A bit of spit and polish

I’ve said it before - this is an odd but not really an unusual lifestyle. Today (Tuesday) Gareth was polishing the van when he was approached by another British mohomer. “You’re spending your holiday polishing!”, he remarked, clearly amused. “Are we on holiday?” we wondered. We’ve been away, now, for three months with another four weeks before we return ‘home’. It is now the way we live; spending summer in our static caravan in Gower and in the winter months, cosseting our arthritises in a motorhome, somewhere warm and sunny. Things need cleaning and servicing wherever we are, so Gareth is polishing our newly washed van and I’m sitting in the sun admiring it. 

The view from the camper

Here in Cabo De Gata, Almeria, reputedly one of the warmest and driest parts of Spain we are parked up on a quiet beach-front sosta (motorhome parking place). This isn’t a bad spot at all for a bit of van-polishing with a view of the sea backed by the snow-topped Sierra Nevada and the gentle smacking of the waves providing a rhythm to breathe and to sleep by; for me, anyway - Gareth’s polishing rhythm is a bit more energetic (that wasn’t a euphemism, by the way!) We are in good company here; other motorhomes of varying sizes, styles and origins, all gathered together with the common wish of finding sun and seclusion. While there’s little chance of seclusion when we are all gravitating to the same places, the motorhoming community is generally respectful of each other’s space and peace. Inevitably, though, there’s occasionally one that isn’t, and they often have a barking dog too.

The sosta at La Fabriquilla, Cabo De Gata

Fabriquilla 

Cabo De Gata is a now dead (I hope) volcanic region, the violence of its fiery history written in the rocks and hill profile. It is part of a tectonic plate that is pushing up against the European plate.  We could see the fold of hills that is the collision point when we visited Níjar, a higher-up town looking out across the land to the coast. An ancient watchtower there is a great place to take in the view, but learning that the area has a history of earthquakes I wondered again about Southern Europeans and their penchant for building as precariously as they do. 

The view these days is very different from the view the Níjar watchtower builders would have had. The lowland shimmers with Almerian agriculture - plastic covered fields. The plastic innovation that enables the growing of fruit, tomatoes, and salad produce has brought much needed income to poor, arid Almería but their pride in the plastic covering being seen from satellite is a bit disturbing, especially when so much of it is often in shreds, blowing in the wind or littering river beds and road sides. It makes a carrier bag beach clean-up look really feeble. We’ve been quite disturbed by the lavish use of plastic here generally. Yes, there are plenty of recycling bins about, but plastic packaging is often over the top and littering, like everywhere, of course, can be a real spoiler. However, the Natural Park of Cabo De Gata is thankfully free of plastic coverings, it’s beauty as a vast, dramatic rockery garden surrounded by a blue, blue sea and sky, well worth spending time in.

An old lava flow

Flowering plants everywhere

Gareth had taken some persuading to drive up to Níjar. He’d been enjoying the hills on his mountain bike but on Monday I had a sudden need of a magpie day. Learning that Níjar is known for Almerian  pottery shops and the rag rugs know as jarapas, I wanted a day browsing for things to take home. The down side of Gareth’s determined towns-avoidance is my lack of opportunity to find souvenirs, and I do not like going home to the grandchildren empty handed. Authentic, locally crafted souvenirs appear to be in short supply, however. Our Spanish ‘Jesus’ had pointed out the folly of European countries like Spain no longer producing much of anything. While the vast swathes of plastic provide for Europe’s salad plates, China and the Far East provide everything else, it seems, to the market traders who clamour for attention in town squares and in popular, widespread Oriental bazar shops. 

House in old Níjar

Pottery shop (closed 😏) 

Nice little place
(Gareth’s photo)

One of this area’s tourist credentials is its having been a film location for many of the spaghetti westerns. A huge metal gun-toting Clint Eastwood welcomes visitors to the little village of Albaricoques. We spent the weekend there in Olivares, a nice little private aire (it had a washing machine! Yay!) and did as all tourists do (after the washing) - followed the film trail, aided by information boards, street names like Calle Clint Eastwood, Calle Lee van Cleef and tried matching scenes from “A Fistfull of Dollars” to relevant bits of the village. A little boy on a bike proudly showed us that he lived in the famous street used in the film. Certainly we could see its essential likeness to a photo on a board but things have moved on, possibly because of some income from the film-makers, and the street is now considerably renovated. The village seems to have missed a trick, though, in not making the most of its fame credentials by finding more ways to take money from the tourists. (WHAT am I saying?! I hate the sorts of places where at every corner there’s some enterprise designed to relieve tourists of their cash!)

Volcanic landscape 

Good ol’ Clint

Los Albaricoques

While I’ve been sitting in the sun giving Gareth encouragement in his van servicing activities I’ve been able to idle contemplatively. The wonder of WhatsApp has enabled me to share my contemplations with my Headless friends, Judy and Jinny (ref. Douglas Harding and an earlier  blog here about Judy’s introduction of me to Headlessness) Their wise words contribute to my sense that life is supremely interesting. Regular WhatsApp chats with my two witchy sisters are also very inspiring.

When I began this blog post, I wanted to convey something of Almería poetically. My best analogy, though, is that it’s like an old, many times handled jigsaw with some bits missing and  bits that must be from different jigsaws. There are some beautiful bits, some ugly bits and some bits that just don’t fit properly, like the plastic covered lowlands and the rows of us motorhomers, some in big, glitzy rigs, littering up the coastline. Yes, the poetry eludes me so, sorry, but I’m not a poet, and don’t I know it! 

Salt from the Cabo De Gata lagoons

Apparently, people put bottles of water on their doorsteps to deter cats
This time they seem to have put bottles of something else!
(Gareth’s photo)

Close Encounters

We bumped into ‘Jesus’ yesterday. It certainly looked like him. This morning Gareth was pondering about the conversation we had with the guy. It was a strange encounter and he did tell us to move Hymer, ourselves and the dogs to higher ground as our parking place was in danger of getting washed away in a flood zone. We heeded his advice and Storm Gloria hit Spain a few hours later bringing snow to higher ground and more devastation to the Costa Blanca.

Where we met ‘Jesus’ 

Our Spanish ‘Jesus’ had conversed with us for a good while as we stood together on the sunny beach near Mojacar. In perfect educated English he spoke about many things including the breaking up of the EU, and countering my reference to the shady tactics of Putin, told us how Putin has done more for his people than any of the Western leaders have done for theirs. He maintains that capitalism is a failed project and that Europe has shot itself in the foot (we can’t argue with that). On our way back to the van we joked that he is probably a communist and possibly a Russian spy.

This morning, out of the blue, Gareth told me about having seen the guy watching us yesterday as we returned to the van and then turning to walk the other way along the beach before suddenly disappearing!  As I’ve said previously, Gareth isn’t often given to flights of fancy, being (mostly) very rational, but the encounter has left him with the feeling that it is somehow meaningful. And the oddest thing about his telling me so is that I had just been reading about synchronicity! (“The Positive Psychology of Synchronicity” by Chris Mackey, if you’re interested, and, btw, Gareth wasn’t aware that I was reading it!).

     

Sierra Espûna in snow
(Thanks for sending the pic, Sue)

Sierra Espûna starting to bloom

                               

 

Well, if the encounter was meaningful simply in terms of getting us to move somewhere safer, then it’s helpful but not that synchronous. We already knew that the weather was looking bad for Eastern Spain so we’d hopped down from El Berro and have been making our way south along the coast towards Almería and Cabo De Gata. However, our ‘Jesus’ guy has left a lingering impression. I’ll let you know if there are any further significances arising from it.

Right now I am writing this tucked up trying to stay warm in the van. We’re in an aire near Carboneras - motorhomes huddled together sitting out the remains of Storm Gloria. Gareth is making a start on his tax return, the dogs have accepted that a hike somewhere interesting is not on the cards today and my mind is wandering instead (it does that a lot). It was a wrench, leaving El Berro and the friends we’d made there but when we adopted this lifestyle we wanted to travel, and just as in the journey of life, knowing when to move on is what makes for adventures. I am, however, rather glad that we avoided the adventure of being washed away in a mud slide 😳

El Berro 

Imagine this in pouring rain or snow (El Berro)

The El Berro Effect

Yes, we’re still here, in the mountains, gradually being assimilated into El Berro life - for the meantime anyway. This place captured our imagination as soon as we arrived and continues to enthrall us; its beauty, the clean air, the peacefulness (when the Spanish aren’t celebrating something), and the ‘Je ne sais quoi’ of it. There isn’t a single incomer we’ve met who hasn’t mentioned the El Berro magic.

The longer you spend in a place the more you learn about it (sorry -obvious statement 😏). Every community is a fluid thing, evolving through phases of growth and decline, birth, death, rebirth, and oblivion. High up in these valleys and mountainsides there are many crumbling remains of homesteads and hamlets. The land still holds the terraces created for fruit and olive groves, trees still surviving though the people have gone. The tracks we hike and bike along are often the original trails of those people whose presence is simply a ghostly reminder, traces in the land they worked on and which once sustained them. High up in this Sierra Espûna are the remains of ice houses, stone dome-covered storage pits where the snow was collected, compacted into ice which was then cut and transported many kilometres down through the rocky terrain to the communities lower down. Now, though, there is no snow. Three years ago there was a very unusual snow flurry that came and went like a leaf on a breeze. The moment is remembered with a photo on the wall in the bar.

We have learned that when a small church, and then a church school, were established here in El Berro, drawing the people from remoter places, gradually those people started moving down and making their homes here instead. The village grew where life was easier and the mountain hamlets perished. 

El Berro

At night, looking out from the ‘mirador’ (viewpoint) where a large statue of Jesus looks out beneficently over the community, the wide coastal plain down below glistens, glows and sparkles with its vast swathe of human population and development. People have trickled down from these mountains and are continuing to do so. The life of El Berro is now suffering the same fate as those mountain hamlets as the river of younger people has flowed down to where there is employment. It’s hard work trying to make a living from a few fruit and olive groves, and insufficiently lucrative to maintain a home and a family in modern times. The little school here which once bubbled with the energy of thirty or more children, now has just three pupils and will close this year.

Apparently the campsite was originally created for the townspeople of Alhama De Murcia, the  town further down, allowing them to retreat from the hotter lower region in the summer. It became a draw for other holiday makers and has had various heydays according to which activity is in vogue. Gareth is enjoying his new mountain bike and the company of other bikers who have been coming here every winter for years, but they tell us that fewer bikers now come here than in previous years and fewer campers too. 

That is a problem, as the village seems to be almost wholly reliant on tourism. There are new residents; we’ve met a few British people who found the place, like we did, and enjoyed it so much that they bought property, living here for much of the year. But they are older people, not doing much to change the demographic of the community. Nevertheless, I am impressed by the ethics of these and the regular campsite over-winterers, in supporting the village community wherever they can. They are sensitive to the potential for villagers to resent the self-sufficiency of caravaners and motorhomers being careful to support the local bakeries, grocery, the campsite bar and the restaurants. We note, too, how the restaurants support each other by alternating closure days. There are also examples of winter residents doing voluntary work here, like teaching English or assisting with land work. It all adds to the magic of El Berro.

 

The fate of communities like this bring to mind the observation that as the world’s population grows there are and will be more and more mega-cities, drawing in people from the outer regions like magnets. From one perspective it is possible to see cities as organisms; arteries of roads, veins of sewers, a nervous system of communication services, organs of government, an immune system of health and emergency services, and so on. There is a theory that city dwelling is more efficient, more sustainable and that the death of rural communities is inevitable. Hey, ho. I have occasionally wondered whether the fate of The UK, apart from our own mega-city, London, is to be a theme park for tourists from other parts of the world. Something to think about, post-Brexit, eh?

A Christmas salad

Well that’s Christmas done then, and we’ve slipped into a new decade. Twenty years ago, though it seems like only yesterday, we were seeing in the new millennium partaking of vodka from a colostomy bag. I’ll explain - we were in the crowded streets of Cardiff for the celebration alongside some medical students who’d snuck in the alcohol inside their jackets; a clever solution, and they were keen to share. Unwise, certainly, but we were too polite to refuse. So much has changed in those twenty years, not least the financial crash and Brexit. What will 2020 bring, I wonder - less cultural and political myopia, maybe? We can hope so. Hope springs eternal.

My Christmas treat this year was a quick rendezvous with my offspring at Heathrow before they took off to Canada for Christmas and Gareth’s is a mountain-bike (now, there’s a surprise). My little trip (and the bike-shopping, of course) required packing up at El Berro and heading down to civilisation. I flew out of Murcia International airport which was the easy part. Negotiating Gatwick airport and then bussing it to Heathrow was quite a nerve-wrangle, but it was worth it for some hours with Richard, Libby, Owen, Jess and the four little ones. Forty-eight hours later I was back in Spain, met by warm sunshine, happy dogs and Gareth of course. (My carbon footprint doesn’t look too good now though).

I must mention in passing how impressed I was with the helpfulness and friendliness of the staff at Gatwick and Heathrow. It was good to see that the Brexit mood hasn’t dented any willingness to be welcoming and to put oneself out. Everyone I came in contact with seemed genuinely happy to help me navigate my way around, though I hope it’s not just my grey hair and crazed lost look that stimulated such attention. I warmed to the thought that British niceness is still alive, in spite of atrocious weather.

Anyway, back on Spanish soil, one mountain bike later, Gareth, the dogs and I were parked up in Alcazares planning how to celebrate Christmas. We stocked the camper with lots of nice things to eat and drink and the local restaurant promised a meal where we could gaze at a Mediterranean blue sea while parakeets squawked among the dates in the palm trees. On Christmas Eve we made ourselves presentable and spent a few very enjoyable hours feasting on air-dried tuna, tuna tartare, delicious dips and bread, a salad to die for, crispy duck, sea bass, good Spanish wine and desserts from seventh heaven. Needless to say, the rest of the day was a blur.

View from our Christmas table

My younger grand-daughter’s parting gift to me at Heathrow was a virus that took hold of me as Christmas dawned. Her poor mum has also been battling with it apparently, out there in snowy British Columbia. The bug may by now have been well and truly shared among them all. I adore my four grandchildren, but like all small children, they are bug factories. Christmas passed uneventfully and rather inactively as a result.

The campsite in Alcazares, Mar Menor, is large, open, spacious, new, clean and well appointed. Beach fronted and with board walks across the marshland to the esplanade and town, it is well placed for mohomers seeking sunshine, warmth and convenience. For plane spotters the occasional activity in the adjacent St Javier military airfield is a bonus and for bird watchers there is ample bird life to be spied on, on the water and in the rushes. It’s a great place for motorhome spotting, too. We watched open-mouthed as bigger and bigger rigs sailed in and glided into their pitches. We watched with amusement as they unfolded with bump-outs, sometimes a garaged car, washing machine compartment and storage holds large enough to accommodate a family or two of stowaways. One sleek looking rig, duly parked up and with its whole 15 (ish) meter long pitch quickly enclosed by an expensive windbreak, disgorged three Pyrenean mountain dogs! The owners looked like mini people in comparison.

We’ve spent a lot of time wondering who such people are. Who, if they can afford such a vehicle, chooses to live like that, when they could so easily afford a holiday apartment or two, or stay in fancy hotels? Some, we have learned, choose to do so instead of buying a bricks-and-mortar home, changing the view from their window at regular intervals. But the number of places where it’s possible to berth are limited when you’re that big, and the challenges of getting to places, quite apart from the running costs, are mind-boggling. Our humble Hymer will do us very nicely, thank you.

Gareth used our time in Mar Menor to get used to his new bike and returned from one trip with a little gift for me - a new brake cable for the old rusty bike that we’d brought away with us as emergency transport and which is now apparently mine. He made the necessary repairs and adjustments that afforded us some pedal-power to breeze along the promenade together one afternoon. The dogs ran alongside, doing quite well at not getting in our way and scurrying off across the beach whenever they thought they could get away with it. It’s a shame they’re a bit too big for us to do what so many other leisure cyclists do with their dogs around here; carrying them in baskets or little trailers. Unfortunately, unless we’re inclined to kill our dogs by running them for miles, cycle rides together will require that they stay in the camper. 

If my description of Mar Menor and Alcazares sounds like a dream holiday destination, I should point out that nowhere is perfect. The town appears to be a modern development, established in the post-Franco boom time of tourism with lots of money spent on wide boulevards, hotels and apartment blocks. Unlike Benidorm, Alicante and other large resorts, the buildings are not high-rise so the place has an open, spacious and relaxed, if slightly synthetic, feel. The edges of the town, though, are ragged where money and enthusiasm have run out, probably as a result of the financial crash of 2008. Unfinished building projects lie about, graffitied, littered, forgotten. And, of course, the area suffered from some devastating rain storms last September and early December. Flood waters destroyed the beaches along so much of this coastline bringing with it muck and debris from inland. The mosquitoes are now thriving as a result; they certainly thrived on us!

It is hard to imagine what those floods must have been like when the sun shines benignly and the ice clinks in one’s glass of sangria, but a British ex-pat we chatted to in a cafe one day described how he’d had to be airlifted from his rooftop when the floods hit his property. He’s a bit cross that no one had warned him not to build his house on a flood plain! Three huge storm channels became overwhelmed with flood water and in no time his house was six foot under water. Evidence of there having been massive water flow is everywhere, including the road to the campsite and perimeter fence of the airfield where logs, bushes and other debris is stacked up against the wire at head height. We’ve seen so little rain here, ourselves......so far at any rate. 

The past few weeks has brought news of dreadful weather events in other parts of the world. When in typical British style, we commented to another camper on what was an unusually cold and windy day, he said “The weather’s bad all over the world”, and so it seems. I’m currently reading Yuval Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” and wondering whether my grandchildren will inherit a world worth living in. I did, by the way, bring with me a number of books written by climate change sceptics, thinking that I really need to balance my understanding of global warming. Unfortunately they have failed to convince me that we aren’t facing catastrophe.

In the meantime we must do our best to love one another and live more lightly on this beautiful planet of ours. Love shone from a photo message one morning when news came through that my eldest has finally done the right thing by his lady and his two children by proposing. She said “yes” and it has put a sparkle and a smile on things. Congratulations, my lovelies!

On Monday we drove back to El Berro and it was a bit like a homecoming. The virus came too but is losing its will to live now that we’re back in the mountains and the air is colder. There are no over-friendly mosquitoes, just lots of friendly fellow campers sharing a love of this place. We are here for a couple of weeks for Gareth to do a bit of mountain biking and for us to witness a proper Spanish Three Kings night. January 6th is also Gareth’s birthday, so I’ll see if the Kings will acknowledge the occasion while throwing sweeties to the local children.

El Berro - again