No crime in the mountains

It's Sunday, May 14th and we're back home but I'll post the blog entries as they were written over the past few days. Thankyou to Tricia and gang (and everyone else) for your encouraging comments. I'm glad you've enjoyed reading - it's been great fun writing down the highlights. Future posts will happen, and there are some more pics and links to add to earlier posts, too.
Today, Wednesday, May 10th, we've driven from Spain's deep south to Madrid, very near its geographical centre. We left Cortijo La Joya in thick mist and watched the cloud rolling off the mountain tops in a huge standing wave as we drove down into Antequera and the motorway. We've spent a very happy month at the cortijo with its little community of friendly residents and travellers. It's been a great base for our explorations and a warm and welcoming home to return to at the end of a day. Antequera was sunny, and we took a last opportunity to photograph its police station that looks like a film-set for Zorro! Our lunch stop was at the extreme northern end of Andulacia, where the road crosses a steep mountain pass and emerges in Castilla La Mancha, which stretches out, flat as a tortilla, for mile upon mile, although the monotony is relieved occasionally by gigantic black bulls standing by the roadside. In earlier times, the pass was the holdout of an Andalucian bandit who "escorted" travellers safely through the dangerous landscape. They weren't allowed to refuse the offer of an escort; if they did, the landscape was likely to become much more dangerous very quickly. We've ensconced in a Formule Hotel in a commercial area on the outskirts of Madrid and had our supper in a truckers' restaurant. Here we got a good 3 course meal with wine and coffee for 17 Euros (total), joining the other customers watching Seville playing Middlesborough in football in UEFA Cup Final. The young and efficient waiter here worked out straight away that we're British from our stumbling order in Spanish, and so he served us in carefully pronounced Spanish himself, listening out for our mistakes and correcting us gently as we struggled along. The other diners meanwhile, truckers to a man, were relishing their own supper, one man to a table, being served just as thoughtfully. Having said that, one of them really got under the waiter's skin. He had convex ears (always a bad sign, I've found) and continually asked for more of everything, holding up a hand like a child at school to catch the waiter's attention. When he got to the dessert he changed his mind repeatedly about what he wanted. Finally he decided that he wanted a peach; the waiter said he thought there weren't any, but that he'd go and look. Meanwhile the diner got up and wandered around, looking for a peach, too. Finally, he found a bowl of fruit, including two peaches, on a high shelf above the dessert display cabinet. With a huge grin, he took first one, then the second, and helped himself to a plate and knife before going back to the table. When the waiter returned to report that there were, indeed, no peaches, the man pointed delightedly at his plate and began to tuck in. For the rest of the time he sat there munching and slurping them as loudly as he could, turning around occasionally to let everyone see that he had TWO peaches, not just ONE. Just before we left, a big friendly giant, just like Mongo in the film Blazing Saddles, came in to eat. he got a seat at the front, right by the television, and the biggest salad I've ever seen, served super-quick. While everyone else was drinking wine or small glasses of beer, he got a huge glassful of beer that must have been about three quarters of a litre. We could have done with his help later (read on). By the way, Seville are 1-0 in the lead as I write. On the short walk back to the hotel, two very nice young men in a swish-looking car asked the way out of the trading complex (well, actually, one was in the car, the other looked as if he'd just got back from asking directions). We stopped and said that we didn't know the area - we should have known better, it was such an obvious set-up - and things got exciting very quickly. The man on the side of the road grabbed Faith's bag and tried to make off with it into the car. She held on very tight, though, and pulled back, yelling at him at the top of her voice. I grabbed the bag, too, and buffeted, trying to push him away. His accomplice in the car turned and shouted to him, and our attacker put his hand inside his jacket as if to pull out a weapon. I don't know whether or not he had one - or was simply going through the motions so that we'd let go - because I managed to land a good high kick in his ribs (bless you, Berkshire Bedlam!) on top of Faith's efforts, and he gave up; we were making a lot of noise! I yelled to Faith to run, which she did surprisingly quickly, and I was close behind. The guy had bundled himself in to the car, though, and was gone in a flash. Back at the hotel, wobbly but in one piece, and with all our belongings still intact, we reported what we could to a passing security patrol. It's appalling how little we'd been able to take in, though; a newish sporty black car, possibly a Mercedes, possibly a BMW; two young men, one black - the driver, one white - the attacker. Seville has just won the game, 4-0 (3 more goals scored in about 10 minutes near the end), and, knowing Seville, there'll be no sleep there tonight!
Thursday, May 11th. The TV news at breakfast showed Seville's celebrations. The whole city out in the streets cheering, crying, singing - and they've only just finished a week of Semana Santa followed by a week of Feria! The news headline was 'Trabajar sin dormir!' - work wothout sleep - and they interviewed a number of very bleary office workers, restaurateurs etc who were convinced that they would survive the day on good, strong coffee. So did we; the next section of the journey took us across the most fearsomely flat country that I've ever seen until, at last, we arrived in the Pays Basque and the Cantabrian Mountains. Here, we could well have been in the Alps. Chalets, green mountain fields and forests of fir trees on steep valley sides.
We stayed in an Etap Hotel this time, in the hilly Bilbao suburb of Arrigorriaga. The whole area is bilingual - Basque (Euskara - all K's and X's) and Spanish. We went for a walk and saw the whole town (more or less) collecting the children from school, had a quick drink in Cafe Coyote - themed on Wile E. Coyote, even down to the light fittings shaped like bundles of ACME TNT, and then had a meal in Restaurant Capitaine Utzigaine (who he?). Meanwhile, outside, it thundered and rained. A good, honest mountain storm. Just before bed, we checked the news. Seville is still partying!
Friday, May 12th. We' as marvelled at Bilbao's transporter bridge (they do say it's even older than the one in Newport, the scurvy knaves) and now, hearties, we is safely aboard ye good ship Pride of Bilbao, bound for Portsmouth, aye. Biscay (o), is fair calm, and ' tis hardly a wobble we's feelin' as she ploughs her way north'ard. We ' as seen 'ordes o' dolphins (common an' striped, dam'yer eyes!), fin whales an' a sei whale. I 'is 'ardly able to keep me trusty 'arpoon from a'quiverin'! We 'is finishin' the day eatin' our supper in the ship's Carvery as the sun is settin' an' 'dolphins is bow-ridin' ahead o' us. I is wipin' a salty tear from my (good) eye jus' thinkin' on it - but don't 'ee think I is goin' soft mind!
By the way: a bottle of wine to the first reader who correctly identifies the source of this post's title.

Who is Juan Gonsales?

The broad beans saga has reached a conclusion at last! A couple of days ago, Faith and I went for a walk through the fields nearby, which are bursting with them, in spite of everyone here saying they're over now, and it was all we could do to hold back from contributing to the well-known phenomenon of "edge-effect" in crops. Instead, we discovered that there's a local market in Antequera ( a little late, I know) and drove down there this morning. En route, we passed our Romanians busy picking the next harvest in the very field we'd walked past; our hopes were raised! The market turned out to be a pretty typical one, mainly shoes, - being Spain, terrifyingly architectural women's underwear, thin clothing, sunglasses and tablecloths (though they might have been mantillas, depending on your viewpoint cf Picasso), but there were also four different traders selling fruit and vegetables. At first there was no sign of broad beans, though plenty of flat, green ones, and then, on one stall, we noticed a few crates of broad beans stacked at the back, but not on sale. We loitered and, in God's good time,a box came to the front, and, lo, broad beans were being sold! We had to wait our turn, though, local fabaphiles were at the front of the queue; small, assertive local housewives who know that the best way to tease their man's jaded ardour is to present him with a plateful of freshly cooked broad beans. We bought rather more than we'd intended, largely through a misunderstanding of the term "medio", as applied to market trading. Whenever I' ve encountered the word before, its meaning has been "half", as in "medio racione", which is the eminently sensible way that you can buy a half portion of something in a venta, and get to taste two things instead of one. I went ahead and applied the logic to buying the beans (I'd heard some of the women do the same, so I felt I was on safe ground). HOWEVER, in this context, medio is taken to mean half of the usual quantity (apparently 4 Kg) in which the item is sold. We have plenty of beans now. We checked the other vegetable stalls out of curiosity; none of them had "habas".On Sunday night we got to a concert in Antequera. Musicians from the New Cologne Philharmonia played a programme of Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Albinoni and others. We heard Mozart's 3rd Violin Concerto played on 3 violins, a viola, a cello and a double bass - a curious and intimate experience. There was a piccolo concerto by Vivaldi with similar instrumentation, the very good soloist looking as though he'd parked his Harley Davidson in the street outside; a Brandenburg concerto featured a big, Arnold Scwarzennegger look-alike playing a tiny trumpet shaped like a French Horn!Our last venture has been to return to El Torcal, more or less where we began our meanderings here a month ago, for a final walk exploring some of the paths that are on the large scale map that we brought, but are not indicated on the information boards. The path that we chose led us to a glorious valley where there is a deserted quarry. Abandoned blocks of stone, each about 1.5 metres square, lay around and, further along the track, we found some millstones of different sizes, including some that were still only partly cut out of the rock. The track had been paved with rough, riven stone at some point in its life. Beside it, beyond the quarry, were a small meadow enclosed by a dry-stone wall, a stone hut and a stone dog kennel. We crept inside the hut (who wouldn't?). It's obviously been used as a bothy - it'd be quite effective, but you'd need a good camping mat on the stone sleeping bench (it had a shallow depression carved in it, roughly body-sized; obviously to contain a straw matress). On one end of the bench, apparently written with white correction fluid was: 10/01/2003, Pancho, Salvi, Madera. Muy buena. -3 deg C. Mucha nieve. Back outside, shading our eyes as we were accustoming ourselves to the glaring sunlight, we noticed something else. Down on one of the road-slabs, something was carved. It was faded and worn, but finally we managed to trace out what it said. There was a date, 1787 (the same year that Mozart composed Don Giovanni), a crucifix, and the name JVAN GONSALES. Who was he? Was this his hut? His quarry, originally? Or is what remains of Juan Gonsales resting quietly under the slab? Take your choice! The trackway wound on down to Antequera, gleaming white in the flat valley below, but we turned upwards and, walking over Camorro de Siete Mesas - Torcal's highest point - we emerged at the roadway near the visitor centre. The car park was full of cars and coaches; we'd met no-one all day (just an ibex, and it wasn't bothered about us at all). Over the past weekend, Heino (the owner) has returned with his wife (Iris), and there have been a couple of long and pleasant evenings where all of our little cortijo community has met together at the end of our separate days to compare notes and discuss those things that one discusses when on holiday and the conversation is lubricated by several glasses of wine. This will probably be the last post from Spain because it's not likely that we'll have access to the internet on the long journey home that begins tomorrow. We plan to leave La Joya in the morning to drive to Madrid for an overnight stop in a Formule Hotel on the southern outskirts of the city, and then on to Bilbao for a similar night, before taking the ferry at 1:15 pm on Friday. Next post, May 14th, deo volente!

Love and death

"Eight brave bulls!" it says on the poster in Malaga. Well, the five that we saw certainly did their best, but each of them ended its twenty minutes or so in the ring dead, nevertheless.
For 15 Euros each, we buy our tickets (sol y sombre, which allow us to sit in a part of the bullring that's in full sun at the beginning of the corrida, but shaded by the time of the fourth bull) and join the crowd. It's made up mainly of enthusiastic, evidently well-informed, Spanish - mostly couples and families - and the merely curious like us. The Plaza de Torros is a circle of raked sand surrounded by stepped stone terraces where the "groundlings" sit and topped with covered galleries for the richer clientelle. It feels Roman. At 6:00 pm exactly, the wind-band, sitting high up in a covered part of the terraces, begins to play and two dignified old gentlemen dressed rather like musketeers and mounted on white horses, enter the ring. They ride across to the other side at a walk, followed by the rest of the equipage, mounted and on foot. There is polite applause from the crowd and some appreciative calls as the various matadors carry out practice passes with flamingo-coloured capes. Now a smaller band, of snare drums and trumpets, sounds a flourish and a horseman with a lance appears. He is splendidly dressed, hidalgo-style, and puts the horse through its paces, high-stepping, side-stepping and generally lording it. Great cheers from the crowd. Another fanfare from the trumpets, a gasp from the crowd this time, and the first bull bursts out of the pen and into view. The job of the unmounted matadors with their flamingo cloaks now becomes clear. They take turns to attract the bull's attention and to make passes before retreating behind wooden barricades; this performance evidently allows the main act to assess the bull's behaviour and stamina and to decide how much it needs to be slowed down before he can engage with it. This slowing down is done by picadores. Mounted on heavily padded and blindfolded horses, they come up alongside the bull and with heavy, short-pointed lances, stab at the hump of muscle between its shoulders as it tries to gore them. The crowd doesn't like the picadores very much; they know that they can take the fight out of a bull before things have even begun if they're too heavy handed. There's hissing and whistling as one of the picadores stands in the stirrups and bears down hard on the bull, turning the lance in the wound. The picadores retreat, and the bull is left panting and confused in the middle of the ring. Not for long; the solo rider returns armed with a light lance. A furious dance begins between the rider and the bull, accompanied by pasadobles from the wind band. The rider, trailing the reversed lance to draw the bull's attention, wheels and turns the horse around it at close quarters. The knowledgeable among the crowd applaud or shout "bien!", or simply "eehhh!" at passes that are particularly good. Eventually the band stops playing, the lance is abandoned and a second rider, who is the matador, enters the stage. He sticks the bull with successively smaller sets of banderillas, decorated barbs. Placing these requires the rider to move in closer and closer to the bull, and with each strike the crowd cheers and the bull starts as if bitten by a fly. For the final scene, the matador dismounts and chooses a scarlet cloak and a heavy sword with a curious cross-piece about 15 cms behind the point. The action takes place in silence. There are a few passes, raising quiet approval from the crowd, before the matador stands still, facing the bull. He takes sight along the sword, rises on tiptoe and falls forward, at attention, towards it. The sword is intended to enter immediately behind the skull, where it joins the neck, to cut the spinal cord. This will drop the bull instantly. But the thrust isn't accurate and the bull rears, turns away, and then faces the matador again, panting, angry, confused and very much alive. The crowd cheers the bull. What began as an elegant, formal final movement, though, has become a messier affair that takes two more attempts before the blade hits its target and the defeated animal falls onto the sand, suddenly onto the sand, suddenly dead. The matador turns away, the crowd applauds and a team of three white asses, with colourful bridles and jingling bells, trots into the ring. The bloody carcass is hitched by a chain to the bar they are carrying, and dragged off , to the sound of the merry bells, to be butchered. There it is then, our first, and likely to be only, experience of a bullfight.
As we walk back to the car, we pass through an enormous street party. Evidently, here in Malaga, Cruces de Mayo is celebrated differently from in Antequera. There is food and drink, anyone can join in, and most of the women and girls are wearing flamenco dresses. We stop and buy a beer and a tapa, listening to the women taking turns to sing flamenco love-songs while the children dance. Behind them, the excavated Roman amphitheatre glows rosy pink, its terraces empty, echoing the wailing music back into the square.

All the world's a stage

It seems to me that the Spanish have a love of theatre in their everyday lives. We've seen this made evident in obvious ways: the Semana Santa celebrations, the Seville Feria, and the Cruces de Mayo, for example. And it's there in the passion for football and bullfighting. But it creeps into all kinds of other things, too; the occasional crazy driving, the fact that you'll sometimes see a farmer with a rod-straight back but a scruffy shirt and worn chaps, riding a fully caparisoned horse - all silver buckles, tooled saddle and plaited main - across a roundabout in the town. As we drove into the village the day before yesterday, we saw one of the Romanians (you remember that they're seasonal workers here), tearing down the street pursued by a man brandishing a broken bottle. They sped past us, but the boy had reached the safety of his house, and so the man hurled the glass into the gutter, where it shattered very effectively, and strode off. In a few moments a posse of women was heading up the street from the house in the direction of the bar. I don't hold out much hope for him.
Yesterday, we went for a walk in the Sierra de Grazalema National Park. It's an area of deep valleys and high mountains, more or less south of Ronda, which were the last stronghold of bandits such as Pasos Largos (Long Strides) and Jose Tragabuches, who survived by smuggling, preying on stagecoaches and living off the land! Maybe there's just a little of it left because all along the path, the National Park signs bore (very neatly written) grafitti like "Don't steal our water!", "Primitivism - yes! Free your soul; preserve the right to roam freely!" and "Not thieves, but Mafias are taking away the outdoors". The area has a microclimate that's wetter than the area further east, where we're based, and so it's greener, with many more trees, and rivers that actually have water in them rather than puddles or nothing.
We walked from one railway station (Benaojan) to another (Jimera de Libar). The railway runs from Algeciras to Ronda and was designed by an English engineer named Henderson. The gradient is ferocious, and in earlier times the train ran so slowly that contraband goods could be traded from the windows. The footpath is so achingly perfect that it must have been designed by the Ministry for the Picturesque, or some such government department. It wound along the mountainside, sometimes down at the level of the river, sometimes high above it, and all along, the banks and hillside were splendid with yellow wild chrysanthemums and red poppies. We passed a ruined farm called, of all things, Cortijo de Orija de Buro (Donkey-ears Farm!), where tiny pond turtles plopped about in a stream and a mummified goat carcass lay dramatically in a mouldering stall; we picnicked close by the river bank where unfeasible numbers of very big fish swam, annoyingly, just out of reach; nightingales sang in the thickets below us as we marched along the higher stretches, and colourful bee-eaters called to one another above.
At the end of the walk, the splendidly uniformed Jefe de Estacion operated the outdoor signalling levers with a flourish, to allow the train to enter the station. His assistant - not so splendidly dressed as you can see - still managed to get into the performance as Beano, the Humorous Clown!
We still haven't been able to buy any broad beans (habas)! We saw them in the market in Malaga earlier this week, but by the time we got back there to buy some, the market was all shut up for the day; we found a tiny grocer's shop in Antequera where we could see beans through the window - but it was closed, and we couldn't find our way back there later; for more than a week now, one of the supermarkets has had a shelf labelled "habas", but it's empty. Of course, the fields are full of them. Once again, you see, it's theatre; build up the tension, and keep them guessing.
I'm beginning to think that Jack struck a good bargain in getting not just one, but five beans for his cow. Cows are ten a penny hereabouts!

Pablito y las cabras felices

Picasso was born in Malaga. In order to paint his tableau, La Joie de Vivre, Picasso divined the vital essence of "goat" by doing lots of studies, and represented it on canvas. Our village is in the centre of a shallow concave plateau in the mountains, about 2 kms in diameter. Around the rim of the plateau, and on the edge of the village itself, there are farms, and at least 5 of these have a goat-flock. Each flock numbers around 200 goats, so you can appreciate that, here in La Joya, goats make a big contribution to the local joie de vivre too. What's the point of this rambling? Well, yesterday, we went to Malaga to visit the very impressive and well-ordered Picasso Gallery - you get directed along from room to room by very attentive and polite curators who get quite agitated if you go back to look at a picture twice [comments overheard from a very British, blue-rinsed lady: looking at early, naturalistic paintings, "He must have done these in his VERY young period, it's not the real stuff."; looking at a pencil sketch of the artist's eyes, drawn realistically, "Of course, if he drew eyes like that in our art class, he wouldn't last long."]. Among other things, we saw his studies of goats, made to help him to paint the mythical creatures like satyrs and fauns, derived from goats, that are dancing with the pretty nymph in the tableau (I think he'd already done plenty of studies of women, so he didn't have any trouble getting the nymph right!). The gallery is on a site occupied since prehistoric times, and when you've seen all the Picassos - in the correct chronological order, by the way - you can go down to the cellar and see - again in the correct chronological order - the Phoenecian, Roman and Mediaeval buildings that they've excavated on the spot. On the way home, for the first time, we had to wait on the narrow road while one of the local goatherds drove his flock along towards us on their way back to their farm. It was on a long bend where the road has barriers on each side to help to stop you from driving over the verge and into the steep fields, and in that particular stretch of road there's only one point where the barrier opens onto a field path. So, llike Picasso, we mused on the goats - as they trotted, jumped or ambled before our eyes - all 200 of them!Malaga city is divided in two, North to South, by River Guadalhorce, or it would be if the riverbed wasn't so dry and sun-baked that it's covered with grass and bushes. On one stretch, near the centre of the city, they've installed a stainless steel false river bed about 30 metres long and 2 metres wide, with fountains and lights in an attempt to represent a river (or maybe its vital essence). It looked very attractive yesterday in the heat, and the sound of the water was refreshing, too. We joked that they could use the river bed as parking space, and so ease the acute parking problem they have in the city. As we settled down to bed last night there was an electrical storm. Lightning lit up the mountains and there was the rumble of distant thunder. By midnight, the thunder wasn't so distant, and by the small hours, the thunder had been replaced by a gale and driving rain that went on all night. It's been raining most of today, too, and so we stayed inside and have done things like reading, editing photos and drawing. At lunchtime, we went to the local farmers' bar, Venta Vargas, to eat and, lo, the big news is of the chaotic aftermath of the flooding in Malaga overnight! There were film reports of people mopping out their houses, retrieving their cars from flooded streets and one man was pointing proudly for the cameras to a scorched hole in his roof where the lightning had struck. In Venta Vargas, they had a log fire going in the huge open fireplace and the place was full. There was the distinct impression that people had put in a morning's work in the fields, against the elements, and were now ready to call it a day. We had to wait until we could get a table for our "Menu del dia". They have this every day, between 1:00 pm and 3:30, and it costs 7 Euros each. For that you get a Premier Plato (usually a choice of two different soups and another simple fish or meat dish), a Segundo Plato (today there was a choice from roast loin of pork, fried anchovies, fried cod, chicken, pork and bean stew etc), Postres (ice cream, homemade flan - creme-caramel, an orange or tinned peaches), bread and a drink (the default choice is a litre bottle of their house red wine put on the table for you to finish, or not, as you wish). All this is reeled off in very fast Spanish with a thick local accent, so what you get can be a bit of a lottery. Wherever we've been in the rural parts of the area, people stop for a lunch like this, taken in a local bar. They get back to work at about 4:00 pm and then finish at around 7:00 pm. Venta Vargas is typical. a single room with a corner counter, a small kitchen behind and a big open room that acts as dining room, bar and television room, depending on how they've laid out the tables and the time of day. It's run by two small, active, quiet men who might be brothers, or not. They've obviously worked together for a long, long time because they move around the space getting all the jobs done, keeping things moving, checking on the customers without getting in each other's way, and each knowing what the other is doing at any time.The weather forecast says more rain tomorrow, but clearing later. So maybe Malaga's river has returned today, filling the city's brave attempt to represent its vital essence with the joie de vivre of fishes.

Seville marmalade

Being back in Cortijo La Joya after the visit to Morocco feels a little like coming home after a rowdy party! We travelled up to Bobadilla on the Algerciras/Granada train past storks' nests, ordered villages and well-watered fields. These things stand out precisely because of the contrast that Morocco affords. A school group got on the train part way home. They were infant school children with their teachers; they'd been on a school visit and were tired but happy. We were surrounded by excited and tired people. At Ronda they got out.Their parents were waiting for them on the platform; a familiar sight from another life! Since being back at La Joya (the spelling varies - sometimes La Joya, sometimes la Hoya), we've explored an enormous local limestone gorge and visited Seville. Seville - Don Juan's home, as well as Carmen's. We got there during the Spring Feria. In Easter Week the men get to carry Holy Images around the streets; during feria, the women get their revenge! They dress in Flamenco costume and parade themselves all over the city! Not only this; they dress up their children in Flamenco costume, too. Buses, trains, cars, horse-drawn carriages were all loaded with putative Carmens and their worried partners. To be fair, the enormous park where the Feria actually happens is nothing nor less than an excuse to see and be seen. There are carriages, temporary ventas (inns), some of which are private and some public. Added to this, there are squadrons of people riding horses. Not ordinary horses; not ordinary people. These are Hidalgos and their escorts. Men in tight trousers and leather chaps, with high boots and spurs and incredibly cool hats. They ride, holding the reins in one hand, with one hand on their hip and their signorita behind them. Faith was transported (not literally, unfortunately, she says)! We visited the Reale Alcazar, too. (What, more Moors?). It was spectacular, but we're all Alcazared out! Yesterday, Antequerra (the local town - you remember, a lovely place) was due to hold a grand display of Flamenco and Horsemanship in the bullring. We went down, but all was locked up. There was a handwritten notice that said, in effect, "Due to circumstances beyond our control ..." We found out what the cirumstances were. Cruces de Mayo. This is the Junior League Semana Santa (see earlier posts), when the children get to carry miniature versions of the Holy Images through the streets. Someone had made a major cock-up! The two dates coincided, and, quite reasonably, Cruces de Mayo won. The bullring organisers are probably galley slaves to a Barbary Corsair as we write. Today is May the First, people here seem to have a day off work. The Romanians are having a big friendly barbecue. I've taught them how to use the swimming pool here, in spite of its being only 68 degrees F in the water, but I've stayed clear of playing football with them so far - they are very fit (they pick broad beans in the fields all day). We tried to buy broad beans today, "Tiene usted habas?" Faith asked. "No. Hay muchos en los campos, pero nada aqui," was the reply. I bet Asda are bying them all up! The dry gorge today was spectatcular and quite scary (lots of plants and sheep bones and so on), but we did well! This evening we've eaten most of a bean stew (alubias rather than habas), but it defeated us in the end, and we'll have to tackle the rest tomorrow!