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

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 :-(

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.

We didn't go to El Sequero this weekend, so I thought I would take this opportunity to go over some background. I'll do this on a regular basis as there are a number of things that I want to document and we can't always go to El Sequero

Let's start by locating the house.


As you can see from this map Candeleda is about 200 Km south west of Madrid. The house itself is about 5 Km south of the town.






A closeup image of the property (outlined in black) shows, La Garganta de Santa Maria to the west, and just visible to the south is river El Tietar which feeds a small dam called El Rosarito.

The white material you can see are boulders, which make up the bed of La Garganta de Santa Maria (in geographical terms a "Garganta" is a gorge or a ravine (garganta literally means throat), although at this point it is actually quite flat, so neither term is all that appropriate. I'm sure there is a technical term for the flat end of a ravine, but I'll leave that up to the geologists among you to let me know what it is).

To give you an idea of size, our house is approximately 500m north of the river, there is a dirt road that leads to the junction between the river and the Garganta, we actually go swimming there in summer.



This is a topographical map of the property, it shows the house, the black object in the top center of the property and a real sequero (more on that in another issue) in the bottom left corner. As you can see the property is in the shape of a "B". The top half of the "B" is where we spend most of our time, we let a local goat herder use the lower half for his goats. Hopefully we will finish fencing this part soon and that will allow us to plan trees there.