Well the final week here in Spain ended up being slightly extended, due to unexpected circumstances.. David came out last Tuesday for a few days at the house and to then drive back with Hawksey and accompany him on the ferry and back to London. We had a lovely bike ride out to Conil, for a very nice fishy lunch – great views from the clifftops along the way. Look at the colour of that sea – and then our red faces as we guzzled liquid on arrival in La Fontanilla – there's nothing like having a posh-ish lunch in your sweaty padded cycle shorts..
Very sadly though, David then got a call from his older daughter to say that Mands had just fallen badly at her Pilates class, and was en route to hospital with a suspected broken hip or pelvis. We were on Skyscanner asap and he left the next morning via Malaga, to go look after Mands. It seems nothing is broken (we hope!) but she is bruised and battered and v glad to have David back to help her get about on her crutches – another proof that exercise can be bad for you…
In the meantime, we also had our next door neighbours, the Sadlers, out with us too. Being sporty bunnies, we booked a pickleball court at the La Barossa racquets centre – only to find that it was outdoors, and it was very windy. It added an extra dimension to have to serve and play taking the hefty gusts into account – a good job we were a group of 7 as I'd booked a two hour slot! My shoulder is still very dodgy and it was a useful way to test if it had got any better from there 6 weeks of physio that I've not done – answer, no – so that's another appointment booked and waiting for my return.
All that was left was for us to revisit a few of our favourite watering haunts – the cocktail bar with the squishy round seats and footrests on the beachfront, and Che Bar where we are now firm chums with one of the regular bar guys, Jope (pron: Hoe-pay). He even asked to swap WhatsApp deets, think we've been approved as 'locals' now!
We left the house on Sun morning, drove 6 hours up to Salamanca (a really gorgeous city where I had one of the best cocktails ever – yes, massive praise indeed. A mescal-based number, arrived in a smoking jar, lightly frothy top, interesting complex flavours – and all for the insane sum of 8 euros. Yes, eight. God bless the Spanish!). One night there then we drove on 3 hours (via a very sweet little 'nowhere' town for a bite of lunch, where Maddie was eyed hungrily by the local wolf dog), eventually arriving in Aranda de Duero, where we demolished a delicious suckling lamb for our final Spanish dinner (sorry lamby).
And this morning it was a final 2.5 hours to Bilbao – oddly, in the fog and rain. Where we back on the A217 already? H dropped me at the airport, for my new flight home, and he, the car and Mads are now on the ferry. Very excitingly, the Spanish dog passport that the vets in Chiclana managed to procure for us for Maddie has worked at the boat canine customs, so hopefully that means we will no longer have to fork out £250-300 each time we take here to the EU now. She is now a true perro.
I'll be back at Dora later this afternoon – and at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square seeing an LGBTQ+ musical tonight, just to make it even weirder being home. Hello my own beddies, it will be very nice to see you x