Roca Verde

Final-Cover

I still feel like I owe you an explanation for my lengthy absence from these pages. So, finally, here it is. *Points excitedly*   This 448 page behemoth of a bilingual sport climbing guide to the Cordillera Cantábrica here in northern Spain has just been published. The product of two and a half years of hard […]

Silent Sunday

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May Day

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Yesterday was a blissful May day. The sun shone, school and work were closed and we spent a long day in the outdoors, putting behind us an April that I shall be glad to see the back of. (You know the kind; stressful.) We headed over the mountains to León, to the municipio  of Senas […]

And Then The Sun Came Out….

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The sudden shock of winter, with oppressive, rain-filled skies and plummeting temperatures, may have born down heavily upon me last week but then, on Thursday, the sun came out. The skies opened out into a blaze of blue and the light was crisp and clear. All the better to see what had been going on […]

Driving Through La Rioja

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‘Is it real, Mum?’ Jack turned saucer shaped eyes to me. The slow passage of kilometres as we trucked our way home from Catalunya had just been enlivened by the sight of a floodlit castle, turrets and all. ‘It is. It really is,’ I smiled. ‘Oh, oh, oh. Do you think they need a knight?’ […]

Sierra del Sueve

It’s Spain, it’s June but somebody forgot to tell the weather. We’ve had a decidedly dodgy start to spring and summer – average temperatures in May were 3 degrees colder than in the last three decades and average rainfall was up by 50 litres per square metre! As a result my garden is in a […]

The Perfect Snow Storm

By the time the month of March comes around spring is well and truly on the way in Asturias. Winter is behind us and while we can still spy snow on the high mountain tops we have long since had our one annual day of snow cover here in the hills close to the sea. […]

Sailing Santander to Portsmouth, Again

We’re back in the UK for our first visit in nearly a year and once again we chose the ferry to get us (and all of our many, many bags) here. As our family love affair with ferry travel continues, it seemed rather appropriate (although entirely coincidental) that we set sail from Santander to Portsmouth […]