"A Year in Spain" My "last gasp" attempt at posting (informative info).

jumartoo said:
Now Peavy as a member of the Morning Funsters NMC (Nosy Mares Club) I really need to ask you how, when and why you learnt such good English.
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Well, basically musical culture is an important factor, since I grew up listening to all kinds of music in English, since my father was a big fan of Beatles, Rolling Stones and many other great bands from the 60s, 70s.. (UK and US basically), so I developed an "ear" for language and music (I'm a musician, mainly play guitar).
So when I developed my own taste in music, I read the lyrics of my favorite bands and constantly learned.
Then I dated a Dutch girl for a few years and started watching movies (DVD's) in their original version with English subtitles (something that is NOT popular in Spain, as you know here everything is dubbed on TV and in cinemas). That relationship took my English to another level, since it was our everyday language.
And nowadays, my wife (Spanish too) is a language enthusiast :LOL:
Sorry for the long answer:giggle:
 
Peavy said:
Well, basically musical culture is an important factor, since I grew up listening to all kinds of music in English, since my father was a big fan of Beatles, Rolling Stones and many other great bands from the 60s, 70s.. (UK and US basically), so I developed an "ear" for language and music (I'm a musician, mainly play guitar).
So when I developed my own taste in music, I read the lyrics of my favorite bands and constantly learned.
Then I dated a Dutch girl for a few years and started watching movies (DVD's) in their original version with English subtitles (something that is NOT popular in Spain, as you know here everything is dubbed on TV and in cinemas). That relationship took my English to another level, since it was our everyday language.
And nowadays, my wife (Spanish too) is a language enthusiast :LOL:
Sorry for the long answer:giggle:
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Brilliant answer, thank you.
 
I got talking to a young guy who was filling my van with diesel not far from Altea and he spoke near perfect English and I asked him how long he had been to England and he said never left Spain, learnt it all from music and watching tv..😳

Being young I guess, their brains just soak it up…

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Just smiffy said:
I got talking to a young guy who was filling my van with diesel not far from Altea and he spoke near perfect English and I asked him how long he had been to England and he said never left Spain, learnt it all from music and watching tv..😳

Being young I guess, their brains just soak it up…
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We once had a similar encounter with a young guy filling our vehicle at a station in Andorra, except he spoke perfect American English, learnt from movies.
 
We had a cold night, and a cool, but very sunny day. We decided to ride a slightly different route to the one we did from Génave a few years ago.

Unfortunately, didn’t get chance to see, and speak to the guy, with whom we had a lovely conversation the last time we rode the route. We stuck to the via verde and minor roads. The tracks we looked onto were, mainly, very muddy!

Our nearest neighbours overnight were a young couple, with two kids, taking a year out from their jobs in Denmark. They were interesting to speak to, especially Maria (a journalist and known in parts of Denmark for being in front of cameras). Meant nothing to us though 😂

They have a little more time before they park up their camper and have three months in Japan. Before coming back to Spain, heading home, selling the van, and getting back to "real life ".

Good luck to them.

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We're having another night here, maybe two. Tomorrow we want to try the recommended, on P4N, restaurant, for lunch.
 
This travelling life, sometimes, can be great.

Our neighbour on the left has a problem trying to shut the back door of his Possl van. Now, even though he's German, and we have a thing against the huge influx to the Med coast from that country 🤣, here we are more friendly. Martin's been trying to help him get the door closed. It's temporarily sorted. The guy lost his lower leg in the 1980's when run over by a caterpillar truck! That's nothing to do with parking here, but something that came out in a subsequent conversation.

The boys (mostly) youths from the town are here playing footie. They've been across asking for a lighter or matches. To smoke? asked Martin. Noooooooo to light some fireworks. Are you Spanish, he was asked. Well, no comment to that, from them, except when he answered I'm from Murcia. Their answer ... Murcia 🤔🤔🤔 oh Murcia 😂😂😂 ...
 
We now have Dutch on one side (working remotely) and the German with dicky door on the other.

Today's forecast is much improved. And getting even better.

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We are still needing to avoid mud and wet areas, so we did another self selected (by Martin) Komoot route. So far he's chosen some good routes. We only had two bits today that were wet and where we had to skirt around to get on, and off, our chosen track.

This area is so nice, we're staying for another day tomorrow.

We've bought a few items in the local shop, and eaten in one of the bars today, so we've put a bit into the local economy.

Looking back from the beginning of our ride.
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A surprising property in the middle of nowhere.
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Some views of our route. Some ahead and some looking back.
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We were on a part of one of the Don Quixote stages from Albacete.
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The village of Villapalacios, our turnaround point.
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And another bit of the via verde.
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I'm now beginning to research another circular Don Quixote bike ride. We did a six day trip last April, so another one this April???
 
We're finding it hard to leave this place. We've overstayed our, self imposed, time already. As its not busy, and all here are furriners, we're not too bothered. There aren't any regulations posted anyway.

We've had, yet another, lovely ride/exploration of the surrounding countryside. Again, we were keeping away from the muddy tracks, although we hit one short patch today, just because it had been driven on by a heavy vehicle recently.

Towards the end of the route, and staying on a minor road, we came to a lovely picnic area, overlooking the village of Villarodrigo. We wondered where our chatty cafe neighbour, from a few years ago, lived. We'll never know 😥.

Will we stay yet another night? Maybe!

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Martin, turning, so his bum isn't in the photo. (As requested by some Funsters 🤣)

A fountain, with a nearby fuente. The source of the Rio Turruchel. We filled our water bags. It should be good water.
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The road down (beyond the track). If we go to our next chosen motorhome area, we'll be driving this way.
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Our first view of the dominant Peña Cambron. We didn't go to the top!
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But we skirted underneath, then went down the muddy bit.
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A few, on route, changes and we arrived at a small road with picnic benches.

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We sat and watched some Cabra Montes (Mountain goats) but couldn't get a photo.

From here, we shunned all the track alternatives, amd stayed on the minor road down past the viewpoint to Villarodrigo. We rode a circuit around the village.

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The way back from there was the same as our day 1.

I made paella for lunch 👍

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We're still at Bienservida but we're leaving tomorrow, honestly.

Now I don't "do" politics but we can't help feeling that the Brits had everything on a plate, and swept it into the bin.

We've been five here. French, German, Danish, Dutch and us. We all conversed in ...... English. How lucky are we.

Anyway. Politics over. We did a mountainbike route today, one a friend did in October and recommended for us. We had a bit of mud, but nothing we couldn't avoid. We climbed up to one of the fire towers and had spectacular views.

My bike (sold subject to my new one arriving) has developed a noise (like the van, what is it with us?) Martin's outside checking it out. He thinks it's something minor, but if anything fails within a year of our friend buying it, we'll get it sorted for them.

Anyway, on our ride. We saw, for the first time, many mountain goats and some deer. Lots of prints in the mud though, so there are a lot out there.

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For us, it's been a brilliant stop. We'll be back 🙂
 
Hahaha the kids have just arrived. They are no problem to the motorhomes BTW. They play football until dusk across the other side of the area, then disappear. They walked across chanting "we are playing football, we are playing football" 🤣🤣🤣

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Thanks for all the likes 💕💕💕

We are having a day off today and a move to a new place. We took the opportunity to do a bit of van work before we left. The French guy, with a big, black Newfoundland dog, borrowed our ladder to do a roof job. He was a nice guy, interesting to talk to, in English. He didn't have any problem using our language 😂. He's actually learning Japanese as a hobby.

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Our new spot. Billy no Mates at the moment. That's good for us. I expect the coast is rammed!

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Disaster .... we've just discovered we only have 6 teabags left. We never expected to be away for as long as this. We didn't bank on having this lovely weather.

We're keeping everything crossed that a returning Brit will call in here tonight with a surplus of teabags that they want to ditch to leave space for carrying booze.

Chances of that are zilch 🤣
 
Well if we appeared you would have a choice of peppermint or green!

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We have just had a week in the parks above Estepona , what a week, need a few days of easy walking to recover.
Also some fantastic drives through some amazing scenery.
 
scousebird said:
Oh no, a terrible state of affairs.
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The worst is there's plenty back in the apartment. We CAN buy some small boxes of wishy-washy breakfast tea (maybe). It's normally stocked even in small shops with the herb teas. It's better than nothing, I think 🤔🤔
 
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Jays2 said:
We have just had a week in the parks above Estepona , what a week, need a few days of easy walking to recover.
Also some fantastic drives through some amazing scenery.
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That's an area we don't know at all. Maybe we'll get down that way sometime.
 
Today it could have gone soooo wrong. We set off on a ride Martin had planned. A lovely track to start, then we saw red and white tapes and sign warning about hunting. We continued on a track we thought was OK but we were stopped by a big guy with a big gun, who "advised" us to go a different way. So we did 🙄😂. He told us it was safe the other side of the river.

We got, safely, to the main road and stopped at a bus shelter so Martin could replan, and he found us a lovely ride to do, almost totally by chance. We visited a waterfall and the source of one of the rivers, then continued to the white village of Cotillas. We saw signs for hunting there tomorrow so tomorrow we may be able to have a go at doing our proposed today's ride 🤔🤞

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We're here alone again. We had one motorhome neighbour last night, and a couple of bike tourers who put up a tiny tent in the dark and left this morning early.
 
This morning we set off on the "safe from Hunter's side" but the Komoot planning wasn't necessarily safe for us (me in particular) or even user friendly once you'd been stopped on a climb and can't get started again. Pushing 24 kilos of bike up a narrow rocky path (and seeing it's "off route" isn't fun, even with ebike "walk" mode.) Martin was well ahead, but had to come back to find me, and the correct route.

We tried an alternative, but a river crossing prevented our onward progress. So we about turned, back to the village, and rode up the quiet road for a while, until we picked up our route again. Once back en route, it was very good. We DID pass some hunter's, but not from the organised Hunter's Competition, so they caused us no problems.

We crossed a reservoir. My Google map shot shows how it was, my photos show how it is. Pretty low.

Our Fremch friend, with big black dog, was parked up when we returned, and we've been joined by a German woman with two dogs. We're not going to be Billy no Mates tonight.

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Yes the rain is needed I’ve read that in Costa del Sol, I think, they are turning the water off at night to homes. This is a first apparently. Not sure if it was the whole province or just a particular area. Not good ☹️
 
jumartoo said:
lovely track to start, then we saw red and white tapes and sign warning about hunting
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jumartoo said:
We DID pass some hunter's, but not from the organised Hunter's Competition, so they caused us no problems.
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This is the one reason l never ride in the Campo on a Sunday there is a serious risk of being shot, here in Andalusia l understand that 450.000 gun licences have been issued and that’s all they know about.
 
jumartoo said:
The worst is there's plenty back in the apartment. We CAN buy some small boxes of wishy-washy breakfast tea (maybe). It's normally stocked even in small shops with the herb teas. It's better than nothing, I think 🤔🤔
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Not that Liptons "s.....e"....🙄

Cheers🍻

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