MONTAR A CABALLO

Lin with Chimbi

Today Ronda! Tomorrow the Burghley Horse Trials! At the age of nearly 60 Lin has discovered a new pastime! For the past couple of weeks, she and her good friend Kathy have been horse riding together. Lin rides Kathy’s horse named ‘Chimbi’ and Kathy rides 'El Duque' one of the horses belonging to a charming German gentleman called Axel, who owns a wonderful property with stables on the outskirts of Ronda and where ‘Chimbi’ boards.

Well today, following an invitation from Axel, the three of them went for a ride that took them into Ronda town centre via the Barrio de San Francisco, which is the old part of Ronda and where the horses can be watered.

Kathy on El Duque leads Lin on Chimbi and Axel on Capricciosa over the Tajo

They caused quite a stir with the day tripping sightseers when the three of them rode over The Tajo Gorge Bridge above the 100 metre ravine!

Ian, Kathy and El Duque

Axel - A true gentleman in every sense of the word!

Chimbi and El Duque enjoying a well deserved drink!!

Ian’s mother, who we have affectionately named ‘Abuela’ is currently over from the UK for a couple of weeks, so the three of us met up with Lin, Kathy and Axel for coffee at the Almocabar Gate in the Moorish wall by the magnificent Iglesia de Espritu Santo

The view of the incredible Tajo Gorge that Lin would have seen during the ride

WILD ASPARAGUS

Lin's first 'wild asparagus'

Mike's first 'Wild Asparagus' complete with ant!!

During spring, many areas of countryside in southern Spain will be filled with Spanish out walking in a peculiar manner. They can be seen, eyes to the ground, knife in hand, walking through woods and undergrowth. Their walk will be interspersed with the occasional dive to the floor and grasp at illusive green shoots. Ask someone to explain this unusual behavior and the answer will be quite simple. They are wild asparagus picking.

How difficult can that be we thought! However, having spent many hours last year roaming the hedge rows and woodlands, we never found one! So you can imagine our delight when we were out today, walking the dogs in the Parque Periurbano ‘Dehesa del Mercadillo’ on the outskirts of Ronda, when we both found one. Sadly the photographs are slightly out of focus, but we just wanted a record of our first ‘wild asparagus’ find!!

Spanish families will have their own favoured areas for wild asparagus picking, and will return here week after week, year after year. Often the exact location of their favourite area will be a closely guarded secret.

Parque Periurbano 'Dehesa del Mercadillo'

COMPLIMENTS OF THE AYUNTAMIENTO

One day last year, whilst we were taking coffee in the town centre of Ronda, we noticed that the gardener's of the Town Hall were replacing all of the plants in the public areas. The discarded plants were just being thrown onto the back of a lorry for disposal (we think)

Rather than see them go to waste, we helped ourselves to a few of the irises and planted them in the garden and a year later this is the result!!

LIN IN CYPRUS

Sunday 12th April: Lin returned from her trip to Cyprus, where she had been visiting Guy and Amanda, Lisa and Grandchildren Ollie and Alex.

These photographs of Lin and Ollie were taken at the TOMBS OF THE KINGS in Paphos, which is a wide area containing underground tombs carved out of solid rock dating to 4th century BC, many decorated with Doric pillars. Whether Kings were buried here or not is not certain, but the magnificence of the tombs gave the locality its name.

PALM SUNDAY 2009 (RONDA)

Sunday 5th April 2009

Easter week, known in Spain as Semana Santa, begins with the Domingo de Ramos (Palm Sunday) processions throughout Spain.

In Ronda the procession, known as 'La Pollinica’ starts from the popular quarter of La Dehesa and winds its way through the town centre, via the Tribuna waiting at the Plaza del Socorro, before returning to La Dehesa. It commemorates the triumphal entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. Huge numbers of people line the streets with their palms or branches of olive trees.

'La Pollinica' means the little donkey on whose back Jesus entered Jerusalem

The platforms carrying ‘The Throne of Christ’ and ‘The Throne of the Virgin’ were made at the Trade School of Ronda in 1995.

As last year, I met up with a group of friends and we all waited for the procession at the Café Colon, opposite the Santa Maria church in Calle Jerez. Unfortunately, Lin was unable to come with me this year as she is in Cyprus and was sadly missed.

WEEKEND IN WINCHESTER

My beautiful daughters Sophie & Becky

I had to travel to London on a legal matter, so Lin and I thought it would be a good opportunity to spend the weekend with my daughters Sophie and Becky, having not seen them for sometime.

And what a lovely weekend it turned out to be. Following business meetings and a shopping trip to Oxford Street with my business partner Carole, during the day on Friday, I travelled up to Stevenage on the train and spent the evening with our old neighbours June & Roger. As a surprise, they had invited Anne and Tony Charles over for the evening (our old friends from church) and we all had a Chinese Meal together and reminisced on old times.

On the Saturday morning, I had an early haircut at my old barbers in Stevenage, before June ran me down to Welham Green, where my youngest daughter Becky lives, who then drove us down to Winchester, where Sophie (my eldest daughter) is at University. She is studying Textiles, Fashion and Fibre, specializing in Pathway Weave. Sophie is living on campus for the first year. Below is a photograph of her room!


Both Sophie and Becky are excellent drivers I’m pleased and relieved to say.

We stayed at a great bed and breakfast in a superb Georgian house at 58 Hyde Street in the centre of Winchester, run by a charming couple Julian and Guinevere Harvey. Highly recommended!

On the Saturday night we went 10 Pin Bowling in Southampton, which was great fun and on the Sunday we met up with Lin’s brother Barrie and his wife Jeanne for lunch in Bournemouth, where we were joined by Jeanne’s brother Geoff and his wife Kathy.

After lunch we went back to Barrie and Jeanne’s new apartment in Bournemouth which is really lovely; elegant, light and airy; interesting views from all sides and situated in a great location.

Becky then drove me back to June and Roger’s on the Sunday evening, where I stayed for the night. Well I say the night!! June, who is a real trooper, took me to the airport at 5am in the morning for the seven o’clock Monarch flight back to Malaga! Thank you June; you’re a star!

It was a very memorable and enjoyable weekend and it was a joy to see that my daughters have grown up into two beautiful young ladies!

MARCH SUNSET

Wednesday 11th March 2009

I’m really sorry that I have not been able to update our BLOG for sometime, but we have been really busy, what with the olive harvest and one thing or another.

The olive harvest this year was disastrous, due to the unpresidented amount of rain we had here during December and January, which caused a number of problems for virtually all of the local olive groves. Normally the harvest would be completed by mid-January, but this year the olives where still being picked at the beginning of March. Although,we did as much as we could before the Co-operative closed for the season, we were about 150kgs down on last year.

On a happier note, Lin is traveling to Cyprus for 12 days at the beginning of April to visit her son Guy (who is now also working in Cyprus) and his wife Amanda, her daughter Lisa (who has now been residing in Cyprus for sometime) and Grandson Alex.

Lin is flying into Bournemouth on the 1st April, where she will spend a few days with her brother Barrie and his wife Jeanne in their new apartment there. Unfortunately, there has been some complications with Barrie's last heart operation, so he is going to be in hospital on the day of her arrival. However, hopefully, he will only be in the one day, so will be able to spend some time with Lin on the Thursday.

On the Friday 3rd April Lin is meeting her other grandson Oliver at Gatwick Airport and they will fly over to Paphos together, which will be nice for them both.

While Lin is away I will make a real effort to get up to date with our BLOG and tell you all about our recent adventures.

In the meantime, I have published a couple of photographs of the sunset we enjoyed earlier this month. Although, you can never captured the natural beauty of sunsets on film, I hope you like them.