Another few days have passed by and I find it hard to believe that I left work almost exactly one month ago… time has flown by these past few weeks. Seems to me that although the days seem to zip past (I find that long lie-ins will do that!) it still feels that we’ve been in Spain for an age. That said, I cannot quite believe that we’ve now almost made it to 3.5 weeks out of our 7 already – time is a strange thing… seems when you want it to pass quickly it doesn’t and when you don’t, it does…

So what have we been up to..?

We had a great walk on the 25th in search of La Torres del Paso (Tower of the Passage) which is on the opposite side of the mountains to where we are staying and just outside Cortes de La Frontera. I have mentioned this tower previously, as we spotted it when we walked up to the Casa de Piedra on the 23rd and, having downloaded a new maps app, we were able to find a route to it from the main road out of Cortes. Fortunately, there was a “mirador” near to where our path began, so we were able to drive more or less to the start of the walk and park the car there. This Mirador is called “Mirador de Corcho” which translates as “Viewpoint of the Cork”. You might remember that where we are staying is surrounded by Cork Oak forest which they strip every decade or so (without damaging the growth of the tree) to make cork.

The walk was lovely despite initially having to slip past a number of big, snarly, ferocious dogs at the start who were guarding the goat farm at the top of the track… fortunately they were chained up but pretty scary all the same (think, Steven King and Cujo… 😱) – other than the dogs at the start & finish, we didn’t see another soul for the whole 4 miles… it was very peaceful with beautiful scenery…

La Torres del Paso is considered a “notable monument” on the border of the Kingdom of Granada and was built by the Moors in the 13th century as a lookout point to oversee the route that linked Gaucin, via the Puerto del Espino, with Ubrique (this is the route on our side of the Mountain valley!). Of course, Pete had to climb up to take a closer look… apparently the building originally had an upper parapet, reached by stairs – Pete found the remnants of these which is how he came to stand on top of it (see top left photo below!) – other than the steps (or what’s left of them 🤣) and the walls shown in the picture, the innards are all dilapidated… it was still pretty cool to find this nestling on the mountainside though!

Other notable things from the walk… amongst the goats and the sheep dotted about the landscape, I saw my first ever “wild” dung-beetle – pushing it’s ball of dung up a big hill! Never seen one of these outside a David Attenborough programme before…it was fascinating to watch it climb on top of the dung ball every few steps to check which way it was going 🤣🤣 – See “bottom” left below! 🤣

Oh, and mountain bees – the picture below is especially for Gabbie Telford & Billy Hughes – how about bee-keeping in the Spanish mountains?? 😆 We’ve tried the local honey and it is delicious!

Yesterday, we decided to hangout at the accommodation – had a bit of sun, a swim and then a bit of a walk up the big hill behind us – it was very nice and relaxing but meant, today (27th) we needed to get out and have a walk somewhere!

The mission today was (a) buy some screen wash for the car – achieved(!); (b) buy some antihistamine to stop the mozzie bites itching quite so much – achieved but very expensive, we will definitely have to ration these 😆; and (c) go for a walk – achieved…

Today’s walk, according to my new app, was around 3.75 miles and started in the next village along from Cortes – a place called Jimera de Libar. However, according to the Fitbit, it was probably more like 5 miles – which was pretty hot going in the sunshine today (oh, it was supposed to rain (according to BBC weather…) – think it might have done overnight based on the amount of dust that the car had on it this morning but we haven’t seen a drop – sorry for all those in the UK affected by the horrible rain we’ve seen reported and, worse still, any flooding – hope everyone is OK!). It was nice to go somewhere different but not too far away…

So, that’s all the news for past few days… it seems strange being the 27th of the month but with no pay going into my bank account… although I was grateful to get my expenses paid (always a month in arrears) but that’s it now… unless I find some work at some point in the future… Whilst I am certainly feeling more relaxed and “chilled” (Pete told me that my “stress management score” of 88 on the Fitbit is very good? I didn’t even know it would tell me that but I’ll no doubt be monitoring it from now on – darn it!) and my sleep has improved (gone from an average of around 5.5 hours a night to 7.5 hours!) it is still scary to think that I do not have a job! I’m sure I’ll get used to the idea eventually 😊

Anyway, that’s all from us in Spain this evening – take care friends… especially those in the UK… we hope you are all safe (and our house is still standing! 😊) xxx