Bear necessities of Life!

What was believed to be the last remaining female example of the Pyrenees bear, "Cannelle" (French for cinnamon) was shot by a French hunter a year ago. Though lamented by Mr. Chirac at that time, there has been no further news on the promised re-introduction of the species. The bears are largely vegetarian and would be a sad loss to the mountain habitat; there must be enough space in the vast and rugged terrain.

I spoke to a Danish couple who had spent the summer of that year touring the Spanish Pyranees, of all the fantastic things they had seen the sight of a brown bear approaching their Camper van was the true highlight of their visit.

If the Government are serious about promoting rural and eco tourism the re-introduced bears would be a great symbol of their commitment.

Until then this example in the city of Figueres is as close as you can get!

Figueres Church of Sant Pere

Feliz Navidad

Christmas Day in Tenerife. The winter sunshine was perfect a comfortable temperature of 24C. most days.

It was good to see so many familiar faces again, and to exchange our experiences of the last twelve months.

Harry in Thailand (see links) is a book which is in turn a humerous account of the exploits of an old friend who should know much better.

Please give Harry some encouragement by leaving your thoughts on the story so far in the comments field.

My place in the Sun

My short journey from Girona airport to the house on January 28th. 2005 was filled with quite reasonable expectations of an escape from cold and damp Britain. There was a lot of work to do on the house and there would be considerable disruption, we needed to have all the contractors working as a team to minimize delay and meet our spring deadline.

As the sun set over the mountains, the taxi driver cheerfully told me that on the past two days the temperature had climbed to 20 degrees C. Spring was on the way!

My first task was to drive to Olot and speak to the double glazing company about their pending installation work. Olot is higher than our house and set in a volcanic area surrounded by high terrain. The mountain air was fresh, cool and invigorating. As the sun began to set I started out on my journey home, the car thermometer was reading low. And then it snowed, and how it snowed. The cold mountain air swirled the snow flakes in the car headlamps, as features of the landscape disappeared into the blizzard then so did the road. A forty minute journey took twice as long in the treacherous weather.

The weather we had come to Spain to avoid was all around us. A Siberian winter was unfolding. The snow did not last long the air was freezing but devoid of moisture. The strong Traumontana winds blew for 45 of the first sixty days of 2005, the wind chill of all wind chills. Spring was no longer on the way! February was cold. So cold in fact that I heard of some expats who left Spain and returned home to face an English winter.

I had travelled out alone to arrange for central heating to be fitted prior to decorating and the later furniture shipment. We had spent several months researching the different systems, and wished to install a geo-exchange ground pump to extract energy from the ground of the large agricultural part of the finca. To this end, I had contacted the representatives of Spain on the international bodies responsible for the promotion of renewable energy for advice as well as several large scale commercial engineering organizations.

The rocky nature of the land meant that excavation or drilling was expensive. The companies which all had glossy web presentations, seemed to lack confidence in their own abilities when the specifics of the task were discussed. The heat pump was not viable.

Underfloor heating for a house of 316 m2 was also cost prohibitive, we had to settle for radiators.

The massive disruption caused during the installation had to be seen to be believed 9" of concrete had to be excavated to take the water pipes; and so in the end had to budget to re-tile the whole of the house as well.

One particularly cold afternoon the North African heating engineer ran out into the garden whooping with delight

"It's snowing! It's snowing never in my life have I seen snow" he called to me.

"Really! I returned only one week ago and already I've seen it twice" I replied with slightly less enthusiasm.

Now, as I pack my bags to return to the Spanish Costa Brava after a winter sunshine holiday I am watching nervously as the thermometer keeps falling; and reading of the record number of UK ski and snow board tourists arriving at Girona airport en-route to Andora.

One of them zip a dee doo dah days!

Song of the south was possibly the movie I enjoyed most as a child. I had become fascinated with the Uncle Remus stories from reading my sister Ann's books. That old Brer Rabbit and his friends were larger than life itself! I still enjoy seeing that opening sequence with the blue birds and Uncle Remus.

The birds of northern Spain have provided much needed company in the course of the last year.

We have had the European roller, Bee eaters, Finches galore, Dipper, Robins , Swallows, Jays, Magpies, and others too numerous to mention.

The rollers put on the early morning show along with the finches. The atmosphere changes in mid morning with the arrival of the birds of prey, a variety of hawks hunting the smaller birds.

The kitchen fitter from Figueres, we had employed on our home, was amazed to see four eagles riding the thermal currents above the finca, a familiar sight to ourselves.

On another occaision, I watched in amazement when a flight of swallows rose into the air high above Ordis to drive away a golden eagle.

Working in the finca is always a pleasure surrounded by these colourful creatures.

Everybody sing along now.............

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay

Mister Bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actch'll
Ev'rything is satisfactch'll
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!

Text

The movie 'The Twin Towers'’, part of the 'Lord of the Rings' was shown on Spanish television and provided an opportunity for me to test my theory. My theory that it was possible to learn the language in an enjoyable way.

This after all was a story I was familiar with from both the book and the movie. Well known characters from the story would speak perfect Spanish, as I read the corresponding text from the subtitles below thereby reinforcing my learning of the language; simple but brilliant!

I had equipped my new language lab with all the essentials, a wide-screen T.V. with remote control, copious amounts of ice cold beer, and a variety of junk food to snack on. Oh! And the not quite so important pencil and paper, dictionary etc. This would be the deluxe learning package; maybe I should patent my new method.

The story unfolded as expected and I tried to follow the Spanish text, though this was often interrupted by pop up ads for forthcoming football matches and other programmes. Still that provided an opportunity for further refreshments to be enjoyed.

As the movie continued the text seemed to be quite succinct compared to the actors spoken words; paraphrasing important dialogue possibly kept the flow but lost the subtlety of the script.

Later as I watched a scene involving the hobbits Sam and Frodo, the discrepancies were more apparent.

Frodo Spoken Spanish, '‘yakity yak yakity yak yakity yakity yakity yak: yakity yak yakity yak yakity yak yakity yak Sam'

Frodo text version '‘Sam'’.

The further into the movie I watched the worse it got, I formed the opinion that the sub title writer was watching another channel, flicking backwards and forwards on his remote control with little interest in the story. My experiment had failed!