To whet the appetite

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Paul

Saturday afternoon saw a melancholic return from Galicia after a fruitful and interesting, although far too short, visit to the house. We managed to cram loads into the seventy-two hours we spent in our little piece of paradise, in what was probably our last trip of 2010. I have got plenty to blog about over the coming weeks and months, hopefully to retain the interest until the new year.

Here is an appetiser, in the form of a few photographs, of some of the things that I’ll be covering in the near future.

Still Standing

The house is still in one piece, well….the several pieces in which we left it. Autumn has arrived and it appears that Carlos has fully exploited our absence by harvesting absolutely everything, even the wind fallen apples which were in evidence on our September visit. I suspect that he’s even got his eye on this ‘in-house’ fir tree (above) as the centre piece for the Carlos family Christmas decorations.

El burro esta bien

The donkey is still living in our barn (little house) and seems to have put on a bit of weight since last time we saw him. I guess that he’s working less hard in the winter, and will have been finding more to eat since the grass which had been stripped by Carlos has now grown back to a munch-able level. Despite Mothers alarm at his mis-treatment he seems happy enough, although with our track record I wasn’t getting close enough to him to find out whether he’d remembered that we are about to steal his barn (thank you 20x zoom on my trusty Canon G10).

Now that's what I call a vacation

We spent a couple of nights in Ribadeo at the wonderful (on weekdays) Hotel Rolle. During our stay we met up with Stephen and Kay who are in the process of renovating a house twice the size of ours. We went for a meal with them but the best Pulperia in town was closed (see above) so they took us to another little gem of a place on the main road through the town (Avenida de Galicia) where we feasted on chipirones, pulpo, grilled langostinos, croquetas and a tuna salad washed down with a couple of bottles of excellent house white.

A tourist trap with no tourists (except us)

Business complete in Pontenova/Ribadeo we’d decided to do the tourist thing for the last twenty-four hours of this trip. On the way to Oviedo we strayed 10km from the motorway to discover the enchanting Castro de Coaña, an ancient Celtic hill top fortified settlement of over eighty round houses. We arrived around mid-day and had the whole site to ourselves, as the only other two cars in the car park belonged to the ladies running  the excellent visitors centre. Stunning.

Heart of the medieval town

We spent the last night in Oviedo, a beautiful, friendly town about 30km inland for Asturias Airport. The medieval old centre survived the Spanish Civil War and comprises narrow pedestrianised streets and grand buildings. Due north of the Cathedral is Calle de Gascona where the speciality is a foul tasting vinegar like cider (sidra) poured from above the waiters head into a glass held around their knees, all without looking (I’ll put a video up later). Needless to say most of it ends up on the increasingly wet an sticky marble floor and despite its unpleasant taste, the spectacle and theatre of it demands that you have more than one.

That’s your whistle -stop tour. Much more to follow over the coming weeks.

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Grand designs, and no Kevin in sight

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Paul

With our next trip planned, and schedule coming nicely together, it is time that we brought you right up to date with where we currently are with the house (at the beginning of November 2010). Consider this article a kind of mental house-keeping, a way of sweeping away the memories of past visits in order to allow new ones to settle in their place, when we next put our trust and lives in the hands of an EasyJet pilot and his dungaree bedecked youth club crew.

In the last instalment, ‘We’ve got squatters’, I left the story on the eve of the meeting with the architect, Mum reeling from the shock of seeing our pile of stones for the first time, and us crossing everything in the hope of being able to move quickly on to the next stage.

After a very long breakfast, lengthened by the architects vehicular troubles in achieving Taramundi from A Coruña on a busy Monday morning, we ordered our third cup of coffee and sat down around the table. Us two like a pair of kids on Christmas morning, and the architects like our parents who needed to manage our expectations that we were about to take delivery of the entire toy shop. The normally decaffeinated Mother was, after three cups of finest Spanish Café con leche, almost as hyper as myself and Amanda. It was touch and go as to which one of us would explode first.

Fernando pulled out the ‘as is’ survey booklet, the most beautiful bound catalogue of our land. He talked us through it in detail, showing us the outlines of rooms that we’d not yet had chance to enter (due to thick undergrowth or dangerous floors) along with room dimensions and photographs of materials. It was a great start, the bound plans (along with a DVD of additional information) was more that we’d hoped for.

Now we moved on to Fernandos’ outline plans for the small house, the house which would be ours in the future, and which once renovated would act as a holiday home and site office while we managed the renovation of the ‘big house’. And what wondrous ideas he put before us.

A small extension, zinc roofing, rusty-look window frames, floor to ceiling windows, a central fire heating the house and providing hot water, a kitchen with a two metre letter-box window allowing is to see the fantastic valley views. It was the kind of thing that you’d see Kevin McCloud waxing lyrical over on Grand Designs, the kind of structure that was entered for awards, our little piece of modern traditionalism. Our eyes and minds were spinning and then Fernando hit us with the estimate. When architects fees, and all of the taxes, were added the total was over double what we’d mentally allowed for this small first part of the site. I suspect that our failure to mask our disappointment was audible, and possibly even olfactible.

We needed to take stock, double check whether A Coruña prices were the same as those locally and at least do some initial investigation as to whether extensions,  zinc roofs and rusty window frames were permissable in casa rural renovations. We thanked Fernando and Luz and decided to visit Delores (have I mentioned Dolores yet?*) for a coffee and some advice from one of our ‘renovation’ gurus.

Delores was sympathetic, soothing, and pragmatic. Just what we wanted and needed. It wasn’t the end of the project, it was just the start. We needed to meet the architect from the Concello and test the water, perhaps chat to a couple more local architects, and get some costings from local builders.

Only then would we know what to do next. It was a time to keep cool and keep our heads.

We spent the rest of the trip collecting contact phone numbers and e-mails ready to start another round of advice-seeking, and gather the ammunition to start planning our next trip.

* Dolores lives in the valley with her inquisative kitten Lula. She moved there from Madrid a couple of years ago to escape the rat race. She’s restored her own house, with some help from contractors, almost single handed, and she knows absolutely everyone in the valley and beyond. She is the ‘renovation guru’.
Posted in Background, The House in Liñeiras | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

An accidental encounter with intrigue

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Paul

On our first trip to Galicia we discovered something most unexpected while driving the coast road from Ortigueira to Ferrol to meet an estate agent. It seems fitting to mention it now, just as remembrance poppies go on sale around the country ahead of the 11th November. 

Leslie Howard Memorial

Exposed to the harshest Atlantic elements, at the side of a beautiful but deserted Galician coastal road, and off the beaten track near San Andrés de Teixido, we stumbled across a monument to prolific British actor Leslie Howard (Leslie Howard Steiner). The monument had been erected by ‘The Royal Green Berets’ to commemorate not only Howard, but also their fallen colleagues and other civilians who died alongside him during the second world war. 

If this all sounds a bit boring, please persevere and read on, for it is a story is full of intrigue. 

Leslie Howard was a fantastically successful actor and producer whose career began in 1920 and throughout the 1920’s, 30’s and early 40’s saw him star in such classics as ‘Gone with the Wind’, ‘Pygmalian’, ‘Romeo and Juliet (1936)’ and  ‘The Petrified Forest’. During his illustrious career he shared the silver screen with the likes of Bette Davies, Vivien Leigh, and Humphrey Bogart to name but a few. 

When war broke out, Howard did the patriotic thing and returned from Hollywood to star and producesome British made wartime (now classed as propaganda) films. But this wasn’t all he did. During many ‘entertainer goodwill’ tours he came onto the Germans radar for his ‘information gathering’ with implications that he was using his position to spy for the Allies, although nothing was ever confimed. 

The circumstances of his death are shrouded in intrigue. 

What is not in any doubt is that the unarmed scheduled passenger plane (a Douglas DC-3 flying under the flag of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/BOAC, Flight 777) was shot down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay (nearest landfall where the monument is sited). Howard was on-board with sixteen others, including two children (aged 11 years, and 18 months). What is the subject of many theories, counter theories and even conspiracy theories is the reason for Howards’ time in Spain (the flight was from Lisbon to Whitchurch – near Stoke-on-Trent) and the circumstances around the interception, shooting down and his untimely death just two months after his fiftieth birthday. 

Howard was supposedly on a lecture tour about cinema and film making but it is now widely thought that he had been sent to Madrid to negotiate with Franco and to urge him to stay neutral in the war rather than joining the Nazis. It had been an important mission, crucial to the war effort and sponsored by Churchill himself. 

The theories surrounding the planes’ interception by the German Air Force are numerous but include speculation that; 

  • information had been spread that Churchill himself would be on the flight to entice a German attack and as a diversion from his actual route back from a meeting in Algiers. Churchill stated this in his memoirs aong with regret that he may have caused Howards death.
  • the allies knew that the Germans were targeting the flight but this information was only known by the fact that they had broken the ENIGMA code, and any change to the plans would alert the Germans that their communications had been compromised.
  • the Germans, especially Joseph Goebbels (German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), were specifically targeting Howard as one of Howard’s films had ridiculed him and Goebbels considered him one of the most dangerous propagandists of the second world war.
  • that Luftwaffe command knew that the plane was an unarmed but failed to pass this down to the pilots in the air fuelling the rumour that the plane was deliberately targeted to be shot down rather than being escorted to German airspace and the passengers taken hostage.

While there is much debate about all aspects of the late life and death of Howard one thing is for sure, he was an English hero, and alongside those who perished with him, he has the most spectacular and fitting memorial atop a windswept Galician cliff top. 

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

There is much more information on wikipedia if you are interested, this article also references several books on Howard and his last days and hours. The monument is a two hour drive from Ribadeo along some of the most spectacular roads in Galicia.

Posted in Background, Places to Visit, Video | Tagged , | 1 Comment

And then there were two

Posted on October 26, 2010 by admin

‘Cutting off ones nose to spite ones face’.

Founded in the medieval practice of women disfiguring themselves to protect their virginity, the phrase has passed into common parlance and is associated with a needless self-destructive over-reaction to a problem.

We’ve all done it at some time in our lives, usually at a miniscule level, and ultimately not causing permanent damage. Going hungry and refusing to touch your food because Mum put a single floret of cauliflower on it; telling your mates you aren’t going tonight out because your Dad wouldn’t let you borrow the car; or, leaving your shopping trolley laden with a half-hours careful shelf picking just because there are a couple of people at the tills in front of you.

We’ve all done it! But now someone, a certain Michael O’Leary (Chief Executive of Ryanair), has gone and overshadowed all our ‘nose cutting’ efforts by nearly decapitating himself in his strop to get his own way. Let me explain.

There are currently three ways to get directly from England to Galicia through the air (although one is via an hours drive down an Asturian motorway). Easyjet fly a daily service from Stansted to Asturias Airport (a 95km drive west to the Galician border) and this is the ideal airport for the provinces of Lugo and Ourense. Vueling (a Spanish budget airline) fly daily from Heathrow to A Coruña airport on the north-west coast, perfect for visiting the province of A Coruña. And, Ryanair have the route from Stansted to Santiago de Compostela, the most popular route and the one which services visitors to the pilgrimage capital and surrounding areas including Pontevedra and the spectacular west coast.

I’m not a fan of either Easyjet or Ryanair, and I’ve never had the pleasure of Vuelings budget hospitality, but I do feel that Easyjet have a softer edge against Ryanairs military style cattle herding operation. Ryanair seem to deliberately court controversy, be it; charging to use the toilets, suggesting people stand on flights, or refusing to pay compensation to people stranded by the Icelandic volcano with the unpronouncable name. All these airlines do serve a great purpose of getting us to where we want to be, for a bargain price, and with as little fuss as possible. So long as your expectations are low then they are likely to be met. None of these airlines are ever likely to have a fan club!

Three to two

Last week Ryanair announced the cancellation of their Santiago route from the 31st December 2010, in one move cutting off the south-west of Galicia to direct flights from the UK. Ryanair did have flights planned for 2011 and had taken bookings but these have now been cancelled and travellers refunded, leaving their clients and the Galician government fuming. What is the reason for this axe-wielding?

Ryanair have fallen out with the Galician government, accusing them of not promoting the area for tourism, which reading between the lines means that the Xunta have not given Ryanair money to advertise their services to Galicia. There could be several repercussions from this petulant Ryanair decision;

  • Tourism to Santiago de Compostela and the south-west of Galicia will reduce by the 700 visitors a week that Ryanair will no longer deliver to the pilgrimage capital.
  • Easyjet or Vueling will step into the void and start offering a service to Santiago de Compostela.
  • The Xunta will acquiesce to Ryanairs’ demands and stump up for a ‘Come to Galicia with Ryanair’ advertising campaign.

Only time will tell which of these three will be the outcome, but I can’t see Santiago de Compostela being without a low-cost service from the UK for long, especially given its popularity. It isn’t a disaster for us as we, and our future guests, use the closer Asturias airport. Ideally Easyjet will decide to open up a route in from the north of England and we’ll then have the decision as to whether to take a long drive down the A1, or on the more pleasant (but tolled) roads in Galicia from Santiago to Lugo via Betanzos.

Ryanair have certainly tarnished their image with clients once again, but as we’ve seen from similar posturing in the past, they really don’t care. Hopefully the loser in all this will be petulant Ryanair, and not Galicia.

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Meeting house criteria, the lure of the green

Posted on October 20, 2010 by admin

After forty-two years on this earth, although I acknowledge that I do look like I’ve been here a bit longer than that, I think that I am qualified to put forward the hypothesis that there are two types of people shuffling their way around our mortal coil trying to make the best of what life throws at them.

‘What are these two types’, I hear you cry.

Am I talking about men and women? Religious and atheist? Extrovert and introvert? X-Factor viewers and non-X-Factor viewers? Well no…none of these.

My two types fall into all of the categories above bisecting sex, religion, personality and whether or not you have a penchant for ‘council house’ TV programmes. I am, of course, talking about golfers and non-golfers.

I fall wholeheartedly into the former category, while Amanda can’t see any pleasure in spending hour upon hour whacking a small white dimpled ball up-hill and down-dale with expensive metal sticks, wearing stupid jumpers you wouldn’t be seen dead in outside a golf club while getting drenched, sunburnt or eaten alive by the local wildlife.

When we sat down at the start of our house-hunting quest, and agreed on the criteria for our perfect house, I managed to sneak in ‘within 30 minutes of an 18-hole golf course’. I used the reasoning that we could offer ‘golfing holidays’ and that I had loads of mates and acquaintances from my ten years of Huddersfield golfing that would love me to cook them a big breakfast, ferry them to and from a nice golf course, and spend a long night serving them beer and whisky. Close proximity to a golf course would sell the Casa Rural and bring the guests flocking… and she bought it!

Disaster. It was only then that I found out that Galicia isn’t the best catered for area of Spain when it comes to golf courses, an industry somewhat in it’s infancy in the north, still seeking the strong financial backing which has turned the whole of the south of Spain into one big golfers paradise.  Meeting the criteria was going to be tough, especially when other priorities (such as space, land, closeness to the coast, ‘peace and tranquility’ and price) were of a higher priority.

When we decided to purchase the house in Liñeiras I did do a quick check for nearby courses and despite their scarcity the meeting of the rest of the criteria swung the deal in the houses favour. 

As an aide-memoir, as much for myself as for our future guests, I give a brief tour of the nearest courses here;

Club de Golf Cierro Grande – 34km – 50 minutes

What will be classed as my local!

This is our nearest course, an eleven holer up (two new holes added recently) on the coast just the other side of Ribadeo, and over the border in Asturias. Seven of the holes are played twice and it is a par 70 measuring 5,425 metres. From the photographs it looks fine, very playable, but despite my Tom-Tom sounding the Reveille every time we pass within a thousand metres of it, I’ve never had chance to stop and take a look (maybe I will on the November trip?).

I think that the fifty minutes estimated by Google is on the conservative side and I suspect that when I get to know the roads that it will be an ‘under 40’ minute trip.

Club de Golf Lugo – 70km – 71 minutes

A drive south, and round the Lugo ring road to the south-west and you’ll find Lugo Golf Club. I suspect that with a bit of local knowledge I’d be able to shave some time off the Google maps estimate but it is going to be an hours drive at the very least.

A nine hole club, this course has a par of 72, measures just over 6,000 metres off the competition tees, and it costs 30 € per round in the week, and 36 € at a weekend.

Club de Golf Balneario de Guitiriz – 70km – 72 minutes

A nine hole golf course without its own website at the moment and therefore I am struggling to glean much information except that it is a parkland course with a par of 72 although it measures just over 5,700 metres from the competition tees.

Club de Golf Miño – 134km – 120 minutes

The nearest eighteen hole course, just, and at 40 € a round during the week rising to 60 € at weekends it isn’t too bad by Spanish golf price standards. The course par is 72 and it is just under 5,800 metres long off the competition tees. It looks a nicely kept course cut into the hillside just off the motorway between A Coruña and Ferrol.

Real Club de Golf de La Coruña – 145km – 122 minutes

Looks tight between the trees

A gorgeous looking eighteen holer which will cost you 100 € a round during the week and 150 € at the weekend. Probably going to be a bit out of my league for membership, and just a little too far for a round twice a week.

For me it looks like I’ll be joining the first mentioned Cierro Grande, if they’ll have me and I have the time! I’ll then be keeping my fingers crossed that someone with plenty of money identifies the gulf between provision and potential demand around our house and decides to build a spectacular course on the rolling hillsides surrounding A Pontenova. Then I’ll be first in the queue with my membership cheque…wearing my silly jumper!

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