Meet the neighbours

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Paul

We’ve said a lot about our house in Liñeiras without really mentioning the rest of the village, although village is possibly a rather grand description of the disjointed and disparate collection of houses which makes up our immediate community.

Casa Liñeiras

You will know from our previous descriptions that our property doesn’t really overlook any other houses although there is a small hamlet about half a kilometre to the southwest down towards the bottom of the valley which can just be seen. Our closest neighbour is to the east, just behind me when I took the photograph above, and was bought by an English couple a few months after we completed our purchase.

Our neighbours house was built around the same time as ours in the 1880’s and is a very large square building over three floors with a brick bard addition to the side. It is massive, twice the size of our main house, and our new neighbours are intending to renovate it, turning it into a number of self catering apartments. They are up against the same planning issues as ourselves, and whilst they are spending a lot of time in Liñeiras doing prepatory work, they will still have a long wait before they can start any major works.

Our nearest neighbours

Follow the road past this house and you stumble on what must be the smallest church that I have ever seen, our own little Iglesia Liñeiras.

Worlds smallest church?

Enclosed on three sides the fourth is open to the elements and protected just by a wire mesh arrangement. Inside is a small altar with the ubiquitous icons and a couple of small pews which could, at a push, seat three people each.

Inside the church

I’m guessing that the contents of the collection plate never take much counting.

The church is causing our new English neighbours some planning concerns as it is within fifty metres of their property and this throws up a whole new set of considerations for the authorities. That said, it doesn’t seem to have caused a family from Madrid too many problems. They bought another of the villages’ abandoned houses a few years ago and have fully renovated it into a family holiday home which they use a few weeks each year.

Casa de los madrileños

There are a few other nearby houses, mostly north of our property, but the rest of the village is spread out over a couple of square kilometers. We’ve not fully explored yet, but we have met several of the locals who despite speaking Gallego seem cheery and happy that people are finally looking to renovate village houses and start their life in their beautiful corner of Galicia.

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The town with the wrong name

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Paul

One fateful night last December saw bitter division and outright controversy, bordering on rebellion, in the nearest town to our house. The locals were up in arms, outraged and shocked as the community was plunged into crisis.

To put it simply, someone removed our bridge and gave us a new one!

‘So what?’, you might say. Surely that is a good thing? A nice new strong bridge? But no, it is a local disaster.

Up until 1950 Pontenova didn’t exist. Prior to this time the area had been split into three administrative districts; Conforto, Miranda and Vilameá. In 1945 the boundaries changed and Vilaoudriz and Vilameá were formed. Then in 1950 came the important building of a new bridge to join two communities across the river Eo (río Eo), and Puente Nuevo (New Bridge in Spanish) was founded much to the pride of its citizens as they indeed did have a ‘New Bridge’.

In 1963 these two councils merged to give Ponte Nova-Vilaoudriz and finally on the 9th June 1979 the whole area became A Pontenova (New Bridge in Gallego), a single administrative area.

The, now disappeared, New Bridge

The sparkly new bridge was in the centre of town, right next to the Concello building and opposite the landmark furnaces. It served the community for sixty years and then, one wet night in early December, some men came along and took it away as bystanders stood and wept.

So A Pontenova, named proudly after it’s new bridge, now has a newer bridge. This one is 400m upstream, has two lanes, a nice safe pavement and should stop the build up of traffic trying to turn in the centre of town. But the locals still aren’t happy.

Perhaps another name change is in order to ‘A Pontenovanova’.

STOP PRESS – It now looks like we are getting another new bridge to replace the old new bridge. I do hope that everyone is keeping up! – STOP PRESS

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How service stations should be

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Paul

The route from Asturias airport to Ribadeo/Castropol, from where it is another 40km onwards to our house, will soon be two lanes of gently undulating and predominantly empty tarmac. The European Community has part (mostly) funded the Autovía del Cantábrico (A-8) and with the exception of a few more mountains that need tunnelling, and valleys that need spanning, it covers the majority of our north coast route from the airport until we turn inland.

There is visible progress on the autovia, despite numerous downing of tool in disagreements between the contractors and government, and although the current financial climate means that cash is tight the work on our section is scheduled for completion by the end of 2012. Once complete the motorway will cut our one hour and forty-five minute journey down to just an hour and a quarter as we cruise at 120km for an hour for the first 90km of the journey, leaving a 40km cross-country run to  Liñeiras.

As always progress comes at a cost.

The cost of our reduced journey time is that we will now no longer automatically pass by the doorstep of Hotel Rio Mayor positioned perfectly to catch the hungry and thirsty traveller, as it will be on the E70 Caraterra del Cantábrico a newly formed backwater away from the hustle and bustle of the new modern thoroughfare.

And it is a most unusual gem that we’ll be missing from the end of next year, unusual as it has a garden with a boat in it, despite being one kilometre from the sea!

A garden with a boat

After driving past it on every trip to the house we finally decided to stop there when we visited in January. Pulling off the main road we could have been forgiven for thinking that it was closed as only one other car was in a large tarmac car park. Despite it being almost 2pm the place was deserted and we thought about turning around and heading straight off, but this would have been a mistake.

Hotel with bar in the entrance

As Spanish ‘service stations’ go, it is a large complex. A decent sized hotel is the main feature but to the side it has a fifty+ table, waiter serviced, restaurant along with a separate grill/barbecue area, gift shop (closed), and children’s play area.

The restaurant offered a perfectly adequate ‘menú del dia’ for 10€ which went to three courses, bread and a drink which included the ubiquitous bottle of half decent house wine. Despite being first in we’d started a trend and within ten minutes half a dozen of the tables had people seated and picking their choice from the daily three.

The restaurant

Service was prompt, food plentiful and service delivered with a courteous smile. Within an hour we were on our way, refreshed and topped up for the remainder of the journey back to blighty.

This is the way that service stations should be, although sadly this is likely to be one establishment which won’t withstand being deserted by passing traffic as people keep their heads down on their speedy slog along the new autovia.

Posted in Food & Drink, Local Life, Places to Visit | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Honestly, it’s bigger than it looks

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Paul

The last of the ‘tooing and froing’ is now underway with the un-namable architect and within the next fortnight we hope that the plans for our Phase I of the development will be en-route to the Galician Xunta and into the hands of a sympathetic planning officer.

It appears that the final application paperwork may have to make a journey by air to England for our signatures, before it makes the shorter trip overland to Lugo, Santiago de Compostela, or wherever else it has to go to get the necessary approvals. While the idea of a trip to the house just to sign the forms holds great appeal, it does seem to be a bit of a waste of both holiday days and finances. At best a three day trip (to fit in with flights) would set us back in the region of 300€, plus food and drink. This equates to a fair few roof tiles, or a couple of nice chestnut beams. Where previously any of our domestic expenditure would have been equated to ‘meals out’ or cases of wine, we now consider the cost of everything in terms of building materials.

Hunting through hundreds of photographs and short movies to find tit-bits to blog about, I stumbled across a video of the small house from the inside, at a time when we’d managed to distract Carlos’ donkey away from its confines. This may help you to visualise how the barn currently looks and what the plans and elevations I have blogged about recently will do to the place.

[mediaplayer src=’/sadfish/visitgalicia//smallhouseinternal.wmv’ ]

The video starts looking up at what will be the entrance to the balcony (nine o’clock), currently breeze blocked up, and with the ends of some old balcony beams showing through. It then pans around the walls of the upper floor in a clockwise direction. The large opening at one o’clock will have a window and door into the kitchen. Moving around to six o’clock and the doorway will become a window into the living room.

The video then starts to move anti-clockwise and where the bare stone wall can be seen we will be installing a staircase up to the kitchen. Then at twelve o’clock, against the far wall on the ground floor will be the bedroom. Continuing to pan left the small window will be enlarged and then there will be a small bathroom. Before finally getting to the doorway at six o’clock which will be the entrance into the new entrance hallway.

Looking at this is does seem pretty small, but the camera must foreshorten as it is more than a reasonable size once you get in there.

That said, it is a simple conversion/renovation….according to our architect and builder. Lets hope they are right.

Posted in The House in Liñeiras, Video | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Small house elevated to the next level

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Paul

The second, and hopefully final, version of the plans for the small house have arrived from the top secret architect along with a number of questions, all of which we answered over the weekend. The plans include elevations from the north, south and east and show what the small house will look like once it has been renovated.

Just as a reminder, this is what the small house looks like now;

View from the north-east

View from the south-east

What our architect has suggested, and with which we wholeheartedly agree, is as follows;

From the north

Here you can see the upper floor from the roadside with a large window and traditional Galician half wood/half glass stable door. The wooden lean-to to the right will stay for now but will eventually be cleared. To the left you can just see the top of the proposed new small entrance porch.

From the east

Moving to the east you can see the new entrance way with another stable door and a slate roof over. The extension will be constructed from brick and then rendered and painted white. To blend the old to the new it is proposed that the area above the new entrance is also rendered and painted white. You can also see the profile of the balcony and a window in the opening which currently has a door, with a new lintel and blocked up slightly at the bottom.

From the south

Finally you can see the view from the south with the two new windows on the gound floor and the chestnut (for now) balcony accessed through a second floor door. The profile of the small entrance porch is also shown.

We have just a couple more bits of clarification with the architect, including how steam will get extracted from the bathroom (underneath the balcony), and then the plans are ready to be costed, written up, and submitted to the A Pontenova Concello.

Then it will be several months of waiting with fingers crossed, and breath baited.

Posted in The House in Liñeiras | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment