Christmas 2023 ......... Good grief, it doesn’t seem five minutes since I sat at this same keyboard (I have washed the keyboard membrane since …. Twice) looking at a blank sheet of paper with the heading, “Christmas 2022, staring back at me! But here we are and what a year it has been here in the wonderful Gandia locale. From the highs o...
An RV in Spain ..... When we first moved to Spain, over two years ago now, we were accompanied by our venerable boat, Herbie. We had bought Herbie, a 32-foot Corvette back in UK about a year before we moved and had already had some fun times aboard, including a Boxing Day Party and a Birthday party for my dear Lady wife. Initially, the price of moorings her...
The End Of Summer? ...... We are all aware of the affects of Global Warming on this lump of floating rock that we call home. Whether it is because of humankind mismanagement, the natural aging of the planet, or a combination of both (my preference is for the latter), the seasons are definitely getting mixed up with extremes of temperature and of weather in...
The Social Whirl! .... Of course, living in this delightful area of Spain, means that we usually miss out on the weather extremes suffered by other areas. It generally doesn’t get as hot as the southern reaches of the Costa’s in the summer months, although you still need to use the old slap factor 50 to start with and gradually reduce the protec...
Spain on wheels! .... So, since our last update, many things have changed in this household. When we came over to Spain, we brought our venerable boat with us, thinking that it would be great to be able to use it much more than we did in the UK, with much more sunshine available to enjoy; Cocktails on the sundeck and all that! What we hadn’t fac...
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain! ....... No, it doesn’t. Right now, it’s dumping everything in the Gandia region and according to the weather forecast on my mobile ‘phone, it’s going to be continuing to do so for the next two weeks! In fact right now on the hill behind Real de Gandia, the downpour is reminiscent of t...
With A Spring in One’s Step! “The spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies is!” (Get on with it – Ed) Yes, well as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, such thoughts come to one’s mind at this time of the year. But I should explain. (Oh Lord, must you? – Ed) For those of you unfortunate...
The coming of Spring ....... So, dear reader, we seem, finally, to be arriving at that wonderful time of the year that we refer to as spring. The weather forecast intimates that the colder nights are drawing to a close and the thermometer is on the wax, as they say; whoever ‘they’ are! Suffice it to say that the sun is now powerful enough to...
An Ex-pat Monthly Experience of Moving to Gandia, Spain - Part 12 - A Winter's Tale ........ Well dear reader, Christmas has been and gone, the New Year celebrations all cleared up and forgotten ….. and winter has arrived! What that has meant here is that the winds have arrived, whistling around the nether regions and elsewhere too, but the temperatu...
The Christmas 2022 Blog! AND SO, A YEAR ENDS AND ANOTHER BEGINS…… It’s sometimes quite amazing how time flies, as they say, when you’re having fun. Here in Gandia, this year seems to have spun past on wheels! So, I guess you have to gather that it was fun. Well, actually ….. yeah, overall, it was. Oh sure, there were the fru...
Part 10: Out and about in the Gandia area .......... One of the many reasons that so many Brits consider moving to Spain, is the very different scenery and surroundings compared with that we are used to in the UK. Most of us have seen the old “Spaghetti Westerns,” many of which were filmed in various areas of Spain, so the rocky desert like scen...
Part 9: Setente años en Espana - (Seventy years old in Spain!) Yes, that number seen for so long as in the dim and distant future seems to have arrived all too quickly. Some eighteen months after we arrived here in Gandia I awoke with the arrival of three score years and ten! Well, almost as I awoke at about eight o clock and wasn’t born u...
Part 8: A vegetarian in Spain …… My wife has been a vegetarian since she was a young teenager, partly from a moral point of view but largely from the fact that she has just never liked the texture of meat. On the other hand, I have been a lifelong meat enjoyer (is there such a word?) and have been previously spoiled by the high standard of ste...
Part 7: Weathering La Safor .........Question: So, what’s it like to live full time in the La Safor Spanish weather with climate change crawling all over us? Well let’s see now? Hmmmm! Actually, a very good question. Let’s have a go at making a sensible answer! So, as we have only been here for just over one year, we don’t have pers...
Part 6; ONE YEAR ON …….. Yes, yes, I know, the previous epistle stated that this column from your beloved scribe was going to be about summer and winter, but I am nothing if not fickle and I promised she who must be obeyed (that’s Sally of course, not my beloved better other half) that I had a little something up my sleeve, so here it is...