved the problem of where we had been living for a week! Later we did that final pack before we went for dinner.

After dinner we had a couple of drinks from the bar then adjourned to the balcony to finish off the last of the bottle of gin we’d bought at the start of the holiday. Sitting on the balcony without coats watching the stars and listening to the waves.

PoD was a photo of someone, a stranger, relaxing on the beach under a couple of coconut matting sunshades.

Tomorrow the tension will be high. Cases will be taken away and we’ll be waiting for the bus to the airport.

Walking round the town – 9 March 2024

Scamp said we hadn’t walked round to the marina and suggested we do that today. It was warm again, so that sounded like a good idea.

We walked along the promenade that follows the line of the beach and takes you round the edge of the town, rather than through it. We saw some changes in the marina area, but only a few. If anything, it had become more gentrified and had lost some of its old character, although I did get a photo of a well rusted bench seat that looked as if it was falling apart.

We continued our walk round the coast and past a few houses. Watched some guys fishing off the rocks and tried to ignore the ever present chipmunks. Rats with furry tails.

We finally found “The English Bar” whose real name is The Trafalgar. We stopped there for a G ’n’ T each. At least that’s what we asked for. What we got was a glass of half melted ice with some (very little) alcohol in it and a bottle of tonic each. This used to be a place we’d always stop at. Scamp liked the coffee which was always Nescafe and I liked the food. I think they’re just taking the Mickey now. I don’t think I’d go back.

We were now on our way back to the hotel and walked through the town and back on to the promenade. As we were walking the clouds were rolling in towards us from what used to be called Chipmunk Hill which is now covered with housing and hotel developments, which is probably why the chipmunks are now down on the beach.

There were a few spots of rain before we got to the hotel, but not real rain. Just the edge of a cloud.

Tonight the entertainment was two singers, a man and a woman. Quite pleasant to listen to for a short while, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stay for too long and we didn’t. The singing was ok, but the pronunciation was poor. Probably would have been better if they’d sung in their own language.

PoD was a view towards Chipmunk Hill with a threatening rain cloud.

Tomorrow may be marred by preparations for going home!

Dull and cold wind – 8 March 2024

Sat for a while out of the sun, but gave up after a while and went into the big round building where yesterday’s Gala Event had been. It was warmer there.

Eventually when the skies cleared a bit and the sun shone, we walked to the ‘Island’. It’s actually a man-made island built on boulders and the last time we were there we had to queue for a table. Today was similar, but we managed to get an inside table out of the wind. I had a burger and Scamp had two of the fattest Sea Bass fillets we’d ever seen. We both had Mojitos.

By the time we were going back, the weather was improving and I went for a walk again in the wilderness. Got a photo of a group of wild goats and also what looks like a locust. I remember seeing locusts in Lanzarote a few years ago and these were very similar.

Came back to the hotel and watched the qualifying for tomorrow’s F1 GP. Didn’t find out who was on pole, because somebody pulled a plug somewhere and we were left with a black screen and muddled sound. No explanation. No apologies. That’s the way it is here.

Entertainment in the evening was two acrobats. The bloke seemed to have trained as a ballet dancer and the girl’s speciality appeared to be the splits. There was a fair bit of faffing about and posing. Entertaining for a while, but I was glad when it was finished.

PoD was a stunning Bird of Paradise flower in the hotel garden. Beautiful colours.

Tomorrow is Saturday and the days are slipping away.

 

In the big city – 7 March 2024

We got the ‘Cooncil’ bus to the big city of Puerto del Rosario.

A slow trudge through roadworks, then an unnecessary detour through a satellite town on the outskirts of Caleta where nobody got off the bus and worse still, nobody got on, but the driver was doing his job and covering the bases. Then out to the airport where one person got on and a host of hopefuls asked if this was the bus to Caleta and were told in no uncertain terms that this was the bus to Puerto del Rosario and the next bus, also a Number 3 would be going to Caleta. I don’t think he was believed, but it turned out to be the truth.

We stopped at the big central shopping centre and walked down a hill hoping to find something interesting. We found the church with the bar in the grounds, but although the church was open, the bar was securely shut. We found a three storey building whose gable being treated to a black and white mural of someone. Then we found a street cafe we’d been to the last time we were in Rosario.

There was a street market in the pedestrian area, mainly because two cruise ships were in the port. A fairly large P&O Azura and the enormous Aida Cosma. Not for the first time I marvelled at just how big these ships are. We walked down to the port and took some photos of them because that’s going to be the nearest we’ll get to a cruise this year, then went on an expedition looking for a fountain with models of dolphins round it, a line of hand painted benches and a big white Puerto del Rosario sculpture we’d photographed ourselves at. Despite our best efforts, we found none of the above, but went back up the hill to the cafe and had lunch. Scamp had Spanish Tortilla and I has Serrano Ham and Tomato in a baguette, both walked down with a beer.

We walked down through the street market and the further I went the more sure I was that we were on the track of the tree missing items. Sure enough at the bottom of the hill we found the big white 3D sign and the painted seats, but alas, no dolphin fountain. Maybe the next time we come this way DV.

After a seat in one of the painted benches we walked back towards the town and found another missing item, not dolphins, but a massive mural of Time Square NYC. Now looking a bit worse for wear, by still impressive. We went in to the big multi-level shopping centre looking for somewhere that sold power adapters. We found one, exactly like the item Scamp was looking for. Bought it and headed for the bus stop. Just got to the stop and the No 3 arrived, our bus to Caleta. No available seats. The bus drove away. Next one was about 10 mins later and it was a rammy! Folk shoving other folk out of the way and an opportunity for us to sharpen our elbows for a change.

A long journey through more traffic works and we got dropped outside the Atlantico Centre where we bought some stuff and went from there to the hotel

We had a Gala Dinner to look forward to except:

  1. Service was slow and without a smile
  2. Some of the starters were baked on to the plate because they were under heat lamps. Fillings were tepid inside.
  3. My entrecôte was as chewy as my walking boots and my roast potatoes were actually baked potatoes.
  4. Best of all, Scamp’s Mango Sorbet was actually a Blackcurrant Smoothie.

Gala Dinner showing off what the hotel can offer? I think not.

We did get to dance salsa again to Tina on the sax. Great fun for us and we got two rounds of applause!

Long day, some disappointments and some highlights. That’s what it’s all about.

PoD was a beautiful sunset over the hills.

As usual, no plans for tomorrow.

Wilderness – 6 March 2024

Today I walked in the wilderness. My name for the sandy desert just south of the hotel. Nothing much to see here unless you take the time to look hard.

I saw a Snowy Egret and a further on a Little Egret. I was hoping to see a Shrike because I’d seen one a few years ago in this place, and there it was. Away in the distance, a single Shrike sitting on the top of a thorny bush. I was kicking myself that I hadn’t brought the 210mm long zoom lens. The little 50mm is a great go-to lens, but it’s struggling with distant objects..

When I came back we sat in the sun for a while, just taking in some rays!

After dinner and the now mandatory coffee in the upstairs bar we had our second visit to the kids club. More families had arrived during the day so there were more kids in the club and more parents too. Pepe was just as entertaining as the first night.

There was no other entertainment for us tonight, so we took a G&T and a Rum ’n’ Coke up to the room and enjoyed the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.

PoD was a bunch of weeds growing at the side of the dusty track through the wilderness. They made me think of yellow jelly beans!

Hoping to go to Puerto del Rosario tomorrow.

First full day in the sun – 5 March 2024

Woke around 7am and watched a glorious sunrise

Breakfast was fairly gentle affair. No big rush to get a table.

We walked in to Caleta town to see what changes there had been. Not a lot. Lots of the shops were closed on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, apparently. We’re guessing this is the low season.

Ice cream cones each and a seat in the sun.

Booked a special dinner for Thursday – Tex Mex. We did the other option (Italian) the last time we were here, five years ago.

Just for fun we  went to the kids club to see Pepe. Only a few kids in the club, but the main man was there and that made up for everything. Lots of mums and dads and grannies and grandpas up dancing along with the weans

Entertainment tonight was a rather aloof girl playing an electric cello. The only dancers on the floor were two Russian (?) girls performing what Loudon Wainwright called ” a modern dance”. Very arty, and they looked three sheets to the wind, but after last night, who am I to criticise? By the interval, half the audience had left, and we did too!

PoD was a picture of two bright red flowers in the hotel garden.

No plans for tomorrow.