Spent two hours on my terrace  this morning before the sun touched down on it!

A pallet flower planter wasn't doing too well, so have taken it from the wall and added it to the table, makes it higher and maybe more of a table...

I've replanted a type of yucca? Lol question mark because I've forgotten what it is, and frankly my dears... Dammit!! Lol I had to check didn't I! It says it's an agave!! Wonder if it's the blue variety? I can make tequila!!

Sunset last evening...

Terrace is now swept, all rubbish cleared up and in trash bags downstairs... Some old bricks and pipes... I did scream once! When a little lizard I wasn't expecting darted out and made me jump! Poor little thing! Him, not me!

Honied eggplant! Yummy!

Had a friend stay last week, was good to have company, someone to laugh and cry with! Spent some of the week away, went to the lakes, of course! La Cala beach a few times, Mijas Pueblo... Not much more, but was really nice, and helped for a while to ease my loss of Pippa...

The lakes are exceedingly low considering the huge amount of rain we had this year! January, February, March... It didn't really settle until June! Crazy weather!

So to see the reservoir so low was a shock!

Had to park beneath the gardens at Mijas Pueblo, and walk up from there it was so busy, a beautiful doorway above, leads down towards the path, so a new vista for me, somewhere I love so much.

I have some friends visiting again this week, at their place, so I'll be busy with them, and others who live here...

I don't like this keeping busy thing! I actually, just want to relax when I'm not working; yes go out and about and adventure around, but I feel I am having to force myself to keep my head from filling with things I can't change.

I have found out I don't talk to myself though now, I thought maybe I did, but I really actually was just talking to Pippa afterall.

The amount of hours I must have spent on station platforms and this was the first time I have seen cars drive by!! And an enormous line of cars there were too!  Everyone stopped to stare!!

Good journey to Nottingham from Cheltenham Spa... Non stop and a quick enough two hour trip.

A couple of photographs from Broadway which we visited the day before I left the placement; a beautiful town in the Cotswolds, absolutely picture perfect, and quintessential England! I kept expecting a film crew to turn up recording a murder mystery or something!  The man in the restaurant knew the area I live in, and told me to visit a local restaurant down near the coast because he knows a singer there!!! Its a small world isn't it!

After my placement I had a few days with my oldest son and his family, my younger son came up to spend some nice time with me; it was a good few days... Then it was back to the airport and back to Spain! My car wasn't ready for pick-up, something to do with the fact I had told them I was collecting it a month later than the date I actually came to pick it up!!!

My birthday yesterday was lovely, went out for lunch, great restaurant I hadn't been in before, but at one of my favourite places! I think the day was so good, that later on I came down with a bang... having trouble picking myself back up today.

The Changing Road

This morning I walked the Pipster, we came home... then we went to the lakes! Los embalses! The road trip there great as usual, regular amount of traffic... turned off just past Ardales... up to the lakes... traffic starting to build...

My secret location...

I drove to the El Kiosko first, thought we park up, wander around the bridge, then back to the bar, have a cup of coffee for me, water for the Pipster... sit at a roadside table and relax in the September warmth... instead... it was a slow haul drive as far as the '60's church and turned around and came away again, sad and angry in equal measures...

I know many many more people come here now, to appreciate that which we have all appreciated for years unobstructed by coaches, buses, millions of tourists!! LOL....

Yes, yes I know! Once a tourist! I get it, but, us normal folks can't even go to love place the place we loved... its not the same now, nowhere to park for us anymore! No coffee for us!! LOL... can you see me? stamping my feet like a petulant child!

When I drove back through the crowds by the bar, waiting to start the walk... I saw their happy and expectant faces and felt bad for my anger... They were already loving what we love, already looking forward to the Kings Walk... Will take the happy memories back to their many countries with them... and only when somewhere they love is unavailable to them might they think about our beloved El Chorro and the lakes...

So I also thought about the commercialised places I have been to, how they have changed for those who, like me, loved them for what they were, not how they became..

This was the final disaster zone...

At the junction El Chorro/Embalses, a big giant car park.... miles of it... I am seriously hoping they will say if you want the coach to the Kings Walk you have to park and get it from there... so the possibility of parking to walk, or have a coffee, or eat... will return to the lakes themselves...

This above is an eyesore! The awfulness of it, just concrete instead of beauty...

I drove left here, away from the lakes... and told myself to look up! To look at the mountains, the 'why' that people were here to see, the reason I was there, the stunning countryside, the mountains and valleys, the bridges, the rivers, the eagles... [Bonelli eagles], look up look up! LOL

Driving back to Alhaurín I put on my Time playlist from my phone, I hadn't realised how many songs mentioned the word Time on the list!! Well, maybe only three or four, but still strange...

Time changes things, places, people...  I am certainly not the girl I was even one year ago... There is actually even more of me than there was before! That's what life does, fill us up with things that make us who we are, until maybe we reach our fill...

Time... Tom Waits...

Over the years, many it feels now, I have completed the journeys through Blooming Human and Gratitude, on-line groups, 40 days usually of emails filled with positivity and thoughts on life... They have helped me through many parts of my life since, but along with the Inspirational quotes I have, had, been posting daily from my email box to my Facebook page... these things seem rather fruitless, empty words... I am a positive person by nature, always finding the good out of the bad, always happy and laughing, always a smile... I find myself now just with nothing much on my face at all... a real bad screensaver face permanently etched there, here... People who I would normally see are having to call to me, or come across the street, or shout at me.. period!

Three mountain shots taken up at El Chorro

I usually see everything, things people wouldn't even normally see, as so many of my photographs prove to the point!

Today I spoke with a friend on the phone on my way into town, I was in the Plaza Legion, I must have looked strange from anyone watching me! pacing about, holding the rail, stepping from ledge to ledge like a big kid!  Talking, crying, talking... then she wouldn't leave me until I stopped crying so I recalled a moment from long ago, and we laughed and we hung up the line...

Next a stopover in friends shop in town, cup of tea and chat and some strength gathered along the way, and in the street stopped to talk to a friend, we normally see each dog walking, and I know, now she is reading this! LOL! Welcome!!

I do some of the people who read my Blog, but going by the mail I receive the majority I do not... You guys have been with me some time now... This one has been going ten years... no eleven now!!!  and I blogged before that on Blogspirit, but I think its gone now, which is sad, also a Blog I wrote on behalf of my step dad was on Blogspirit and I cannot gain access to that one either... I am guessing I started back in 2003 then...

Flowers by the Kiosko

Eucalyptus tree

We came out of the bar before lunch and my camera was free to live and possess what my eye came upon.. so the flowers and the eucalyptus, I love eucalyptus trees, the height of them, the bark, the smell... and the memories of them... lining the road near my uncles Charlies in Yonkers...

Roaring fire in Kiosko

 This was the fire crackling and spitting throughout our lunch... should have actually recorded it shouldn't I?  Would have been more effective maybe!

Wind turbines in the clouds

and the aforementioned wind turbines in the clouds....

This taken from my secret location!!  lol

Well, what have we been doing since last posting? was new years eve... and today is the 3rd!  I sadly still feel the memories strongly at this time seven years ago... and it was exactly seven years ago on Friday when I am travelling to Bristol airport that I flew to Luton from Malaga, to get to my mom urgently, I thought it was today, the 3rd, but just reading back to then, it was the 6th January 2010... I can't believe its seven years, I wish I could fly over there now, get to Watford hospital and find my mom still there, boy would she be annoyed with me!! lol... but just to talk to her, get comfort from her...  Seven years...

Anyways, yesterday Franco woke up with the need for [more] suckling pig!  So off to the coast we went and after many stores we found 'him' in Eroski! Eroski is closing did I mention that? Yes, I think so!  And today after getting home from town Franco had already got him roasting in the oven, he had named him!!! Really!! Enrique!! So we had to eat something with a name!! Arrrhh!!  He also, in the photo Franco put on Facebook bore a strong resemblance to Pippa when she is sleeping!!

Down town I needed to get a few last things to take with me to work on Friday, allowed ten 100ml bottles, which is fine, just enough for three weeks hopefully, because there are no shops anywhere near where I am going!!  I thought I would go into the perfumaria instead for the few things, what a mistake!! Apart from the cost being higher I forgot Christmas present buying is in full swing and all packages are wrapped here... so stood in the line for about twenty minutes!!

A positive note though, our gorgeous baby granddaughter is now two years old! Already! Impossible I know!  We spent time on Facebook cam which was lovely, no substitute I know, but a million times better than past generations had the benefit of... photographs below taken in late November when we were visiting, Cassie and Franco relaxing and chatting on the sofa...

Cassy at Christmas keeping warm :-) 

Todays weather has been beautiful, a bit misty over the Guadalhorce valley from out of the window just now, but the sun is shining and the flies are out!!! Whats with those flies?? Could it be the piglet!!

TTFN

Last day of 2016 New Years eve... all roads lead to here each year...

Screenshot of our travels on Christmas day... We went out on the dark blue line and came home along the paler blue!  Love these phones, written in history our every move, for good or for bad...

It was a bit cloudy at home, but much better once we got further inland, sky opened up for miles on end... although I did get some great shots of the wind turbines, their bases firmly fixed upon the earth and their blades hidden in the clouds...

We went first to have a coffee in the Kiosko at the lakes, we booked a table for two in the restaurant there for one pm... la una!  We finished our coffees and walked around to the dam... not as much water as we thought there would be, expected it to be full to bursting with all the rain we've had recently, but it wasn't even over the steps near the dam at all!!

At one we were back to the Kiosko for lunch, upstairs, by the roaring fire... No starters, Franco had piglet, and I had kid!  Sorry my friends who don't eat meat, we really went the whole 9 yards didn't we with our food!  It was wonderful, both with roast potatoes and veggies, I had a small glass of house red, which actually was very nice, and cremé brulés for us both for desert!

We took our time and chatted with a neighbouring table, three people from Wales!!  Bridgend and Porthcawl! Bizarre bizarre!!  But live here in Spain too, Álora.

After lunch we took to the car and took to the road, up past Bobastro and to our secret place up a narrow road, I took a fair few photographs from up there, [more to follow].

We came home via Álora as it happens and then followed the road all the way to Cartáma Estacion, the long route we call it, and have only done it once before!!  So a way bigger distance that we thought we were going to do!  But no matter, a beautiful day, making beautiful memories...

Franco is doing great!  Eating like a horse! [sorry!!], we had x-ray results which we had had taken because of bad pain in his neck and back, they showed there is nothing wrong with his spine or joints, although of course it did mean the pain is because of the tumour, Franco and I are out and about! Day before yesterday we went to Calahonda and had coffee with a friend, used to be our neighbour down in the duplex when we lived down there.  It was an emotional cup of coffee, for all three of us. Difficult.

We also bought cannelloni, we had been looking everywhere for it and found it eventually in Super Sol down at El Zoco in Calahonda!

I had overdone things on the lap top and compressed something in my neck, which is starting to ache again now, so not looking at the screen at all while I am typing now, to avoid a repeat of it!  I had vertigo!! Thought it was my ear problem come back, but no earache, just neck ache! Stupid stupid me, I panicked, couldn't think how I can go to work like this! Idiot!  Then toothache yesterday, also getting better, I am having trouble coping, period, don't need all this on top, I have to be okay to... be okay...  Franco needs me to be okay!

TTFN
Marian

DC - Abundance

I have a whole bunch of photos to place here lol.... I loaded them into my Picasso photos on my lap top, and they usually scoot over into my cloud thingy without a bye or leave!  I am guessing its not reached the cloud, and seeing as I have switched off the lap top... they are not here yet!!

Veronica Drawing challenge for last weekend was... is! Abundance! And as I was at work I had trouble really with it, but I did want to be 'there'... my abundance really is a feeling of having my life so full, for me now... Full of being at home at last back in Spain, full of work, here, or there, back home for two weeks now... full of wonderful family and friends... an abundance of fullness!

The photos are one taken in an amazing church where I have been placed for a few weeks, medieval roots, such a pretty town, and everyone so friendly, it was a like a walk down the movie set of The Truman show! lol... Smiley happy people, very welcoming... I took far too many photos inside the church, and spent far too long chatting to a lady about it!  Although, in all seriousness she didn't want to stop telling me!!

Photos to follow here soon.... bare with amigos!

Just edited to add these photos.... these are Abundance of amazing cakes and ice cream... and dearly wish these were within my grasp right now! lol

Other photos in next Blog!

I am going back for just over a week then moving on elsewhere for Christmas and New Years before coming home for a month.... I'll need it by then too!

Coming back home via Stansted airport I was very impressed with the airport, we flew into and out of it last about ten years ago going to Sardinia... it has changed considerably since then, bag check was amazing, I just walked up to a machine, put my case on the scale, held my QR coded check in under the reader, the tag was printed and came out for me to tape to the handle of my case.... I walked to conveyor, a lady there said it would be the last time a human would check my passport, and my case went off on its merry way into the abyss of the suitcase system!

Amazing!  Going through the passport control bit was a bit more harrowing, but only four people at a time filling our boxes with belongings, no pushing and shoving therefore... and through!  More shops than the average town centre, and food hall massive!

I got a bit lost going to the gate, misread the directions, thats the only point I would mention to the great Stansted airport people, of course now I know that you head down one corridor, then following the left right and straight ahead signs, and not before!!!!

Tuesday morning, after Franco finished his Spanish lesson we went off to the lakes, trying hard not to take photos I have taken a million times before... bit difficult now, seeings as I have been going there for nearly 30 years!!!  We followed up the lakes by of course having our second coffee break at El Chorro railway station, sat under a blue sky... amazing mountains and eagles circling high above... Bonelli eagles so the sign says, amongst others...

                                


And today we went down to Fuengirola's paseo maritimo, after shopping for a washing machine, still some good bargains going in this week of bargains!!

We had a McDonalds... I know, I know, shame on us eh!  But we had never been in this newly opened restaurant, it looks great, and has the new machines... you know the ones yet?  You order your food on the computer screens, pressing all the correct bits, pay... and collect when your number is up! So to speak!

On our way back to the car we took a side road, it runs parallel to the paseo maritimo, and here we came across this restaurant, The Old Swiss House its called, you know I have seen the sign for this restaurant since 1989, when I first came to Fuengirola... always seen it, there, by the side of the road, always thought it must be the house by the sign, tried to see the restaurant now and again in the first few years, then just stopped thinking about it!  As we do sadly, we get used to seeing something and stop seeing it all...  Then here it is! Hiding about a hundred yards at least from the main road where the sign is!  I nearly fell over and then crossed over the road to just stand and stare up at at it!! And of course, take a photo!

Franco bought some beautiful colorful poinsettias plants, standing in out plant boxes from the front balcon... and the streets look extra bright and white, our little Andalucian village is being painted white for the forthcoming celebrations of December 8th The Immaculate Conception....

TTFN
Marian

Caminito Del Rey - The Kings Walk, El Chorro, Ardales...

 Fantastic! Amazing... and there the opening to the beginning of the walk! After searching for years to gain access to the narrow old walkway, as it became closed to the public by other means...  We began the walk from the lakes at Ardales, by the restaurant El Kiosk, take the tunnel there and follow the new signs... it was about a fifty minute walk, taken at leisure, through beautiful scenery as yet unseen by us after about fifteen minutes.  We had walked previously through some of the forest there, we had taken the lower walk, the medium walk, but never this walk!

The mountain above, incredible beauty I must have taken about ten pictures of it!

We came to the sign in office and at 10:15am showed our bar coded printed tickets and walked through into a small area, with our hard hats and hair nets in place, we were given strict direction as to not to interfere with either flora nor fauna, to leave nothing and take nothing... but pictures!

To respect the area and its beauty and power....
That we could take our time, and to walk to the end and get either the bus back or a lift!

I wanted to get a better view of the area below... not easy to see what I saw when actually there!


Perspective is hard to get in a photo... the one on the left is just looking down... but how far? Its a long long drop down!  I luckily, don't get vertigo much, had an inner ear thing... Labyrinthitis, a few years ago, and oddly had a bit of it the day before this!!  But a friend of mine in Spain gave me an answer to it, which a doctor did not, and I can get it fixed myself now!  Thankfully!

We were looking forward to seeing the bridge we walked over years ago too... and we were not disappointed!

You can no longer walk over it, and 'they' have fixed a metal support beneath, a wire runs next to one side as a hand rail maybe for workers?

But to think we crossed this!  Tony was with us that day, he and Franco walked along the old Kings Walk over the broken concrete... ugh!!! While I stood and took photos!! LOL, I did walk along the walk, in the other, safer direction!

 Here to the right you can the new walk passing up and over the one one, we are glad they left some of it, to ooooh and arhhhh at and remember how it was... Near the bridge beneath.... there is a plaque marking respect for some of those who have died walking the walk over the years...

Walkers would have walked over the waterway there, now we cross on a new suspension bridge, no more than ten at a time, and it bounces! lots!! Metal you can see through and a guard stands there to make sure no one uses it as a swing or trampoline no doubt!!









"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
William Shakespeare, The Tempest

TTFN
Marian

Come ride with me through my day today amigos.... M4 to Port Talbot, into shopping centre, already at car park new charges, set the day in motion for 'fail'.... 1.30 for an hour, already five minutes past before my feet even hit the shop floor!

Into Opticians... new glasses bought a month ago, they were impossible to actually see through and I had gone back twice, first time 'they' said see how I go, they are narrow lenses and have lots to do in such a narrow space! Second time, er no... we can't change them now, you would have to buy a new pair... by the by, in the first instance I would have been within my rights...

The day of was off to work a week ago on Monday, picked them up and an arm just fell off... the glasses, not me! Not the hinge the part of the hinge that sticks onto the frame... no screws in these, sooooooo, now I am building the clock, sorry the scene!  In I go.... "No, sorry, we can't fix them here, we can send them off to the factory, did you get insurance?".... I hadn't so, that was that, they need soldering!  I asked if the few times they had had to heat the plastic arm could have had any effect on the solder that had, apparently, been holding the hinge in place, she said "No"... in my experience though, heat does tend to melt solder... er... that's how it works, yes!!!!

Arh.... so out I came, back to the car and off to supermarket... only a five minutes drive, so I thought I would bring my mood with me!  Did my shopping, at the check out I handed the very helpful lady, no sarcasm, she was helpful! lol... I handed her the new card we have recently acquired for this store... she said, "we aren't taking these yet!" What!!!! I had done quite a big shop, a weeks worth of meals and stuff, I had wanted to make sure I went over the limit necessary for the WOW points extra for this new system they have in place!  She said she would check to make sure anyway, she did, it didn't!

I went to customer service and said I had just spent such and such amount of money, purely because of this new card!  That the vouchers I had said they were only to be used between October 13th and ..... about the 2nd or 3rd of November, [without getting up to check!].

She phoned the office and they said that this store hadn't started yet, and it would be available to use the vouchers as of Thursday!

Al final.... out in the car park, one of the 5p carrier bags gave up its goods as I was loading into the car and a beautiful tall glass bottle of sauce hit the tarmac and shattered, its contents beautifully coloring the car park!  I cleared it up best I could and vacated the area!

Beautiful painting of the lakes at Ardales below...

TTFN
Marian

View from La Alcazaba restaurant in Mijas pueblo...

From our roof terrace one evening at the sun was setting...

Having a café con leché in town one evening, very quiet, had gone for dinner but the place I chose already had the kitchen closed! Only 5:45pm!!! Okay, it wasn't exactly Spanish is probably why! lol

This view never ceases to amaze and keep me forever wishing to be here...

This view on the other hand... above, of the Kings walk at El Chorro, the green bridge there on the right, where Frank Sinatra took a bullet in the movie Von Ryans Express!  The walk now goes over the bridge... that's the jagged line running across the mountain, not the cable above that's crept into the shot much nearer where I am standing! lol

From El Kiosk bar/restaurant near the lakes, Ardales, the water was a lot higher than I thought after such a long drought... will have to check out my low level pics!

Whispy red evening skies above Alhaurín from our balcon in the new living room!



Found one!  The lake was dry all the way to the road that runs between the church and the restaurant area... Lowest I have ever seen it!  It was winter too, the  deciduous trees as you can see are bare...

TTFN
Marian