Idle Thoughts

This was my second trip of the year and I decided to take the car over (I sold the van in 2008. It had done it's job and was taking up too much space) with a smaller load of bits and pieces. A back of the envelope calculation shows that it's cheaper to fly and hire a car for short trips, but anything over about 3 weeks, depending on the time of year and hence the air fare/rental rate works out cheaper to catch the ferry and drive down.

I had also decided it was time to take some action to get rid of the weeds that grow, right up to the house, continually - even when I'm not there.
One of my friends in CdN, John Moody, is doing up an old Cortijo and had got a good deal on lorry-loads of gravel. When I saw him in January, I was impressed with how easily he had graveled his yard. I wanted to do the same.
One aspect of Spain that I'm becoming increasingly aware of is that it's not a cheap country to live in. Granted, alcohol and property are cheap, as is the local equivalent of council tax, but most other products are a comparable price - or more expensive than in Britain. Add to that, I had seen rolls of weed-suppressing membrane in one, single garden centre in Spain a couple of years previously but could not say if it was still stocked or what the price was. Therefore to assure a supply, I brought a 100 sq. m roll of membrane over in the car.
I had also decided during 2008 that the first time I drove over again, I would take my bread-maker with me. Spanish bread comes in two main styles: french-stick type, long thin bread and "pan de mold" a.k.a. white, medium sliced, sold mainly on price. I wanted something that made good toast and the few times I had tried out the breadmaker in Britain, it had been a success. So over it came with the promise of warm, fresh, unsliced farmhouse loaves - bliss!
I also brought with me a new rotary clothes line (this time removable, to store in the garage while I'm away) to replace the one that was stolen in 2008.

The crossing

Brittany Ferries have changed their schedule this year. They used to run 2 crossings a week from Plymouth to Santander and back. This has now changed and they run one a week from Plymouth and one from Portsmouth (similar to P&O's Portsmouth to Bilbao run). I thought I'd give this route a try, so I booked the outward leg from Portsmouth and the return to Plymouth. The reason I chose to do it this way was purely because the dates of the crossings suited me. On reflection, in future I will go out via Plymouth and back into Portsmouth. The reason is that the crossing to/from Portsmouth takes a full 24 hours and embarks at 5 p.m. which means I get on the road in Spain late in the afternoon and have to drive down through the night - arriving in the small hours. Without a good night's sleep during the crossing I would (and did) start the drive already tired, which meant many stops along the way. In contrast, the Plymouth crossing gets into Santander early in the morning, so I can drive down during the day and arrive at a decent hour and be less tired, too. The return trip departs from Santander at about the same time, so I may as well arrive back to Portsmouth, since the fare is the same and I'll have a shorter drive home.

When I got to the house I was surprised to see that parts of the outside, that I'd painted less than 2 years earlier, were starting to look really shabby. Most of the walls were OK, but in two patches it had blistered badly since last year.

Strangely the paint was coming off the office wall -which should not have been affected by damp from the hillside, I can only assume I hadn't applied it properly in the first place. Still that was a job for another time, the first priority was to do something about the weeds, which were now well up to knee height and showing no signs of slowing down.

Gravelling the yard

The roll of geotextile membrane I used came from Toolstation and covered the area shown below
Which is all the ground close to the house and around the patio.
I also bought 2 lorry loads of gravel for €120 which gave me a depth of around 8-10 cm. Hopefully that'll save me a day's work every time I come over.
In the end, I'm pleased with the result.

Repainting

As mentioned above, this was not one of the jobs I had planned for this trip. However, the deteriorating state of the walls meant it had to be done. I still had some paint left over from the first time I painted these walls. So, after scraping off the loose paint (which turned out to be more than it looked) and and making sure there were no other patches that were likely to need work soon (there were some) I got the ladder out and started repainting. This time, in addition to wetting the walls which I had done the first time around, I used a much more dilute first coat. My hope was that this would soak into the wall rather than just stay on the surface. The second coat was more in accordance with the instructions on the tin.
Once finished, it became apparent how stained the rest of the walls had become. The rain frequently carries red or yellow dust over from Africa, which forms a residue that doesn't wash off. So I decided that I would have to put a new coat (after washing off what I could of the dirt) onto all the walls. This was a much diluted top coat, as by then, I was running low on white paint. The end result does make the effort look worthwhile.

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Finally a quick tip if you find yourself browsing at the Santander port Duty-Free shop. Leave. A 10 minute walk into the town centre (go through the sliding doors, out to the road, turn left, walk along to the white building by the shore, turn right and cross the road, continue past the station and through the road tunnel, turn left and walk about 50 metres to the Carrefour Express). The booze there is much cheaper and the choice is greater too.