Guttered

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Paul

I’m feeling very homesick, not for the Pennine hills, but for our little piece of Galicia.

I keep getting reports of what is happening ‘back home’ and it makes me wish I was there, breathing in the clean air, eating the great food, and taking in the fantastic views. But I know I’ve got to wait for at least three months.

Our friend Dolores has two new kittens (I’m a real softie for kittens) which look very playful in the photographs. Stephen and Kay’s barn is almost finished and they are taking bookings from the middle of this October for a very reasonable full week price of €500, or €85 a night for short breaks. And the temperatures have been setting local records in excess of thirty-five degrees, when we’ve got more chance of going rusty than sun-tanned.

There have also been some developments over the last week at Casa Liñeiras.

The architect, who cannot be named, has prepared the detailed plans for the interior of the barn including water and electricity schema. What we didn’t realise is that our brilliant new idea to put the kitchen sink in front of the kitchen window has necessitated the plans to be re-submitted to Patrimonio. Hopefully this won’t take long to come back with a positive outcome, and to be honest if it’s not through when the builders start-date arrives, then we’ll be getting on with it anyway.

One physical change that has happened is the installation of gutters at the barn, after the architect urged us to get them put up due to the water cascading off the roof taking the varnish off the balcony.

The barn with new zinc guttering

We discussed the options with Facundo last time we were at the house and despite us both preferring traditional copper, we opted for zinc. This was partly due to zinc being half the cost of copper, but also out of concern that the copper could be too much of a temptation to a passing casual thief. This has now set the standard for the big house, which will also be finished in zinc to match.

Workmanship looks good from this distance

The work was completed last week and Facundo sent through these photographs today and from afar, and through the lens of a camera, it looks pretty impressive. I’m slighly concerned where the fall pipes discharge to, but with the drains being put in properly in October/November they surely can’t do too much damage?

Guttered, and at the same time gutted that I’m not there.

 

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Our second anniversary

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Paul

Yesterday was the second anniversary of us buying the house…and I celebrated with toothache!

It really is a full two years, twenty-four months, seven hundred and thirty days since, on the longest day in 2010, we sat in the smoky Notarios office and handed over our life savings for our pile of Galician stones.

Fortunately my toothache wasn’t the only method of celebration (although as it is ongoing as I write this I am struggling to class it as any sort celebration), as by some very strange quirk of fate, yesterday was also the day that we finally received confirmation that our planning paperwork for the barn had been given all of the bureaucratic rubber stamps that it required by the Concello. We now owe money for the license (about €850), have to start the works within six months, and then complete them within three years.

So what have we actually achieved in the last two years?

  1. We’ve made some brilliant friends in the local community; Spanish, Gallego and English. Everyone we meet is quite simply ‘nice’. It’s bizarre, the only local I don’t like is the white van driver who tried to kill me last autumn. These fellow expatriates, people seeking a better life, locals, architects, builders and solicitors will be our future neighbours and community, and that puts a smile on my face.
  2. We’ve managed to obtain planning permission for the phase one conversion of the barn into a house for us to inhabit. At times it looked doubtful, at times we came close to giving up hope, but our architect came through and presented a project which satisfied the Xunta…eventually. And it’s going to be great….compact….but great.
  3. We’ve got all of the structural works completed on the barn and we’ve a tentative start date for this October to complete the works and have a habitable house early in 2013.
  4. At the rambling property itself we are coming to terms with what we’d like to do and understanding what we can actually achieve, and the order in which it needs to be done. We have a mental plan, and unless we win the lottery, in which case we might have a re-think, we have a rough timetable in our heads.
  5. We’ve become certain that choosing the Turia Valley as our future home was the right idea. We both love the valley and the surrounding area, its people, cuisine and tradition, and now we are both keen to move out there at the earliest opportunity.

Permission to finish

It has been an enjoyable, occasionally frustrating, two years. We’re finally getting towards the first step of realising the dream.

Anyone know a good dentist?

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Filled with culture and cuisine

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Paul

Our last night in Galicia found us at a bit of a loose end but Neil and Rosa came to our rescue with the offer of a free concert in Ribadeo to celebrate the Galician ‘Day of Letters’, a local holiday for which the whole autonomous state had ground to a halt. The fact that the local holiday fell on a thursday meant that most people would also take the friday off, and make a decent long weekend out of it.

We didn’t know what to expect, but it was free, and with the promise of food afterwards there was no option but to give it a try. It turned out to be a forty piece wind orchestra who spend just over an hour guiding us through seven works of Galician importance while the young students in front of us in the audience played games on their mobile telephones, much the same the world over.

Forty piece wind orchestra

At the end we all stood for the Galician national anthem and those who knew the words, predominantly those whose place of birth was Galicia, joined in while we shuffled our feet.

We walked across town for a couple of beers and with eleven o’clock rapidly approaching decided that it was time to get something to eat.

In the UK this would have comprised either a kebab, pizza, or if you were lucky a last sitting at a curry house, but Neil and Rosa decided to introduce us to a new restaurant in Vegadeo, just over half way on the drive back to our hotel.

We parked up on the Avenida de Taramundi outside a non-descript bar (the one with the barrel in the entrance) which didn’t fill me with confidence, and had me wondering whether we’d anything in the car that would satisfy our hunger until breakfast. On walking in there were a couple of people at the bar but the rest of the place was in darkness. Rosa must hold some local influence. Within seconds the lights were on, the chef awoken from his slumbers, and menus in front of us.

‘Finess’ is not the word for this establishment, they have a menu with pictures (usually a no-no in my mind) and ten ‘specials’ which you order by number rather than name. We elected to share a portion of Pimientos de Padron for starters which arrived quickly and contained a couple of peppers of thermo-nuclear intensity. We’d barely stopped for breath and a swig of mouth cooling beer when the platters arrived, numbers 3, 5 and 7.

Squid, chips and egg....a heavenly combination

 

Cholesterol rich 'breakfast'

Half a cow and chips

Neil and I made valiant efforts to finish ours but Amanda left some chips…which is almost unheard of…and the salad didn’t get touched. The quantity was truly Galician and the quality was pretty good too. The cost, for the whole meal for four, with starter, beers and wines, was under forty euros (about thirty quid at the current exchange rate) and rather than a hungry wait until breakfast, we were wondering whether we’d need to eat again before we got home.

It was a great night out, with excellent company, and we’d had our fill of culture and cuisine. We’re learning that in Galicia you just have to ‘go with the flow’ and everything will work out brilliantly.

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Ants in our pants (almost)

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Paul

According to everyone we spoke to, we took the good weather with us to Galicia when we visited last week, although I did try and point out that the English spring back home was more resemblant of a continuation of the English winter. After a ropey weekend here it looks like we might have brought it back to Yorkshire.

The world just seems a happier place with the sun on your back.

There is plenty of Galicia news to share over the next few weeks, but my first blog since arriving back has to be about the natural world and our exposure to the animal kingdom.

We benefitted from a nice car upgrade, a brand new (1,000 km) Renault Megane Scenic Diesel with all the toys (which essentially means that I could connect to my iPhone via bluetooth and annoy Amanda with my music all week). I wore a broad grin as I approached the nice shiny car, but it wouldn’t last long.

As I opened the drivers door I saw an ant, then another, then realised that the whole car had a serious infestetation. We retrieved our luggage from the boot, took out the dictionary to look up the word for ant (hormiga), and headed to the Budget rental desk. The nice rental lady went to investigate and on her return exchanged our chariot, for a slightly higher mileage version of the same car.

On arrival in Pontenova for our first meeting we had some time to kill so went for a wander near the old kilns and up towards the football ground. Here we encountered our second bit of nature, the first lizard that we’ve seen in Galicia, and it was a belter.

Photoshop free lizard

It was about 30cm long and stunning with a blue head, green body and brown tail, I photoshop you not. We’d later see a very similar one up at the house and now wonder how they have evaded our eyes for the last two years.

Up at the house we had wildlife encounters three and four, although not strictly ‘wildlife’.

We visited neighbour Miro who has a pig in his barn whose chances of survival past the end of the year I suspect are slim. He’s a friendly thing, the pig not Miro, and likes to have his head scratched with scrubbing brush. He eats corn and the best vegetable scraps from Miros garden and seems fairly happy with the world.

This winters chorizo

And we’ve not finished yet.

Those of you who have been reading my blog will know about Enrique, the donkey I accidentally electrocuted. He’s still on our farm, although evicted from the barn, and now lives in a makeshift shelter under a cabazo.

Not an apple in sight

Amanda called him and he came trotting but then left her feeling guilty that she’d no treat for him.

I, on the other hand, stayed well clear. I’m sure he remembers me and the now infamous ‘electric apple’ episode.

 

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There’s good news, and there’s bad news

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Paul

‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession.’

A lot can happen in three weeks, unless you’re waiting for planning permission from the Xunta de Galicia.

But that’s where the good news comes in. We’ve had notice from our architect, the one who can’t be named, that the Xunta have finally sent through their approval of our application to convert the barn into a dwelling, ‘obras mayores’, just fourteen months after we initially submitted it!

What’s more, the Xunta has not placed a single constraint or condition on the approval and it has been accepted in full. This despite lower than permitted roof heights, a lack of solar panels and the limited amount of windows, the architect argued our case and the Xunta are happy.

With the Xunta happy, we’re very happy, and the architect is ecstatically happy, but also a little shocked at the lack of clarifications and conditions.

The next stage is for the drawing up of detailed plans, final approval by the local council (a formality we believe), appointment of a contractor and placing an order for the windows and doors with our preferred carpenter. There is also a little legal transaction which needs to take place, adding the barn to the deeds as a dwelling rather than a barn so that the council can levy the right taxes. The only two certain things in Spanish life are taxes and death! (paraphrased from Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil, 1726).

But where there is good, there is inevitably bad!

The bad news came in the form of another letter from ‘Ministerio del Interior’, which after initially freaking out thinking was another speeding fine, turned out to be a second notification about the first fine (from two months ago). Reading the paperwork it appeared to us that the second letter was due to the fine being unpaid and that I was now on a ‘blacklist’. Our solicitor is now investigating, but she thinks that our payment has gone through fine, but that I am now on a register of offenders held on a public website. Terrific.

I took a look at the ‘speeding sinners’ website, while half hiding behind the settee out of fright, and there I am Paul xxxx – Huddersfield, GB – €400! The only solace is that there are other offenders on there who got fined a lot more than me for transgressing at the same camera, one guy got hit for €1,500. So now I don’t feel quite so bad.

We’re back out to Galicia very soon, I’ve just booked the flights and the hire car. We’ll meet the architect, builder, carpenters and our friends. Hopefully there will be plenty more blogs over the coming weeks as the project awakes from its’ enforced winter/spring slumbers.

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