Aires de Menorca

On Saturday evening, we went to see a Gran Espectaculo Ecuestre.

This was a horse show in Xativa bullring, with the display being carried out by 'Menorquina' thoroughbred horses. There were 16 of them in the display at various stages, along with 8 riders and 4 grooms.

The horses were beautifully trained, dancing to music, walking with cross steps, diaganolly, backwards etc, as well as standing on their hind legs.

The music was excellent, and the compare spoke very clearly, so that I could actually understand most of it this time.

There was even a section where the horses came out in the dark, dressed up in lights. This was very clever, as, with the horses being black, it was impossible to see anything except the outline of them as they performed.

I'm not a horsey person, but the show was so well put together, and lasted about 2 hours in total, that I would certainly recommend it to anyone.

Spring Clean

Ed has been working very hard in the garden, spring cleaning!

We have cleared the front flower bed of anything English (there were 4 tulips in there as well as a few narcissi) and have left everything spanish. The bay tree is fine, as well as the small palm, which Ed managed to split into two. There are also several different succulents. We have filled it with gravel, and now just need to clad it (new cladding is currently in a big pile, around the back of the house).

Ed has also raked up all of the pine needles and fir-cones from the front garden. A massive task, which, thankfully, only needs to be done every couple of years.

We did plant 15 red geraniums around the tree in the centre of the drive, but, unfortunately, Max loves the smell of the compost and has managed to uproot them several times already. Hopefully he will get bored with them soon and they will actually manage to grow and flower again.

Monday will be burning day. As well as the pile of garden rubbish, there is now a truck full of pine needles to burn. These can only be done bit-by-bit, as they are terribly flamable. The last thing we need, is to start a forest fire of our own.

It turns out, that of the three fires last weekend, one of them was a farm fire which got out of hand - the other two were started deliberately.

Like Something from Under a Rock

When searching for geocaches, it is often necessary to look inside treetrunkc, down holes or under rocks.

This, of course presents an interesting issue in Spain. There is every chance of finding a snake, scorpion, tarantula or something else, instead of a tupperware container. In this case, we found a pair of Megarian Banded Centipedes.

These are reported to be slightly venemous. Hmm. Maybe climbing around looking under rocks is not such a good idea after all!

Serra Grossa Geocaching

There are two geocaches on the mountains outside our house, and we finally managed to find the time to go up there. Admittedly, I didn't want to go up during February or March, as the processionary caterpillars were already out, and they don't mix well with the dogs.

Mark and Tracey had already found the new cache, but they went up with us. That turned out to be a good move, as the co-ordinates were out, and we would have been looking for hours! The cache itself was also very well hidden, so there was no chance of finding it by accident, should you decide to look under every rock on the whole mountainside! I guess we were cheating a little, but even so, we were there for quite a while.

Next, we moved on to the one a little further along. I knew roughly where it was from the description and there did seem to be an obvious rock that I checked under, but no joy. We searched around for a while, then Ed looked under the same rock that I had earlier. Bingo. Evidently, I have to learn to reach right underneath, not just girlie fashion, around the edges.

There are now another two new ones in the valley, so we will soon be off exploring again.

Glow in the Dark

As I walked back up from the garage a few nights ago, I saw something glowing very brightly on the garden wall. I had no idea what it was, and couldn't see in the dark, so I assumed that Ed had dropped some took or something.

I mentioned it to him, so he walked outside and quickly spotted the glow! Investigating more closely than I had, he shouted, "it's an insect". I must be getting braver nowadays, as I quickly grabbed the camera, and managed to get some very close up shoots.

In the end, it was a male glow worm. He was there the next day too, so maybe in the near future, we won't need our outside lights, to light up the garden!

First Forest Fire of the year

We have just had a couple of extremely warm days (38 degrees) considering the fact that it is still only April. Sadly, since we had a pretty dry winter, this has led to four forest fires this weekend.

The first one, was reported at 9:15pm on Friday night, and is still smouldering now, although it is under control. This was in our valley, and we have been able to see the smoke during the day, and the flames at night, even though it was some 15 miles away.

I have not been able to work out where the helicopters were going, in order to get their water, but they have been flying overhear non-stop for the last 2 days. When the sun goes down, they have to stop, and the poor firemen are then left to do their best overnight.

The helicopters actually flew over Bellus reservoir to get their water from somewhere near Ontinyent, or Enguera, which seemed rediculous. One person did say, that the water from Bellus was too expensive, but surely the cost of flying further would have cancelled that out! (I didn't know that the fire brigade had to pay for their water - but I guess someone has to!)

This afternoon, we toured around a little, and saw that one helicopter was taking water from very near the fire (Rotova), but the others were still travelling a long way. The fire was out by then, and they were just keeping on top of it, making sure none of the smouldering parts caught fire again.

As far as I know, no-one has been hurt, and no houses actually damages, but a very large area of forest and mountainside has been destroyed. Terrible for those nearby. Thank goodness we have cut down the trees nearest to our house now.

Hissing Sid

Arriving home yesterday, Ed suddenly braked very hard by the gate, and backed up a little. There, stretched out across the entry, was a lovely snake. By definition - a ladder snake.

Being brave, I jumped out and took a few photo's, but I certainly wasn't brave enough to pick it up and move it. I shoved it a couple of times with my foot, but it wouldn't move. Ed then got out of the car and managed to persuade it to move along. However, it then went along our wall, and into the hole where our water meter and stopcock are. (We have checked since, and it's not there any more.)