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Sommerferie 2010 Dagbog fra Andalusian (Spanien) Part one - Part two - Part three >> Climbs on bike >> vejudsigten 07.07.2010
After this very hot visit (36 degrees) we went for a little stroll in the town of El Bosque, it was almost as if everything was closed. On the way home we went to Hipico el imperio; a equestrian centre just outside of El Bosque. i would like to go horseback riding on Friday morning, so I booked a horse for a couple of hours of riding. Looking very much forward to that! Then we went home and made dinner on the barbecue (chicken casserole with wine, tomatoes and peppers) and Esteban dropped by to see if everything is OK with the water situation...It has improved. We asked about how it is going for Spain in the soccer world championships; and he said that they were just about to play the semi-final against Germany. We are excited about the result! The weather today has been a little different; light clouds, and in the morning not as hot as usually. But the afternoon and evening became very hot; and the winds were stronger. It was a very hot night for Gabor, he had to shower in the middle of the night in order to stand the heat. I love the heat so I have no problems sleeping in it:-)
The last long climb from the Embalse up to the top passing the road up to Vina Cristina (The "Uha bebe" climb)
Gabors climb 28.35 avg. 17,1 k/h
06.07.2010 While we were having breakfast under the wine Esteban came by to fix our little water problem. The water pressure in the pipes had been lowering the last couple of days and it is caused by the lower level of water in the deposit tank. Water here is very precious; normally being delivered by a large truck to the deposit tank next to our plunge pool. But this year we are very lucky to have water running in the creek crossing the garden. It is water from this creek that we use for watering the garden, filling the plunge pool, and also for filling the deposit tank. It is not drinking water; drinking water is collected from the Roman pond near by, or is bought in bottles. So Esteban put some of the watering tubes down the deposit and it is being filled at this moment. Gabor went out his bike and I did 50 minutes of running from Grazalema and out of town towards Ronda, then turned to the left into a minor road, and went a few km out before returning to Grazalema. Gabor needs to explore the road by bike.
Then I went to town (it is market day - Tuesday) but it was finished when I arrived at 14. Then I went swimming at El Tajo, and today I had the whole pool to myself. No one else here is swimming for the training benefits it seems. I guess they think I am very strange, coming all by myself swimming non stop for one hour, take a quick shower and then going home again...
After a siesta in the hammock we took the dogs walking; went up our local track trying to find our way cross country to Grazalema. Supposedly it should be easy, but we cannot seem to get started right...by the help of one of our neighbours (an elderly shepherd) we found a way up, but we don't think it is the "right" one; well we came up to the reservoir (Embalse del Fresnillo) and although th egate was locked we found a way in so we could dip our toes in the water before finding the path down to Grazalema.
The people in Grazalema had never seen a dog as big as Kutya; they almost fainted when they saw him. He is just a normal sized German Shepherd of 35 kg, which of Danish standards is not very big.
We bought something to drink and went home via the old Roman road, which is partly preserved; we could follow it all the way to the Roman pond about 1 km from Vina Christina. Now Gabor is watering the lawn; the grass is growing as never before, and we are about to put some chuletas de cerdo, pimientos fritos and arrozes (pork chops, fried peppers and rice) on the barbecue down by the olive tree. All for now. Goodnight! By the way, we often have Mr. toad for a visit here; a gigantic toad, and the dogs go crazy when he enters the garden. We also have a snake living in the wisteria hegde (Danish: blåregns hæk), the dogs scared it nearly to death yesterday when it was lying in the sun. Last night the dogs were barking like crazy at 3.30 in the morning, we never found out what triggered them; but they are starting to behave more and more like the local Spanish dogs. And when someone passes or enters the garden, we can be sure that we will be alarmed by them!
The last "short" climb from the Embalse up to the road that leads up to Vina Christina
05.07.2010 After todays training (Gabor bike as seen below and Pia 1 hour running and 1 hour of swimming in what we see as the best situated public swimming pool in the world, El Tajo) we went to Ronda in late afternoon, partly as tourists and partly for shopping. We went to see the Bull Ring in Ronda, which is thought to be the oldest one built for the purpose of bull fighting. We DO NOT at all support that awful kind of mistreating animals; to put it gently we find it disgusting that people have fun watching those magnificent animals being tortured! But the building is very pretty and has a special architecture with its tuscan columns and two-storey arcade. It is built of sandstone, and the first fight took place in 1785. It also contains a bullfighting museum as well as a firearms collectioin and a horse harness collection.
After a few hours of sightseeing we went shopping in SuperSol (supermarket) and then went home for a late dinner.
04.07.2010
Gabors climb to Puerto de la Palomas 48.49 avg. 15.3 k/h
03.07.2010
Puerto del Boyar (1103m): 14,7k with 825 vertical metres (avg. 5,6%) Todays climb to Puerto del Boyar 1.11.40 avg. 12.3 k/h 02.07.2010 After a night where the dogs kept us awake quite a bit, and an insect as well, we slept a bit longer. We are beginning to feel more tired because of the increased amount of training.
Gabor went out on his bike; the course is shown below. I took the car to Grazalema, where I would do my running today. I have been running on a section of the road just outside Grazalema before and it is not flat, but more flat than here. I made a V-shaped course which I did 6 times; which was 1 hour. Every 10 minutes I passed a well with fresh drinking water, which was lovely here in the heat. After running a did a bit of shopping in Grazalema; nice to be there in the morning opening hours. I also went to the wool factory, which also has an outlet where you can buy lovely high-quality woolen products, such as blankets, scarfs, hats, horse blankets etc. I bought a lovely blue woolen blanket, it is the same colour as some of our house is painted in, and therefore will remind us of our stay.
I went home, starting to feel hungry, and I thought that Gabor would be as well after 4 hours on the bike, so I made a vegetable and shrimp curry with rice. We had an hour or two of siesta before going to the lake swimming. Now we are waiting for Gabors pörkölt (Hungarian dish with paprika and beef) to be ready.
Puerto de la Palomas (1181m): 12,5 k with 785 vertical metres (avg. 6.3%) Gabors 1. climb to Puerto de la Palomas 55.38 avg. 13.5
k/h
01.07.2010 Today we were already on the bikes at 9 am. We went to Grazalema - towards Ronda - turned off towards Zahara, and then climbed up our mountain. I was very tired; but Gabor, who does not need to run and swim, went on to Grazalema, via Puerto de las Palomas, Zahara and back up the mountain to the house.
In the meantime I did my running; today from the house, trying to find the most flat area. That was not easy; it ended up being up and down. Temperature 35 degrees! After a quick lunch (broccoli and avocado!) we all went down to the lake to do my swimming. Found a new spot to dip in; my wet suit zipper did not work, so I went without it into the very very cold, 29 degree hot water! Uh ah. No, the water is fantastic; and the only flat area here :-)
The dogs loved it too - Machico, for the first time went swimming voluntarily! And when she found out how lovely and cooling that was, we couldn't stop her. She suffers much more from the heat than Kutya, despite her southern European origin. But Kutya is also constantly wet; either playing with Gabor and the watering tubes, or dipping into the creek, or the plunge pool.
After an hour or so we went back up with the dogs, and we went to Grazalema, where we went to the tourist office to upload this diary, and we strolled around in lovely Grazalema. Very quiet here at the moment, very few tourists. We stopped at a plaza, and Gabor had his first caña of Cruzcampo today. I had a tinto verano. When we were hungry we went home and we dipped into the plunge pool (Pia, Kutya and Machico did - Gabor has not yet tried either this or the lake) and made gambas al ajillo for dinner.
Now we are sitting on the patio enjoying the lavender scent and listening to the birds and the dogs barking in some of the other houses around here.
30.06.2010 After a good nights sleep we went out on the bikes again to do a trip that says: Vina Christina - Grazalema - Montecorto - Villalones - El Gastor - VC (Gabor took an extra loop via Puerta de las Palomas!).
We were too tired to go swimming, so we went home and made a nice pasta and serrano ham dish, and sat outside under the wine until bedtime. We tried to find the foot path from here to Grazalema, but with no luck; we were stopped only 100 m away by a locked gate. We will try and find the path another day. We are supposed to walk to Grazalema in about half an hour, and we are looking forward to that.
29.06.2010 Training camp has started! Now that we have organized things around the house, it was time to start training! We got up before 8, had breakfast on the patio under the wine. The dogs played a bit and the they were ready for siesta! I was ready too, but no siesta for me. The first bike training session of the summer waited! And why not do a proper one. Unless I write otherwise, the weather is fantastic. Sun on blue sky and not much wind, and + 30 degrees.
We went down our own mountain, went along the lake towards Zahara, then we started the climp towards Puerta de las Palomas. We have done it a few times two years ago, when we stayed here for one week. It is a nearly 15 km ascend, stunningly beautiful (I do not notice much though) and it is hot, hot, hot. And my back hurt a lot, when riding uphill you use the back muscles a lot. And coming straight from pancake-flat Denmark we are not yet accustomed to this kind of terrain. The last time we did it, we started the stop watch going out of Zahara, but this time we start the watch below zahara, to get the full lenght of the climb. Today it took us 1.05; which must be our reference point. Hopefulle we will be able to cut off minutes when we increase our strenght. Due to my recent tonsillectomy, my biking condition is not as good as it usually is this time of year! But a few weeks with my Eastern European coach and his tought methods will do the trick, i hope. And lot of training combined with very little food will take a few pounds of me as well, I hope!
After going to the top, I went back to the house via Grazalema, while Gabor needed another loop, towards El Bosque and going off road towards Puerta de las Palomas again. Half way up he was stopped by a park officer, who more or less politely told him to turn around! Biking obviously not permitted in that area.
After resting a bit, and trying to rehydrate, we went down to the lake, to the only "flat" area around here. I was going to do some running, and we waited until 19.15, because we wanted the heat to lower a bit. But...I had to do my running in 33 degrees! It was a tough one! Also very hungry, it seemed like days ago we had breakfast! Gabor and the dogs went swimming in the lake while I was running. And Kutya saw a turtle; he thought it was a very odd creature!
Went down to make dinner on the barbecue, and then we went straight to bed. The evenings are wonderful here, it is so quiet, and it does not get dark until very late, it is still warm, and we sit by the fire having a glass of cava! 28.06.2010 Up 7.30, because we had to go to Ronda to get material for the fence as well as do some shopping, since we have no food. Before we left we pulled out the plug in the plunge pool so it could empty. We could not find the agricultural shop, but after asking around a bit I found a ferreterie, ans asked if they had fencing material...it was not perfect Spanish, but we understood each other, and in half an hour he would get me 100m of net in a roll, and 20 iron posters, and for the price of 106 euros. It was super quality. In DK we would only have gotten the net for that price. While waiting for the fence we did some shopping. Unfortunately we could by now see that we would be too late for our appointment at Vina Christina at 11. Esteban and Judith would come by to make plans for the fence. We hurried home and was "only" half an hour late! Judith and Estebans wife, Elene were here. Esteban gad to go with his brother to the hospital. We would like Elena to come by once a week to do some cleaning for us. We made a plan for the fencing of the garden, and after a rather late breakfast we started the work. Since Esteban did not have time to make the fence today, we did it ourselves. It is not nice for us or the dogs to be tied up all the time.
Most of the garden has fence around it, with hedges and trees etc, but one side is missing completely and some of the other parts need reinforcement. Gabor put the posters in and we tied the fence on to them. After 5 hours and some cuts and scratches we were nearly done, and the result is really good we think. We checked the rested of the fence and now the garden surrounding the house is secure, and the dogs were now allowed to run around playing. Do I need to say that they love it! Kutyas favourite spot is the creek that runs near the house, and when he rests it is underneath the very pretty palm tree. Machico prefers to escape into the house and lie on the floor when resting.
After that we went to the plunge pool, that was now empty. And what a sight! About 30 cm of stinky dirt/mud, probably with some dead animals in as well! We took a shovel and started cleaning. That was a really dirty job. Within minutes we were both covered in that smelly substance! Luckily we have both a washing mashine a bath tub and shower. We let in some water in order to flush the rest of the mud out into the stream; and after a few hours os scrubbing and flushing it was as clean as we could get it. There is no more mud on the floor or the sides, but on the sides there is a a layer of calciumcarbonate or something like that, and we cannot get if off. The pool is covered by lovely blue tiles. We do not want to use strong desinfectants or detergents, since the water from the stream could be collected and used further down the hill side. We put the plug back in and the bassin started filling.
After that we took showers and washed our clothes (luckily it is so hot, that we only wore swim wear) and then we started the barbecue in the far end of the garden, and we enjoyed the beautiful place while having dinner under the olive tree. The dogs a playing with each other once in a while, but can also just walk around and have fun alone. It is so nice not to have to separate them all the time and yell at them to be quiet!
Before bed time we checked the pool to see how much water was in it, and it was full already! Kutya jumped in and had a night swim! We also saw a huge toad, it was gigantic! the body was 20 cm long and almost just as wide. The dogs sniffed at it but we told them to leave it! Them off to bed after a very productive day. 27.06.2010 Finally here. After 49 hours on the road (stop over at hotel between Saturday and Sunday) we arrived at beautiful Grazalema and our home for the next 6 weeks Vina Christina. The owner of the house, Judith, was waiting for us, and she gave us a lot of useful information about the house and surroundings before taking off.
It is a truly amazing house, in amazing surroundings. The property is quite large; the house is surrounded by a beautiful garden with a lot of lovely flowers (roses, lavenders, thyme, rosemary) and trees (palm tree, olive trees, citrus trees, pomegranate, plum trees etc), a little creek crosses the garden right next to the house. On the other side of a small track is the other part of the garden, and there we have our plunge pool, a water bassin we can use for a swimming pool! It needs to be emptied, cleaned and refilled, but then we will have a lovely little pool where we can cool off. So that will be one of the things we will be fixing the next days, s well as fencing the garden. It more or less has a fence round it, but one part is missing and some other parts have to be reinforced. The project for tomorrow will be to buy materials for that and make the fence, probably with the help of Esteban, who is the caretaker. He will come by tomorrow morning to plan it with us. While Gabor was out biking, I stayed here with the dogs; still tied up because of the runaway risk. I did sketch of the house, my plan is to do some drawing while we are here.
Later we went down to Embalse de Zahara - El Gastor, which is a large water reservoir situated at the foot of the hill. It has wonderful turqoise water, very warm, around 27 degrees! I went swimming and the dogs did too. After swimming we went to Grazalema where we had dinner at Casa de las Piedras, a hotel where we stayed a night a few years back. Here you can sit at the inner patio and enjoy a lovely meal. We had gambas al ajillo, pollo a la plancha, a few beers and cafe con leche and anis dulce for "dessert". After that it was home in bed. The house is so so pretty and decorated with excellent taste and respect to Spanish tradition. We love it. Pictures and thorough description will follow later. Now we still have a few nights sleep to catch up with. Goodnight! 26.06.2010 Driving all day and night 25.06.2010 Kl er 9 morgen i København; om lidt henter jeg
Gabor i Hillerød og så er det nonstop Hillerød
- Grazalema, hvor Judith venter os på søndag, forhåbentlig
med en kold forfriskning og en nyredt seng!
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