Ring, ring! Ring, ring!

For most people in the modern world, a ringing phone in the house is not only completely normal, but very often excessively intrusive.

For us, it is a forgotten sound.

Since we moved here in November we have had no mobile signal here. Until we had the Astra satellite dish installed, we didn't have the internet or the chance of a ringing phone.

Then in December, the dish was fitted. We could access the internet again, we could use e-mail again and we could use Skype.

But the luxury of sitting with a normal phone and hearing it ring still eluded us. We needed a number. Now we could have a choice. If we expect most incoming calls to be from the UK, we could have a UK number, if most calls will be from Spain, we could have a Spanish number. For an extra payment we could have 2 numbers, one Spanish and the other English. We opted for a local Spanish number and were told it would take about 10 days.

That was more than a month ago. Now, I assume it is a bit like BT releasing numbers in the UK to non-BT providers only here it is Telefonica. We have been able to make outgoing calls, but because it showed as number withheld, we did have the problem that people thought it was a sales call and didn't answer. We also had a problem when calling my brother, as for some reason he couldn't hear us yet I could hear him perfectly. He would wait a few seconds and then assume it was me and embark on a monologue for my benefit.

Finally, on Friday we got home to an e-mail with our new 950 number. We were so excited. E-mails and Skype messages flew off to all our friends and we sat back to wait for our first call.

And waited.....

And waited.

Eventually I got a Skype message from my brother, the calls were not connecting,he was just getting a continual tone!

This morning I contacted our Astra providers to ask what happens now, and less than half an hour later, I got the shock of my life. Sitting here, at the computer suddenly...............

IT RANG!

Finally, we have full contact with the outside world!

Hills can be deceptive.

As I look out of our front door across the rolling hills, it is easy to forget that we live 3,000ft up a mountain and that these hills are seperated by very steep ravines, and that the hills themselves are very steep.

Yesterday Janet & I decided we would take our dogs for a long walk across the hills to a ruin that we can see from the roadside. The ruin is about the same height as our house and Maria, who has the goats, oftens walks that way so how hard could it be?

The first hill we climbed should have given us some indication of the task at hand. Halfway up, gasping for breath I did managed to remind Janet that I am asthmatic, and that I didn't have an inhaler with me. After all, at 3,000ft, the air is a lot thinner than at sea level!

We eventualy got to the top only to find we had to walk down a hill equally steep on the other side. In the bottom of the rambla were heavy trees and bushes and so we would have to walk around them, and the same on the next hill and the next. Walking this way would actually take us further away from the ruin, not closer to it.

So, we decided we would be better to walk along the road until we got the the track that led upto the ruin rather than trying to go across country. We had two possible routes to get down to the road, retrace our steps or head down hill and hope we could find a way through the trees at the bottom that would come out by tarmac.

Having the dogs on a lead helps when you are going up hill, as they give a little bit of added effort - but the same cannot be said when going down a steep hill. In the end we decided to take a zig-zag route down the hill to take out some of the steepness and eventually we met up with tarmac.

10 minutes later we were once more climbing up a steep track, but this time we knew the ruin would be at the top. Distance is incredibly deceptive up here, what looks like a 5 minute walk can easily take 15 minutes and we needed a rest-break halfway up the hill. But, a little more effort and we finally made it to the top and the view was well worth it. The ruin was built on a plateau at the top of the hill and almost had a 360 view across to Velez, Puerto Lumbreras and down towards Santa Maria - stunning.

The ruin itself was a little scary, but we ventured in. Just inside the door was a broomstick so should we come across any wildlife we would both be grabbing for it. As with a lot of the old cortijos that have been allowed to fall beyond a state of dis-repair, this had a maze of little room and a very rickety looking staircase. We decided not to venture upstairs. The ceilings were really low and I couldn't imagine anyone above 5ft 6ins living there without having to permanently wear a crash helmet. The main part of the house still had a roof, although it was definitely in need of repair, and there were other 'rooms' where the roof had long since gone.

As we wandered around outside we saw the path that was the proper access route to the ruin, the track we had climed up looked only suitable for goats and cross-country bikes and we both had concerns about trying to walk back that way. We decided we would walk back along the path even though it seemed to be leading us further away from the route home, but we thought it should eventually meet up with the little tarmac road that runs past Janet's house. There were a couple of pine trees with caterpillar nests in them along theway so the dogs were put on their leads so that I could make sure they gave the trees a wide birth, and before long we were at the gates, well, 2 metal posts with a chain across them to prevent any vehicles from going down to the ruin.

From there it was a relatively easy walk back home, mostly level and a lot better underfoot than walking across the hills. We'd been out for about an hour but felt like more than 3. The dogs got home and hardly moved for the rest of the day.

Next time we'll head out down our Rambla and see what we can find. We cannt venture over our hill at the moment as the far side of the hill becomes a pine forest, beautiful to look at but out of bounds for us for at least 4 months while the caterpillars leave their nests and bury underground. No view is worth risking our dogs health(or ours, for that matter) for.

Never again will I under- estimate the effort needed to take a walk acrossthe rolling hills that we live amongst!

Early warning - Processional Caterpillars are on the move.

Each year there is the continual worry that the Processional Caterpillars that make their nests on the Pine Trees will cause problems for well loved animals. They are usually on the move between January and March and this year are on the move early. Already we have seen nests of a fairly large size with caterpillars leaving the nest. Fortunately, these are not close enough to be a problem to our pups and we only have 3 pine trees close to the house, all of which are small and none of which have any nests them - but they do get a daily inspection.







Many people get rid of the nests themselves by cutting them down and burning them, but this also has it's dangers as the hairs from the caterpillars, which carry the poison can be carried into the air and still affect people and animals. A nest can contain upto 300 caterpillars and that's a lot of hairs flying around! There is a section of the Guardia Civil, called Seprona, which will come and deal with any problem nests.

A Google search on Processional Caterpillars will bring up reams of information on them.

It's official, Brian is Dead!

But, we can have a second hand engine, only 6 years old and low mileage for less than we were prepared to pay to get Brian back on the road. And the ,mechanic has the engine in the garage AND if we aren't happy he'll take it out again.

Yeah!!!

Long live Brian!

He should be back on the road by the end of next week.

What a Saga!

It should have been a good day, a day of celebration! Finally, the gas tank had arrived!

But that was only the start of the problems!

We had been told we needed to construct a cage for the tank to be housed in, for safety reasons. This was built at the back of the house by us back in November to the size we had in a diagram drawn by the installer. Guess what - HE GAVE US THE WRONG SIZE!!!!!

On one side, he's written down the size of the tank - not the size the cage needed to be. OK, it's only 30cms to short (about 12 inches for those of you that still work in 'old money') but it means more concreting, we have to take down the side of the cage with the door in, extend both sides, which means more posts with more fencing. So frustrating. It turns out that he had given us 2 diagrams. When he first spoke to Neil he drew one on the back of the promotional leaflet with the right dimensions. Then when we went into the shop to say we would go ahead, he drew us another diagram for us to take to the fencing place to order the posts, door, fencing etc - and that one had the wrong measuerment on - but that's the one we worked to.

So, OK - we can sort that. The next problem was actually getting the tank into the cage (it will fit, there's just supposed to be more room around it (30cms more!). We had been told to construct the cage, and the tank would be lifted in from the top. Only,the wagon with the crane is too big to bring down our dirt track and so it couldn't go in over the top. Step 2 - remove one side of the cage - well, it saves us some work when we have to rebuild it next week. We nearly put double doors in and were told it wasn't necessary - in future we'll go with our own instincts.

Finally, the tank was in place and they began piping it up. In the meantime Manolo wanted to check the cooker as he is doing all the paperwork for our gas installation. Again he had been at the house before we fitted anything and told Neil what was needed. Now, it needed doing differently. The gas pipe came through the utility wall to the back of the cooker, but here we need a regulator that can be turned off accessible in the kitchen so, they had to re-pipe along the back of the house, bring the pipe in through the wall and run it through the back of a cupboard. Actually, they have done a really good job, because they fitted it inside the cupboard that has drawers, and the drawers still work perfectly but the not so pretty regulator is out of sight, yet still very accessible.

At this point they left for lunch leaving us with no heating and no hot water and hoping they would be returning later. We felt it was a strong probability as they had left quite a bit of their gear here.

Sure enough, a couple of hours later they were back on site and carried on with installing the tank. Once installed, we have to wait for the paperwork to be completed (i.e. after the cage is corrected) and then it will take about 7 days to get the tank filled - presumably this is to allow Cespa time to request the money for filling from our bank before giving us €400 worth of gas, but at least we can see an end to the twice weekly trips to town to get our bottles changed.

Finally, they had finished the installation and just needed to reconnect the system to run off the bottles until the tank is filled. By now it was starting to cool down as the sun was rapidly disappearing over the hill. It would be dark in about half an hour.

All done, they checked we had gas to the cooker - and yes, the rings burst into flame instantly. But the cooker's gas supply doesn't come through the boiler, so when they ran the hot water tap - oh dear, absolutley cold, cold, cold!

That was the start of an hour of head scratching and re-checking. We knew it couldn't be the boiler as they hadn't actually done anything to the boiler and it worked wonderfully before they arrived. Eventually they tracked it down to a faulty regulator they had installed on one of the pipes in the utility. Did they have another? No, but they could get one from town. By now it was dark, cold and getting late. I told the engineer we would need to go home with him for the night as it would be too cold here. Now, I'm not sure whether he though 'this crazy english woman means it' but he told me he would go and fetch a replacement and return straight away, that he would not leave us without heating and hot water. And just to prove he was coming back - he left his mate here!

Half an hour later he was back and within 10 minutes the replacement regulator was in place - and still, no hot water, no heating. Now it was seriously testing everyone's patience. We got the manual out for the boiler and Neil started to look through what he could check on the boiler - the manual is all in english so the engineers couldn't really get any help from it. The gas pressure was tested, the flow was tested - all was fine.

Eventually one of the engineers phoned his boss and had a chat. I couldn't make out much of the conversation but I could tell he was really puzzled why it didn't work. After a few minutes he came off the phone and marched outside saying 'un momento, un momento'.

And sure enough, un momento later we had hot water and we had heating. It turns out the regulator on the tank has to be a single, but because we have 2 pipes coming into the house they had put 2 on and it was restricting the flow of gas through the boiler to an extent that there wasn't enough to light it. It had been a long day for them but they had made sure they didn't leave us without heating and hot water.

So, finally we have a tank. This weekend we will re-do the cage and hopefully before too long we will have a full tank of gas which should last us several months, and that will be another job to tick off the long list of things'To-Do!'

Peace of mind.

You may remember not long after we moved into the new house I managed to lock us out. Well, I may not have admitted it was my fault, but it was me that closed the front door, the only door, without checking whether there were any keys on the inside. It resulted in Neil missing a days golf while we waited for the door man to break in for us.

Since then we have been asking if he could get us a lock that we could open even if there was a key in the other side. Because we have an offset lock, it has been difficult to find one and we have really, really tried, as I didn't want to do it again. Some of our friends had tried to make me feel better by saying 'oh, we all do it at some time' but trust me, I didn't feel any better. However, it did get us a guy to fit the fly screens and the door and window for the utility, so it wasn't altogether a bad thing.

We are still waiting for the big screens to go round the terrace and so we popped in yesterday, to see if they knew when they would be ready. We get a number of flies here when the sun is out, but also there are quite a few bees about as there are several beehives over the hill, and the bees are out after the almond blossom. It makes it a little annoying when we use the hot tub and if we wanted to eat out so we have decided to screen around the terrace.

Well, the screens won't be ready for another few weeks but they had finally got a lock for us to fit and it works brilliantly.

So, no more obsessive checking the inside of the door for keys before I close it, now all I have to compulsively check for is that I have my keys with me before I leave so I can get back in again!

Bye, bye Brian.

You may remember me saying that one of the conditions linked to moving to the country was that we had a second car, a little runaround, so that if Neil was at golf or I was out at a class or shopping, there was a means of transport if necessary. So, we bought Brian, a little white Citroen Saxo.


He ran beautifully, but didn't like starting if the weather was cold. So, I learnt how to start him when it was cold, he took a lot of warming up but eventually he realised I wasn't taking 'No' for an answer, and started. Once started - he would run all day.




We took him to the garage for them to check him out, make sure his heater plugs were ok, and they told us they had replaced a filter and done some cleaning up but the heater plugs were fine and charged us €70! We asked about some new tyres and the mechanic told us we shouldn't spend money on tyres just yet, until we were sure there wasn't anything more serious with Brian.

He must have had his suspicions........

There is something more serious with Brian!

He didn't get out much so, on Christmas Eve, we too Brian when we went up to our neighbours a short 400m away, he got us there without any hint of what was to come later.



At a few minutes past midnight we decided we should leave so that we didn't bump into Santa on his rounds. Brian started, reluctantly, but then, it was cold. As soon as I tried to move - he stalled. He did this 3 times and then he wouldn't start!



We decided we would walk back to the house, in the dark, on the dirt track, without a torch (yes, we know to take one with us now!) to fetch big car and rope. In Spain it is not allowed to tow a vehicle but we were only taking him down the Campo, so we thought we would be ok.



We managed to get him back, parked him up infront of the house ............



......and he's been there ever since. We have tried jump leads from Big Car, we have tried squirting Easy Start into the engine, and nothing.



So, today we went back to the garage to let them know that we had a very poorly Brian.



I asked the mechanic if they could come and collect him and he reminded me that most motor insurance policies in Spain include breakdown recovery, and it would be free, whereas he would have to charge us. So, when we got home I rang the insurers, and he was correct. After 10 minutes on the phone we had a breakdown truck on it's way to collect Brian in half an hour.



And so, it was with some sadness that this was the scene outside our house, earlier today.




I will call at the garage tomorrow and see when they will be able to check what the problem is and give us an idea of how much it will cost so that we can decide what to do with Brian.

Poor Bri!