I love surprises.

After 2 days of being snow bound, this morning we HAD to get out of the house, get the car out and get to town. HAD to because all 6 gas bottles were empty, the last one ran out sometime between 2am and 5am this morning. Although we have our tank, as yet it is still empty and we have no chance of getting it filled until all the snow has gone.

The sky was clear this morning, the sun was showing above the hills and the thaw was definitely happening, but it was going to take some time to thaw 8 inches of frozen snow.

The car was still covered in a thick layer of frozen snow which took us 15 minutes to chip off, then having loaded the car with 6 empty gas bottles, a shovel and a large tub of sand & grit we set off to see whether we could get up 400m of snow covered frozen dirt track - just about all up hill.

We had arranged to pick up our neighbours who couldn't get their car out this morning and I could see them standing on the hill, watching to see whether we would make. Neil was driving, there is no way I was going to try it, after all on one side of the track is a hill and the other a long drop - any deviance from a straight line was going to be trouble.

As we drove away from the house we have the steepest part of the drive to negotiate and to my surprise, the car got up there with very little difficulty and no slipping. Then we rounded a corner, the path was in shadow and the wheels started to spin and go nowhere. A few minutes of digging and a couple of shovels of grit and the car managed to make more progress. I walked along behond ready to leap into action with shovel & grit. I noticed that Kanet & Graham were no longer watching and assumed they had realised we would make it and had started to walk to meet us. I would find out later I couldn't be more wrong!

I could feel the snow melting but underneath was a layer of ice 2 inches thick so it was slow progress. There were a couple more stops but then we were over the worst, and the car seemed to settle. I jumped in and we managed to get to the end of our track and meet the tarmac road where the snow plough had been. A few minutes later were at our neighbours who, I discovered,having watched us get stuck a couple of times were convinced we would never make it and had gone to see whether they could dig there car out instead. All morning Janet just kept saying 'I can't believe you made it!' but we're made of tougher stuff, after all we're mountain people now.

The roads to Velez were clear and the town didn't have a sign of a single snowflake but all around the mountain tops were covered.

We feel a lot better now we have 6 full gas bottles, the majority of the snow has melted although there is enough to cause us problems in the morning if it freezes tonight, but we have a week of sunshine and double figure temperatures forecast so by the weekend we should be back to rolling, green hills and our first experience of being snowed in will be well and truly behind is.

While we were in town we called at the Post Office and that's where we got our surprise. A large box from our friends in California. Inside we had some very thick, warm socks - for the bad weather!, a lovely ornament and a jar of Andy's rub. Andy has perfected his rub over many years, and it is fabulous on BBQ meat. Recently he has started marketing it and he had sent us a jar over. When we opened it, the smell reminded us of our time in California with them. Of our wedding, which they held in their garden for us and did a hge BBQ party with huge pieces of beef coated in Andy's rub. Such a fabulous box of gifts and so unexpected - they'd even sent us the few Euro's they'd had left after their trip here last Autumn, so we were all able to have a coffee on them.

Thanks guys, loved it!

Check out Andy's Rub at http://www.andysrub.com/