A morning surprise.

Winter has been late starting in this part of Spain this year. Only last week one of the locals was commenting how we had been having such a warm start to the winter and the lack of rain was beginning to be a concern but yesterday started with a heavy sky and rain always looked likely.

About 5pm we were aware that it was raining quite heavily. I say we were aware because this house is so well built, with such thick walls of concrete and a very solid roof, that you don’t hear the rain, even when it is torrential – and it was.

It rained all night and was still rain this morning, although a little less enthusiastically. Whenever we have bad weather the satellite signal for the TV can break up and in extreme weather, we lose the signal all together. Last night we had about half an hour where it looked possible we would lose the signal, but it managed to keep it together right through the X-Factor final.

I woke about 7am with the rain still falling, so I made a coffee and went back to bed to watch the news as the dogs would not be in a rush to go out.

About 8am we suddenly lost both BBC and ITV programmes and I assumed the rains had got heavier but it was getting to a time when the dogs would need to go out regardless of the weather.

And that was when I got a big surprise. I opened the front door to let them out and saw this…….

The skies were heavy with snow and everywhere was turning white. Brinkley was out there without hesitation, Brandy was not so keen at first but eventually he too went out.

I quickly put on my boots, big coat and gloves and went out with them. It was wonderful – so peaceful, so pretty and so much fun. The dogs were racing around, exploring all their usual favourite haunts that now looked and smelled so different. We walked across the hills as the snow continued to fall and I could see that there was plenty more to come.

Neil and I needed to go into town to change some gas bottles (we can’t run out with this weather) and to do some shopping. We also needed to collect my car. As we set off there was plenty of snow on the road but within a couple of kilometres, having dropped some 1,000 feet, the roads were clear of snow and easy to drive. Once in town we met our neighbours so decided to go for a coffee and talk ‘snow’ and ‘Christmas’ and ‘shopping’. It was a nice way to pass half an hour before we went our separate ways.

When we called for the little car we were told by the garage that the heather plugs were fine but they had needed to replace the diesel filter and clean some contacts and that it seemed ok now. We will find out when I try to start it in the morning, especially if it continues to snow through the night.

As I type this, the snow has stopped and the hills are looking a bit greener than they were so it has obviously warmed up a little bit but we do have more snow forecast. Tomorrow morning could be another surprise.