Last week of current work

Villa Casamanza, Near Perugia, Umbria

After a poor summer, this is our last week of working on running summer breaks. We have four guests this week (not quite enough to break even on the week) and though I am really sad that it is all coming to an end, I am determined to make this week a good one.

Our villa is located about 6km north-west of Perugia - the best side well away from the industrial part of the city. It looks like a "new-build" villa in an old style and is very comfortable. We hadn't seen the property prior to our arrival but it should be fine for our stay.

View from the driveway

Looking towards Assisi, early morning

From the pool towards Assisi - Susie in the executive floating pool chair!

Brunch on day two

So I have five more yoga classes to teach and have decided to adopt a more flowing style of class, even though I have four beginners and Linda as my participants this week. So we start with a gentle run through the easiest sun salutation, already finding lots of stiffness and aches from everyone. I keep having little breaks to explain stuff and so everyone manages a reasonably good first go. Linda felt that I should test people much more, but this was class number one of five and that will come later.

As a result of this weeks classes, my total teaching experience will pass 50 classes. I actually think I am actually quite an ok yoga teacher - not very spiritual, but fairly safe and able to produce a challenging class for everyone. But I'm not sure whether I will ever teach again after this week, which is rather a shame.

I finished reading Cohen's Birth of a New Physics this afternoon in the blazing sun by the pool. My tentative plans for next week here on my own involves doing loads of study and this will be one of the books I return to for some detailed note taking.

The temperature reaches 33 degree today and everyone is outside making the most of it, coated in factor 30 suncream and going for loads of swims to cool down. Such a contrasts to the UK which is still pretty poor weather. If only the poor weather had encouraged more people to come on our breaks this year. We blame the credit crunch for frightening off people!

Travel to Italy

Hotel Lido, Passignano, Umbria, Italy

After many really early starting flights this year, it is actually quite a luxury to have a slightly later start and be picked up by taxi as well. An uneventful trip with plenty of reading, some sleeping and some music. The car starts ok when we get to Pisa airport (despite four weeks in the long stay car park). The only problem is that the car park doesn't take credit cards, the nearby ATM isn't working and we don't have enough cash. They accept the cash we do have and £10 so that is all ok.

We stayed tonight at the Hotel Lido in Passignano on the shore of Lake Trasimeno in north-west Umbria. I stayed here one night a month or so again and was very impressed. It is exactly the sort of place that Linda and I most like staying at. We have been remindered again about how much we would like to do a trip round Europe just turning up at places to stay rather than having a firm itinerary. Otherwise, it is pretty certain that we would never stay somewhere like Passignano.

Sunset from the balcony of our hotel room

Views from the hotel room on the morning of our departure

One big disappointment is that our plans for week two in Italy are changing. Emma no loner wants to stay that week so it looks like I'll be on my own. I will have to think about what the most positive use of this time would be. For the moment, it is simply a big disappointment.

The Offer has been accepted

After a week or so of reviewing everything, I have sent off my documents to accept my MSc place at the LSE. But there are so many complex issues related to the MSc that I have little idea how it will work out in practice. This is due to issues related to work during the same period. My summer project has not been as successful as we might have hoped and I need to find some other work over the winter. This will inevitably encroach on the MSc and may even threaten it completely. Hopefully not but much to think about in the meantime.

I finished Drake's book on Galileo and am about to start on IB Cohen's Birth of a New Physics. Lots of books keep arriving in the post at the moment after I had a splurge of buying of second hand books related to the MSc. One is Cohen's Newtonian Revolution, which I remember reading in the LSE library years ago. The guy who sent it to me runs a second hand book store in Wallingford and says he has just bought a load of history of science books that used to be in the library of a professor from Rotterdam University. I don't have time to visit this shop before we leave for Italy, but it will be an essential trip when I get back. I am particularly keen to find a copy of Alexandre Koyre's Galilean Studies

So tomorrow we depart for a few weeks in Italy and despite having a load of books already in Italy (the car is currently parked at Pisa airport), I have slipped another half dozen into my bag - mainly MSc related stuff of course.

A Productive journey

Wednesday July 30th

For various complex reasons, I had a long journey back from near Evesham today by a combination of bus, train and walking. 3 hours plus rather than the one hour that it would have taken by car, and it cost more. But a good chance to listen to some music and read.

Today's reading was mainly Stillman Drake's short introduction to Galileo. His main thesis is that Galileo was really trying to protect the Catholic church by stopping it aligning itself to scientific theories that might turn out to be untrue. I am not convinced. Galileo was much too argumentative to have these more complex goals. He was sure he was correct and has not pro-Catholic agenda it seems to me.

My main listening is PJ Harvey who I have only just put on the ipod. I have a new set of ipod headphones and the impact is enormous. Much of the music sounds really fresh again

Re-joining the Bodleian

Living close to Oxford, I have, in the past, had a readers ticket to the Bodleian library in the city centre. I had a ticket for 6 years ending in 2005, though it is fair to say that I didn't use the library a lot in that period. On a whim today, but clearly part of my planning for working on my MSc, I rejoined and bought a one year ticket, which works during both term time and vacations.

Soon after, while reading the guidebook to the library, I came across a mention of the Radcliffe Science Library. I have been passed this a couple of times on my way to the Pitt Rivers museum, but hadn't had a look round it alone before. One of the library staff explained the layout of the library and showed me how to work the online resources. Then I had a wander downstairs to the floor that contained history of science, astronomy and physics, etc.

This is a real find - many of the books that I could use on my MSc were on the shelves in the main area (rather than elsewhere on the stakes) and they also had complete sets of various periodicals dealing with history of science. So this could be a fantastic place to work. The library is even open on a Saturday and Sunday. I was really excited about this and am really looking forward to starting work there at some point.

Some recent music

There has been a flurry of articles in the press in the last week about the music industry's attempts to persuade the Government to levy charges through ISPs to compensate it for losses from illegal downloading. This smacks of desperation yet again from an industry that has had a negative public perception for years. So few businesses seem so intent on annoying their customers. I have been thinking about this issue for a number of years and of the new indistry model that this will all lead to. But claims that new talent will not be found are largely nonsense - there has never been a better time for a band to get themselves known - e.g. through myspace, etc.

And more small artists can get some access to the world than ever before. I have been particularly struck by the example of Jason Molina over the past few years. He would never have been able to release the large amount of stuff he has been able to, nor to make some sort of living from music, in the bad old days of limited numbers of big record companies.

The situation is really one in which large blockbuster albums (which were expensive to make) will become a thing of the past, while live performance will become increasingly important. But what can't be denied is that there has never been a better time to be interested in music (and I am pretty fanatical)

This week is my refresh week for my account with emusic.com and I have already downloaded about half of this month's tracks. Mostly tracks by the Japanese slow metal band Boris and some similar bands. Now this is an excellent example of a band that would not have been ever heard by anyone in the band old days before the internet. Beautiful slow heavy power chords, and a good compliment to Sun O))) who I listened to a lot last year.

Also downloaded some examples of African Blues guitar playing and 60 minutes of whale and dolphin sounds. All excellent stuff, I don't doubt.

Randy Pausch

A couple of the newspapers have obituaries for Randy Pausch, who died a few days ago. He is famous for his "last lecture" given following a diagnosis of cancer last year in which he discussed "life, the universe, and everything". Like 10m others, I saw the lecture on Youtube. There is no doubt that it is a powerful performance and one that I found very moving at the time - it joins several other pieces of work that have been important to me since my dad died of cancer a couple of years ago. For instance, Joan Dideon's "Year of Magical Thinking".

I haven't read the book that he also produced in his last few months. But anything that emphasises the power of dreaming, the transcience of material possessions and the fruitlessness of complaining has got to be good. No doubt it would fit in well with my recent re-reading of Tom Hodgkinson's "How to be free"

Some academic reading

I have managed to keep to my planned routine of work for the past few days and have finished a first reading of Reston's "Galileo" moving on to looking at a few of the contributions to "The Cambridge Companion to Galileo". Over the next few days I have to decide how much note taking I expect to take from a book and what form I want this in.

I was particular struck by a piece in the Cambridge Companion on the "God of the astronomers versus the God of the theologions", contrasting Galileo and Bellarmine, and which I will be studying in much more detail soon. A month or so ago I was reading a piece by Adolf Grunsbaum on attempts by theologians to use modern cosmology in support of arguments for God's existence. Some of the books published in response to Dawkin's "The God Delusion" have simply assumed that a creator God would automatically be the God of religion, but this needn't be the case. And the huge variety in religious believes leaves the linkage of a creator God to one religion as a very problematic leap

Some other recent reading including a book on atheism that suggested that the multitude of religious beliefs was actually a real problem for religious believers. Atheists have little trouble explaining why there are so many religious beliefs, but each religion should find other religions problematic. And in an important sense, believers in one religion are atheists about other religions - after all, such beliefs must be wrong if one's own religion is true. These are two arguments that could be developed more fully.

The John Peel show

I started listening to John Peel in about 1976. Punk was just beginning to break out and some people at school said that you could hear this on Peel's show - indeed it was the only place you could hear it. The record shop in my home town actually refused to order in punk records as the owner didn't like them! If one charted, then he had to stock them and the first punk record I bought was Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Hong Kong Garden". My dad was not happy with me playing this on his hi-fi and was convinced that the loudness would damage it.

The other day, as part of my continuing decluttering, I came across two boxes of cassette tapes in the garage, both full of "mix tapes" that I had edited out of the Peel show from 1977 (when I first acquired a cassette recorder) through to about 2003, when I finally stopped editing tapes from the show. Today I transferred half a dozen tapes to digital and am thinking that I may be able to gradually work my way through the two boxes (a huge job, but one ideally suited to the times when I will be studying).

So today's tapes were number 124 to 129 covering the period around 1988. Fantastic tracks that I had long forgotten by bands like the Bhundu Boys, Inca Babies, The Siddleys, I ludicrous, The Farm, Head of David, and so on. Plus tracks I hadn't heard for years by groups such as the Wedding Present, Eric B and Rakim (the fantastic cold-cut remix of "Paid in full"), Grynor, and so on.

I have also invested in a 500GB external hard drive to store what could become a huge amount of stuff over the coming months. I am rather shocked to discover that I actually produced nearly 400 mix tapes from the Peel show over the years.

Peel's death a few years back was actually a really big blow to me at the time - not far off the effect that my dad's death had a year or two later. For someone as fanatical about music as myself, Peel was clear evidence that other people shared this obsession. How great would it be to still be able to hear a show of his now?

Patterns of work

I have always enjoyed the pattern of work that comes with academia. The books to be read, thought about, questioned . . . key points to be picked out ready for future use. Emma and I were watching the movie of "The Paper Chase" the other day, a film from the seventies set in Harvard Law School and which features the "Socratic" method of teaching law, which always seems really tough. I re-read the book a few weeks back - my copy is from 1973 and is now falling apart. Still one of my favourite books and guarateed to raise my excitement about going back to Uni.

In the past, I have realised, I tended to be too uncritical in my reading - not really trying to appraise arguments, more to simply follow them. One of my aims in the MSc course is to really try to boosts my critical appraisal of arguments. I also want to develop a much better academic style of writing.

At present, I am also having to do quite a bit of other work related to preparing for some other work going forward. So each day I am up and working by about 5:30, do three hours related to this other work, have a break and then try to do another four hours related to the MSc. So far I have managed only a couple of days to this routine, but it could be a good pattern for the period to the end of September. It is very possible that I won't be able to do much of the MSc course in the first few months, so anything I can do now would be good.

Science fiction

I have recently been watching some old episodes of series 7 of Star Trek Voyager with daughter Emma. We have always been big Trekkies but haven't seen any episodes for some while. Science fiction is generally dismissed by serious media but I am often struck by the view that this is a mistake. Often the very artificiality of science fiction serves to highlight the human condition so much more clearly. A prime example would be the episode of Star trek Next Gen with Data and his daughter - still one of the saddest things I have ever seen on TV.

Tonight's episode was a major "Seven of Nine" episode. I read somewhere ages ago that the character of Seven of Nine was based on someone with Asperger's syndrome - a form of "higher functioning" autism. Tonight Seven was running holodeck stories to try to and boost her ability to cope with close relationships and it was desperately sad to see her failing yet again. It always strikes me that Asperger's is one of the most tragic of conditions - the desire for close relationships is there, but the ability to create them isn't. The constant disappointment of rejection and failure is very sad. I continue to think that Seven of Nine is one of the greatest characters created in a TV series.

Which probably just shows what a geek I am!!

More alternatives to rat racing

Of all things, "The Great Outdoors" magazine has a feature on a woman who, three years ago, gave up her journalist job on radio to take up the life of adventure! Renting out her house, she now travels the world climbing mountains. As an attempt to diversify her finances, she has written a book called "Meetings on the Edge - a high-level escape from Office routine". An essential purchase I would say. Over the past week or so I have been examining various brochures from treking companies and am very taken with Mackean's story

I am, at this moment, at rather a crossroads. There is tremendous pressure on me to take some time and earn what is taken to be decent money and this will inevitably impact badly on other ideas for living. Different philosophies of life are in sharp relief and are, of course, wholly incommensurable.

As part of my continuing de-cluttering, I have come across a box of print outs of Robert Fripp's diary from 2001 to 2005 (http://www.dgmlive.com/). This is the model for what I am trying to do with this blog. Reading six months worth today, I was struck by the universality of the issues being addressed.

And six more carrier bags of books went to Oxfam in Oxford this morning bringing the total to 16 in the last couple of weeks.

Fish, fishing and the meaning of life . . . .

Jeremy Paxman edited an anthology of fishing literature with the above title some years ago. And pretty good it was from what I remember. What always strikes me as odd about my fishing is that I don't go for ages, putting trips off for poor reasons, yet when I do finally go, the reasons why I love fishing so much come flooding back.

This afternoon I visiting Bushyleaze, a local trout lake. The other anglers seemed to be really struggling to after a quick review of what they were doing (mostly stripping buzzers and weighted nymphs) it was off to the far side of the lake (rule one - always walk the furthest distance from the car park to choose a spot to fish) and set up with a red hopper and a small Dwal Bach nymph fished close to the surface. It is rare that things pay off so quickly but within 20 minutes I had a fish of about 3.5lbs on the nymph.

The sun blazed down most of the rest of the afternoon and, sadly, as the sun set, so the wind dropped. So fish started to rise but presentation was very hard in the calm conditions. Fishing two hoppers, I did have a second fish about 8:30pm.

As always, I feel revitalised by a day out fishing. I really should think about having a good go after barbel and chub in September when we are back from our next trip abroad.

More on Concentration . . . .

The Sunday Times has an article this week by Bryan Appleyard entitled "Stoooopid - why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks". This covers the same area as the article from the Independent a few days ago.

This tends to focus more on the idea of "distractions". It also notes that one way to consider the problem is to say that today we "go outside of ourselves to make all the connections that we used to make inside of ourselves"

And as "big money" is on the side of distracting us, the situation will not improve.

At a more general level, there is a quote from the ecologist, Bill McKibben

"The next generation will not grieve because they will not know what they have lost"

This is true more generally than just in respect of learning and the internet. It is the reason why no action will be taken on long-term climate change - each generation does not miss what the previous generation things of as a loss.

Spent much of the afternoon watching the Tour de France on tv and reading the first couple of chapters of James Reston's biography of Galileo. I am reading it more critically and, interestingly, more from the point of view of my MSc and the sort of scholarly attention to themes that I might not otherwise have brought to the book.

A list of goals

One of the reasons to start this blog was to provide me with a basis for thinking about my life and what I want to achieve in the future - hence the Blog's title. So here is a short list of some of the things I would like to do over the next couple of years - just to get me started.

In the shorter term (around two years out);

1. To successfully complete my MSc

2. To climb Mera peak in the Himalayas - I currently have November 2010 pencilled in for this

3. To catch a barbel over 10lbs from my local River Windrush or to catch a 5 1/2lb chub from the Evenlode

4. To travel to some interesting places with my wife, Linda - Finland is a possibility for this Christmas

Longer term (more than 2 years out);

5. To develop a pattern of work in which 6 to 9 months of each year is free

6. To make a long visit to India (at least a month)

7. To go on a one month retreat (ideally at the farm connected with the San Francisco Zen Centre)

8. To create a high-quality portfolio of photographs

So this is a decent list to get me started on thinking seriously about things.

Two little projects for today. To do a couple of hours sorting out in the garage followed by a trip to the local dump with a car full of stuff and to do an hour's clearing at our allotment (which has been rather neglected over the past year)

Some major news

A package arrived in the post this morning to say that I have been accepted onto the Msc course I had applied for and will be starting this October. This is really great news and will be the focus of my intellectual efforts over the next couple of years.

I will be studying "Philosophy and History of Science" at the London School of Economics as a part time student. It is over 20 years since I graduated from the LSE and I am very excited about returning there after such a long break.

There are, of course, all sorts of issues that this raises. Will it fit round the work I am planning to do? Will I feel silly being so much older than the other students? Are my intellectual powers in such steep decline that I will really struggle? Can I write a dissertation? Will I feel embarrassed if I meet my daughter's best friend who is an undergraduate at LSE at the moment?

It took about four months for my application to be processed and I have rather forgotten much of the course details. So I have been skimming through the department handbook and am back thinking about which course options I would most like to do and what reading should I try and do over the summer before I start. I have fished out my old copy of Arthur Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers", his account of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, and maybe that would be a good one to have a look at first?

Very exciting news!!

A day out in London

There is a long article in today's paper suggesting that use of the internet is causing people to lose their ability to concentrate on reading long articles or complex books. It suggests that knowledge might become wider and shallower, with less depth.

Over the last year or so, I have noticed that my own ability to just sit and read to long periods has definitely diminished but I had not attributed it to use of the internet. I don't feel a constant need to check my emails, I don't spend much time just flitting between web pages and I don't suffer anxiety if I don't have internet access. None the less, until recently, it had been a long time since I had been able to just read something for several hours.

By contrast, my daughter, 19 years old and very much in the thick of current trends in internet usage, is able to read for hours at a time. Indeed, after years of this, she is now tremendously well read. Most days she manages 50 to 100 pages of pretty serious stuff. Her current reading is Richard Dawkin's "The Ancestor's Tale", the 600 page hardback edition from a few year's ago.

A few weeks ago, we were in France and didn't have internet on demand. It was swelteringly hot and so there was little excuse not to read a lot. And for the first time in years, I found I could do several hours a day. What a treat. And perhaps a sign that the newspaper article is on to something.

Since France I have definitely done better. I read eight books while in France and have managed four more in the two weeks since we got back. Current reading is a collection of essays on Isaac Newton called "Let Newton be!" and the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Mathematics. I currently manage about an hour a day. As always, I'd like to read more, but this is definite progress.

My London trip covers a couple of meetings related to possible work going forward and the purchase of fresh pasta and sauce from our favourite Italian deli in Soho.

Some introductory thoughts

For many years I kept a diary, there are at least fifteen years on the bookcase beside me, going back to 1979. But for the last couple of years I haven't been able to. This is the longest gap I have had from not writing. But some events over the last few years were too difficult to describe and the act of trying made me feel worse rather than better.

However a couple of weeks ago I was talking with a woman who was looking to make a number of really significant changes in her life and she had decided that part of this process would be to write a Blog, not so much as a diary, but just to record things that interested her each day and to provide a little bit of focus to think about things. Inspired by this example, I am going to do the same.

So what will I be talking about?

Probably things I've been reading about - science, philosophy, religion, art, etc. Things I've been doing - fishing, mountaineering, photography, etc. And probably anything else I fancy. The internet is filling up with blogs that no one reads. I will add mine to this, but as long as I enjoy writing it, I'm not bothered. It will hopefully provide me with a base for jotting down some of the things that I'd like to remember.

At the moment, I have no intention of telling anyone about this. It is just for me.

Travelling to France from Spain

Saturday June 7th 2008

Through Spain to France

And so the six week block of breaks in Spain has come to an end. A major learning experience throughout, but the feedback we received was generally very favourable and offers a lot of promise for the future.


The courtyard at the hacienda - another sunny day

A pause while packing the land rover for the journey

The hacienda from the path up the mountain

.

But our tentative planning for 2009 has suggested that the two venues per country idea is not a necessary part of what we are about and so may well be dropped. And if that is the case, then we will definitely be basing the future Spanish breaks at the "Moorish Farmhouse" rather than here at the hacienda

.

The main question for the journey was whether I would have time to get to the Chateau de Rodie and then back to Toulouse for my flight. It was about 1400 km from the hacienda to the chateau and that increasingly seemed to be too challenging in the time I had available. But for the first day of the journey, I did keep an open mind on this question. This early part of the journey took me to Cordoba, then Madrid and at that point a decision had to be made.

.

Nigel had mentioned that they had travelled to France across the Pyrenees through a long tunnel that came out near Lourdes. He had said this was a really great drive and I had begun to think more about this as I headed towards Madrid. And then as I looked at my map and plotted a possible route I noticed that the route close to Lourdes would also mean travelling close to la Mongie and the Col de Tourmalet, key features of recent Tour de France races. So maybe if I did abandon the plan to reach the chateau, I could go and visit these places instead. At Madrid, therefore, I turned right and headed towards Zaragoza, reaching there at around 9:30 in the evening after a day's drive of over 1,000km. Never has an Express Holiday Inn being more welcoming!

.

I slept for close to 10 hours straight through and was on the road again by 8:30 the next morning, heading towards Huesca and the Pyrennees. Around 10:00, I had a quick chat to Linda, stopping with the foothills of the Pyrennees in the distance (cloud hugging the tops, but definitely some snow still there)

.

Stopped for a call home - mountains topped with cloud and snow in the distance

North of Huesca towards Sabinanigo, I stopped briefly by a river where there was the most incredible noise coming from a collection of toads living in the rivers margins.

"Toad river" - looked an ideal trout water but I didn't spot any fish. It might run dry of course each year.

At Toad river I turned right again and headed towards Boltana on an incredibly scenic road that stayed close to the Rio Guarex and features some amazing waterfalls, and fields of wild flowers.

The Pyrennes getting steadily closer

Cyclists in front of a beautiful (and incredibly isolated) house on the way to Boltana

One highlight of this backroads route was the occasional totally unspoilt village that I came across, the best being perhaps Campodarbe.

Campodarbe

The descent towards Boltana - another hairpined road.

Boltana in the distance.

Poppies in a field close to Boltana

First sign to France - maybe 40km from the border

One of my better photos - poppies and mountains on the way to the border

As I approached the border, it was more and more clear that there were huge banks of clouds stuck on the mountains. As I passed through the tunnel to France, the weather was noticeably different on the French side. Low cloud, much cooler.

.

At Arreau, I turned off the main road and started the ascent that would ultimate get to La Mongie and the Col du Tourmalet. First pass was the Col D'Aspin, also a famous cycling pass. There were loads of cyclists making the 12km ascent from Arreau, with helpful signs every km telling them the average gradient of the next section - not information I would have wanted to know in the circumstances. The top of the Col D'Aspin was really cold - most people huddled in coats. Well done to the two cyclists who got to the top just as I was there.

Down the other side and a stop in a little village for some food at a spot obviously used by cyclists for the start of their ascents from this side. A "plat du jour" meals of steak, chips and salad followed by ice cream. Not bad for 8 euros.

As I approached La Mongie, the weather got much worse and visibility really dropped. There were banks of snow on the sides of the road as I came up the Tourmalet, indeed I barely realised I was there when I got to the top the cloud was so thick. So a bit disappointing that this wasn't better.

.

And from there it was a drop down towards Lannemezan and the motorway to Toulouse. Still 150km to go to Toulouse at this point and I was very glad that I had decided to not try and make it to the Chateau. Instead the car is now parked up at Toulouse airport for a couple of weeks. I was in bags of time for my flight - perhaps 3 hours early - only to find that it was delayed 2 hours. I arrived at Gatwick just after 1:00am just missing the coach to Oxford and had to wait for the 3:00am departure instead. So I arrived in Oxford just after 5:00am and ready for a really good rest. Emma was home for a couple of days before her exams start and so I did see her for the first time in nearly two months, which was really nice.

Spain week six, day five

Wednesday June 4th 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

It is really hot today and we basically have a day out in the sun. - such a shame it wasn't like this throughout the time here, it would have made such a difference. Lots of reading done - I have started re-reading a biography of Martin Heidegger that I first read a couple of years ago and am also re-reading Lucy Edge's "Yoga school dropout", one of the funniest books about yoga in India. I very nearly went in the pool at one point too.

Two yoga sessions today again and the classes are really beginning to loosen Julia's shoulder - it's so amazing the impact of concerted efforts is on something like this.

A beautiful sunset tonight across the plains from the main terrace

Spain week six, day four

Tuesday June 3rd 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

Yoga first thing after a day off for the Seville trip. Zoe participates, but Nigel thinks better of it. He remains more of a Pilates man! Shortly after, my modem seems to stop working and that is why so much of this blog is being uploaded a week or so later now we are back in the UK!

Then off to Ronda for another day out. The weather has now been really good for a few days in a row and the photos are so much better than my previous visit with Fiona


The north entrance to Ronda's bullring - the oldest in Spain

The view towards the Grazalema National park from near to the New Bridge

Looking down on a cafe overlooking the river gorge

.

Nigel has a relative who they think used to work at one of the cafes that is adjacent to the New Bridge, and so we settled in the first one we came to and had some tapas to set us up for the walking round. But it turned out this probably wasn't the cafe he had worked at

.

Looking back at the cafe we ate at close to the edge of the gorge by the New Bridge

A famous Ronda walkway starts in front of the building above and travels round to the left.

As we made our way up the main street we passed a museum that Fiona and I had somehow missed on our epic trip round Ronda last week. This was a shame as its main current feature was about the Spanish Inquisition and that would have been really good to see I thought.

.

There were also several art gallaries that we also didn't find last time and we would have enjoyed. One had lots of oil painted copies of famous works which were very interesting.

Restaurants in a back street

Julia and Zoe outside one of the best looking houses in Ronda

By mid afternoon, we were due another stop for a drink and a snack. Julia and Zoe each ordered lemon juice and received a glass made up of just the squeezed juice from several lemons - a quite extraordinary drink. Nice cakes to go with drinks as well

Last picture of the New Bridge for this visit - still haven't made it to the floor of the gorge for the classic views.

Bullfighting postcards - odd how these events feature in the sports section of tv news each night.

Back for paella night at the hacienda - always one of my favourite dishes, both to cook and eat. It was warm enough to sit outside reading this evening before dinner. I have just finished Naomi Wolf's "Promiscuities", a book I had intended to just dip into but then found far more interesting that I had expected.

Spain week six, day three

Monday June 2nd 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

A day out in Seville today - my first proper visit if you discount the trip a week or so ago when I took Jonathan to the station and collected Eve. Today we are returning Eve to the airport and then carrying on for a day's sight seeing.

It is about 12:30 when we arrive in the city centre and our first is finding somwhere to park. This was a good example of where having Nigel and Zoe with us really helped as they could make more sense of the parking meters. The confusing thing is that the siesta period from 2:00 till 5:00 is free, so if we could find a meter that we could stay at this 2:00, we would then have parking till 5:00 for free - which should be enough time for us. So we are sorted eventually and parked up near the Plaza de Espana and associated gardens.

On the way towards the centre I was disappointed to find that the battery on my camera had just about run out and so I only have one picture from today's trip. But oddly enough, this did mean that I looked at the city sights rather differently. Rather than focusing on taking pictures, I found myself looking much closer at things than I might have done normally. An interesting experience, though I would have preferred some pictures - Seville is just so beautiful. Maybe Linda and myself should return there at some point for a few days.

The park we passed on the way to the city centre - today's only picture of Seville

So we walked towards the cathedral and Alcazar (leaving a visit till later), before heading off through a shopping area and looping round towards the bullring. Then, as shops started closing for Siestas, Nigel asked someone local where a good place to eat might me and we ended up in a spot well off the beaten track. Nigel is quite a connoisseur of Spanish dining being a great fan of tapas and other food. So he was very happy to have found a new spot well away from the major tourist areas.

From here we made our way back to the Alcazar only to find that it wasn't open on Mondays. Fiona would never have made this mistake! So instead we visited the cathedral (the largest of its type in the world) including the Girolda tower, from where there are some great views of the city. Unusually, there aren't steps up the tower, instead there is a sloping ramp the whole way up.

Finally, as we worked our way back to the car, we went round the Plaza de Espana and gardens - one of Seville's absolute highlights.

Back by early evening and then a trip out to Villamartin for dinner. The only place open is a tapas bar but this proves to be a real find and Nigel is completely in his element as he orders around a dozen portions of various things. And it proves to be an absolute bargain at less than 10 euros per person, including drinks. I can tell Nigel was very impressed!

Spain Week six, day two

Sunday June 1st 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

Fiona's departure this morning - back to Seville to drop in her car, then onward to Cordoba for a few more day's sight seeing. She has been a lot of fun to have here this week and seems to have had a really good time. We have had loads of chats about all sorts of stuff - mainly art, which Fiona is passionately interested in. She is planning to try and develop a business that will involve her interest in art and I can only wish her well with this.

A day in at the hacienda today. Some sun but the breeze makes the best sunbathing spot to be the inner courtyard. Nigel and Zoe arrived for a few day's visit this afternoon. They used to live near where Julia is based in Cheshire and it turns out that they have quite a few friends in common. So they were able to have a good chat about everyone they knew there.

Eve's last night with us as well today. Tomorrow we are all going to have a day out in Seville dropping Eve back at the airport on the way. Weather forecast is finally good as well for the next few days.

Spain week six, day one

Saturday May 31st 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

Early away this morning down to Malaga airport to pick up a new guest, Julia. The drive down took me passed Ronda and down to the coast at San Pedro. This is a quite spectacular drive and one that I really enjoyed. Some of my favourite music on the ipod, amazing views, etc. I even stopped for 15 minutes on one viewpoint and called Linda to say how nice the drive was and how it would have been really nice if she had been with me to share it. Our current time apart is the longest we have ever had at 3 weeks and I am certainly starting to really miss her.

The pick-up goes fine, though I do feel a bit of a twit holding a sign up for Julia - I've never done that before and might, in future, work out how to do a nicer WBB sign. We have a good drive back the same way I came down and realised, much to my surprise, that one of the things we could see in the far distance was actually Gibralter. I had thought it would have been much further away.

It is sunny enought for Fiona to be sunbathing when we got back. Bit of a breeze though.

We have an extra yoga class tonight as Fiona had missed one or two on our travels and so a first class for Julia. She has a very tight left shoulder, probably from carrying a laptop around at work, but this should perk up over the week.

A call to Linda tonight and news that my mum isn't very well. She has been short of breath lately and had a really bad experience while out with one of her friends. So she is going for a heart test in a few days time and has to take it very easy for now.

Spain week five, day seven

Friday May 30th 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

A thunder storm first thing this morning for several hours and the possibility that we wouldn't be able to go out anywhere today. But we decided to take a chance on going to Jerez - if nothing else we could visit our nearest hypermarket and re-stock with some of the things we can't buy locally.

But as we passed Arcos, the weather started to improve and was fine by the time we got to Jerez. So another decent sight seeing day was in order. Fiona had her trusty guidebook to hand and a good plan for the day.


Sherry barrels and blue-flowered Jacaranda trees

The facade of a building that featured Julius Caesar on the left and Hercules on the right - I forget what it was

The main entrance to the Cathedral

A statue of the founder of the Tio Pepe sherry bodegas in front of the cathedral

View of the Tio Pepe bodegas with the cathedral behind

The only disappointment on today's itinerary was that the Alcazar was closed for some work of some sort and doesn't re-open until next week. But we enjoyed the cathedral, had a delicious plate of seafood in one of the squares and another good day out.

.

I did get a parking ticket though, and the instructions on how to pay were really complex even though they were translated into English. It would seem I could pay a charge at the ticket machine and enclose the ticket for this in a little envelope into a letter box below the machine. I have no idea if I did this correctly or not.

Spain week five, days five and six

Wednesday May 28th and Thursday May 29th 2008

Hacienda, Villamartin, Spain

Two more days sightseeing in the local villages. Our Wednesday trip is to Arcos, a medium sized town about 35km west of the hacienda and marking the boundary of the "white villages" area. I had passed by it last weekend on the way to Jerez and some of last week's group went there one afternoon. Like so many of these villages, it is perched on the apex of a hill, with a clearly defined centre arranged around the church. We parked at the bottom of the hill and made slow progress up through the streets till we came to the main square. This had a church that was being refurbished and a "mirador" or viewing point with some very dramatic views over the valley below.


The church in the main square that is currently being refurbished

We missed the Tourist Office being open by ten minutes but have discovered that The Rough Guide to Andalucia is actually very good, even including some maps of the white villages. So after a spot of lunch outside a bar, we are off down the south side of the town towards the bigger church.

More narrow streets through the town

Throughout all the white villages, you come across ceramic tiles painted with religious pictures, usually of the Virgin Mary. This was one of the most elaborate.

.

There were several art gallaries in the town which we had a quick wander round - original oil paintings costing about Euros 40 but usually rather garish colours. But some were much better and I was definitely tempted by one or two.
.

We eventually made our way round to the main church which was notable for containing a couple of the most unpleasant religious displays that I have ever seen. Under each of the small alters around the main alter was a glass case containing the dessicated remains of a saint who was said to have died in the third century. These had been recovered from a crypt somewhere many years ago and were dessicated rather than decomposed - a sign, apparently, of their purity. They were dress in some sort of outfit and their glass box was filled with all sorts of bits and bobs. Apparently, the display of corpses of saints is quite common in Spain (and indeed in other Catholic countries).

.

The main entrance to the church - suitably ornate

The lower class case containing the desicated corpse of a Saint - the head is towards the left, garlanded in flowers!

Later on, back at the hacienda, the puppies were out again. Getting bigger by the day, though still rather wobbly!

My favourite puppy - one of the two white ones

Our Thursday trip is to Zahara, perhaps the most photogenic of the white villages, perched on a hill above a reservoir and with a ruined castle at the top of the town. As usual, we arrived in the early afternoon just as the siesta was starting and we had another walk up through the streets from the car park. We are certainly feeling that this is providing another decent work out to go with the yoga each day.

A street in Zahara on the way to the main square and cobbled centre street

Zahara's beautiful main church - close in to the rock face above on which the castle sits

Village rooftops on the way up towards the castle

Poppies on the side of the path up to the castle - the main church behind

As we came up to the top of the hill with the castle on, one of the local vultures was just make a turn over the castle and I was able to get the closest view I have had of one so far. Luckily the camera was at full zoom already. At its closest it was maybe 20 yards away. These birds are just an amazing size - maybe 8 foot wingspan. We saw another half dozen today in the far distance.

.

Slighly enlarged picture of the vulture that flew past just as I reached the castle

Another staue of Mary, against a wall of ivy, close to the church

We spent about four hours in the town in the end and this is definitely one of the highlights of the local area.

Tonight we decided to watch a movie on Fiona's Apple - the first tv anyone has watched for some while. Our selected movie was "Juno" which I thought was really good. I think the screenplay may have won an Oscar - I wouldn't be surprised if it did. And a great soundtrack - Cat Power, Sonic Youth, Mo Tucker, etc. I loved the final scene when the two lovers were playing their guitars together. Very moving film I thought.