A different view

It rained

Spain has been and still is going through a period of drought, last week it rained,

 

One of the nice things about Candeleda, there are many, is that as it lays at the foot of Almanzor, when it rains it has the capacity to collect a lot of water. The Rosarito dam therefore has the potential to quickly fill up, I was once told that the dam actually receives 5 to 6 times more water than it is capable of storing, on a normal year. This year has been far from normal, as you can see by following the red line, we have been a long way from normal levels so the rain over the last week has been warmly received, it still needs to rain a lot more, and hopefully it will but at least this is a good start.

Chilla - Fountain in slow motion

Behind the house - the stream

Chilla - mountain stream

Chilla

Almanzor - covered in snow

FIre!!!

Each year in December we take advantage of two public holidays at the start of the month to spend a week in Candeleda. This year was no different, we gathered the family and turned up as usual on a Friday afternoon. The routine, open all the blinds, check for issues, start the fire,wonder around the garden and if there is enough light go for a walk before getting ready to go into town for a nice dinner. Unfortunately this years routine was interrupted by the fire. 

While the rest of the family went to check out the countryside I decided as usual to stay behind and wonder around the garden a bit more. As I was stuffing my face before hitting the garden trail I happened to look up at the chimney, I guess something must have caught my eye, when I focused I notice flames licking at the roof, calm panic set in. I ran to the shed, pulled out the hose, pulled out the ladder, called the family so they could help, luckily I manged to get through to them and they came running (walking fast in some cases) back to help out.

If you've never been in this situation its interesting to see how the mind works, I had mixed feelings about taking a hose into the house to douse the flames, I wanted to put out the fire but I was concerned about wetting things inside the house, those feelings became less mixed once I saw the extent of the flames.

The smoke begins to spread

At one point my sister in law asked if we should not call the fire brigade, I was up the ladder hosing down the roof, I looked at the roof, then looked back at her, took another look a the roof then said, "maybe not a bad idea".

That's me enveloped in smoke, while onlookers talk about the weekends football match

My wife called the local police, she had to actually go out and show them the way to the house, come on guys just follow the smoke, someone called the local civil guard and then someone called the local civil protection. At this point, about an hour after the fire had started my family and I were the only people actually doing anything in, the civil guards and local police where all standing around nodding their heads gravely, I'm sure they where betting between themselves as to how long before the whole house went up in flames, my wife was livid. Luckily the civil protection team, a volunteer team of two ( think one was the local butcher), got into action, climbed up on the roof with me, started pulling tiles of the roof (FYI if you ever need to put out a roof fire remember the tiles actually prevent the water from getting to the fire). They hosed the roof with some sort of fire retardant and then did the same inside the house. 

The plot, like the smoke, thickens

While I was busy climbing up and down ladders and wondering if the roof would give way while I was up there, the family was busy moving furniture and generally doing a great job considering that the house was full of acrid smoke making it impossible to breath or see much.

Two hours after the fire had started the fire brigade arrived. It turns out that Candeleda does not have a local fire brigade, the nearest one is Avila, which is about 100K away, but remember between us and them is a mountain range, so 2 hours is not bad going all considered. 

 

By the time the fire brigade arrived it was getting dark which added to the effect of the lights 

 The firemen all trundled onto the roof, started throwing more tiles onto the lawn, pulled out a chain saw and cut through one of the beams holding up the roof, they wanted to make sure the fire was completely out, they then packed up and left.

Two hours later

By this stage most people had left, my wife and I stayed behind to clean up the mess, which mean mopping up all the water in the house, opening the doors and windwos to clear out the smoke. Lat that night we wondered into two to grab a room in a hotel grab a shaower and get something to eat. 

While I'm disappointed this happened I'm glad to say no one was hurt and the house is still standing. 

Autumn

Nice sunset.

The weather has finally turned, still great, but no longer hot and dry, I look forward to seeing this all under water in the next few weeks

Spring time

I took this photo around May this year while walking the dog, the house is just visible in the centre. Right at the foot of the trees you can make out a corner of the house, but of course what really stands out is Almanzor with snow, albeit only a sprinkling, still it was May

It's nice to see it all so green and fresh

Follow the yellow brick road

Para los que no sabéis llegar a casa

Si vienes por la A5 tienes dos opciones,

1. la salida 123 hasta Candeleda,
2. la salida 135 hasta Candeleda

(Si vienes por la M-501 es todo recto hasta el desvió)

La primera opción es mejor carretera, la segunda opción es menos carretera secundaria..

En ambos casos llegaras a la cruz AV-910 con la CL-501, desde ahí el desvió es 1.1 Km, desde el desvió hasta el camino de tierra es 1.2 Km, y desde que empieza el camino hasta casa es 1 Km  Si quieres usar google maps estos son los coordinadas 40.119483, -5.247038 solo tienes que introducir los en google maps

Sigue el camino señalado en amarillo "The Yellow brick road"

La primera parte esta "Asfaltada", la parte en verde es de tierra o baro si llueve :-)

Os animo a que llegáis temprano para disfrutar del campo.

La "comida" (gastronomía local) estar lista a partir de las las 2:30.

Solo tenemos 10 sillas así que si puedes, traer sillas, o si hace sol una manta de campo. Si llueve traer paraguas y botas de goma, la comida hay que comerla si o si :-)

Si os perdéis, llámame y haré señales de humo :-)

A wet January

At last after a very dry 2015, January 2016 has brought some serious rain, unfortunately who ever runs the weather station in Candeleda must have goon on holidays so the official numbers are useless but from what I can gather from neighboring regions we are talking in excess of 230 liters..these photos where sent to us by Aurora, wish we had been there

Missing - Mika

This is the last photo I have of Mika, we've not seen her since this was taken on the 9th of September 2015

We are all very sad :-(

This is what the inside of a hot water tank looks like when the anode has been eaten away

and this is what a wooden floor looks like after a hot water tank with a corroded anode looks like after it's had water pouring over it for about two weeks

yep, no floor boards

My favorite swimming hole

This summer I went to my favorite swimming spots around Candeleda.

this lovely spot is actually just outside El Raso, which is about 15 minutes from Candeleda. The great thing about this place is that it is close to the road, so not much walking involved :-) and it's big and deep and not full of tourists, yet!

As you can see the quality of the water is spectacular, no Photoshop here.

To look at it you wouldn't think we were going through one of the driest years in the past 10 years.

Great view

The other day I wondered into my local garden supply shop and while waiting to be attended I spied this photo on the owners PC

This is an aerial view of the Santa Maria where it meets the Tietar river (top of the photo). It was taken by Jesus Delgado last spring. it's a great shot, just a pity our house was not in view.

2014 the year that was

2014 is almost at an end, and I haven't posted anything yet, ahhh

so what happened in 2014, lots

from memory and in no particular order

• The faithful McCulloch 65530 lawn mower was replaced by a ride on Viking tractor/cart, No more walking behind the lawn mower for hours and days, now I get the job done in half a day which leaves me time to do other things, like walk with the wife :-)

• it Rained a lot at the start of the year especially,  In fact this year has been one of the wetter years, over 1000 liters which is above average as far as my statistics are concerned

• The lemon tree finally started producing more than 1 lemon a year, this year we've had a whopping 6, hopefully the trend will continue
• the "big shed is about to cave in, sounds expensive :-(
• new years was not celebrated in Candeleda, and won't be this year either, damn
• Mika is still going fine, despite someone having taken a pot shot at her with a slug gun, she has a single pellet embed in her side, we need to remove it but have to find the time to be with her after the operation
• Duna died, she had a tough life and was finally put to sleep by their owners
• The house was almost rented out and almost sold, a year of almosts

Nothing else comes to mind, hopefully next year I'll be blogging more often.

Happy new year

The Orchard

Having failed to keep this blog up to date I just realized that I never mentioned the fact that last year (2012) I decided to organize the fruit trees into an orchard.

I selected 15, more on that number later, fruit trees that where spread out all over the place and took me forever to water and moved them to an area just behind the shed where they had sufficient space, light and most importantly close to a water source so I could automate the irrigation.

Not much to look at, but it is the middle of summer

The list of fruit trees include:

Orange
Pear
Apricot
Cheery
Fig
Apple
Granado
Hazelnut
Pistacho (2, 1 male and 1 female)

Almond
Kaki
Azufaifu (Jujube)
Nispero (Loquat)

The layout is basically a 4 by 4 grid, the more astute will have notices that this makes 16 yet I only have 15, the reason for this is simple, in my grid there was already growing a Hawthorn and so I just left it :-)

Water is now a simple 15 minute job which is automated, I've saved myself hours, why didn't I think of this earlier. So far all the trees have appreciated the move and I plan to add two more this autumn, a walnut tree and something else, yet to be decided..... stay tuned

update - 26-4-2014
Added a walnut to the list :-)

The Great Audit - or the arboreal equivalent of the dooms day book

The Great Audit 

It's been another hot long summer here in Candeleda, nothing new there, but today the clouds partially cover the sun and that makes working in the garden somewhat more tolerable, tearing myself away from my newly discovered Chrome apps, learning to type is one of them ;-) I decided to count how many trees we had, assuming they all survive the summer.

To start with let me point out that I counted the trees on the basis of

1. I only counted mature trees, mostly anything over 1. 5 meters in height
2. to count as a single tree they needed to be clearly individual trees and not just a tree with multiple trunks etc
3. my numbers are precise but not exact

So  the numbers are

Pyrenean Oak (Quercus pyrenaica) -  249

Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)  48
European Hackberry (Celtis australis) 31
Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) -  14



The Majority are in the top half, which makes senses.

Some interesting observations, at least to me.
The Oak is by far the most common tree but it is also the one whose long term survival is most in doubt due to the disease they are exposed to, another has dries up this year

While there are more Hackberries than Ash trees, they are nowhere near as big so they are Ash trees and so the impression on has is that there are few of them

While the second most common tree is the Hawthorn, few are more than just shrubs, still I include them here as there are two or three examples well over  meters in height

I'll up date this from time to time, just to see how things develop, but I expect to see the oak tree numbers decline over the next few years, hopefully I'll have found a sustainable way of planting new trees