Barbacoa en el club nautico

We had a great afternoon at club nautico on Friday, lots of friends, lots of food and lots of boating.

Jose and Sam in cooking mode.
Ian, Rowan and Callum, both of the boys learned a lot about paddling.
Jose paddling for the first time serpiente style :-)

Alexandre powering the dinghy for Sam and Lorenna.
Rowan and Paula with Jose and Violeta dancing at the far end of the pontoon.

Ruan doing all of the work and Sam, Stanley and Callum taking it easy.

chuck chuck

Our first couple of chickens settling into temporary accomodation - Poppy on the left and Kate on the right, they will be 'gallinas libre' once we pluck up the courage to let them out...for the moment they are in what was an indoor rabbit pen and seem quite happy. As soon as I find a shop that sells big nails I will be building them a hen house and an outdoor pen.

not how it says it will be in all those books and magazines

We read lots of books and magazines for several years before we decided to move and weighed up all the pitfalls - the dodgy estate agents odd and slow banking practices, the ineffective mail service, poor electric supply, unclean tap water, polluted seas, slow phone company, lack of internet in rural areas but despite buying in a very very rural area our estate agents were trustworthy and are now good friends, the banks is great - better than our UK one, the mail arrives from the UK in two days, the electric is fine, Telefonica were friendly and the new phone line and ADSL were installed in 5 days and work well, we have friends who speak highly of emergency services and of medical services our well pumps beautiful drinking water uncontaminated with flouride woohoo we are free of unsolicited mass medication...the sea is warm and clean ...all seems fine so far.. we must have read the wrong books.

new home

The garden was a tad overgrown when we arrived but with some help from a power ranger, a pirate and a strimmer we tamed some of it
Our first seeds have been planted; the local wild boar trampled across them on the first night but not a lot of damage was done.

We now have two chickens and expect our first eggs in a couple of months. The locals are very friendly if a tad unintelligable, weather has been fine and we have had some great beach days. Life in vilaboa is very tranquil; on a busy day we see a few cars, the local bull stands up, moos and sits down again, the odd lizard takes a walk along our path..a few birds fly past.

last days of caravaning

over the last few days of caravaning it rained and rained..nuff said about that

Eeek

So much for a 7 day countdown - no network on the camp site for a few days. Rain and more rain although we had a great trip up to Somerset to see family and say our goodbyes, only a little light rain but as soon as we got back last night it became torrential. Gale force 8 with 9 expected today and the same across the whole of the sea area between Plymouth and Santander for the sailing tomorrow. I was hoping for a last kayak today paddling out on a glassy sea to watch the sunset but that is not going to happen by the looks of things. This has to be the worst summer since we moved to Cornwall... ah well I will go and take some photos in a little while.

6 days

Sun is shining again and this is my last day of working from the caravan wooohooo, time is both dragging and rushing by, we have so much to do before we leave but momentum is low; can I be bothered to waxoyl the caravan we are in to protect it while it is stored over the winter; jack up our touring caravan (recently won on ebay) and grease the wheel bearings, put a couple of new tyres on etc so we can be sure of getting to Galicia, I should really take a look and see why our van is taking ages to start in the morning but once started it is fine for the rest of the day so that is on the non urgent list too .....we have lots of lists but they can wait til manyana comes. 6 days is ages :-)

7 days

It has been a fairly depressing week so far with all the rain and thoughts of who and what we are leaving behind dominating, lots to do at work grappling with ethics, updating module guides trying to finish a paper ..."Developing technology-enhanced work-focussed learning - a Pattern Language approach." However today the sun is shining, the paper is nearly finished and the boys are getting excited about the journey - this time next week we will be waiting to disembark in Santander and will soon be driving past some stunning mountains.

We will be stopping on the way to visit the Jurassic museum at Colunga http://www.museojurasico.com/ - this is what you see when you get to the car park.

















This is the turn off we find it hard to drive past as it leads to the Picos de Europa and some wonderful high level walking country.

















We might well stop off at the Playa de Catedrales near Foz as our last road stop - the rock formations are stunning and a little while chillin on the beach is a great break for the boys.
A couple of hours later and we will be ariving home.

glorious mud

Still raining, trouble with drainage in the bottom field by the looks of thing, tent folk are being resilient - I'm impressed I would have gone home by now had we been in a tent.