Ribadesella

Ribadesella is a small market town on the Costa Verde built around the estuary of the River Sella. It's most famous in Asturias, and probably the rest of Spain for all I know, for the competitive descent of the river by canoe every August; a time when the town becomes packed with locals and tourists alike and a festive atmosphere takes control of the town.

We'd visited the town once before, last year while we were camping further east on the coast, to visit the impressive Cueva de Tito Bustillo: a system of caves housing paleolithic paintings named after the caver who discovered them. Following our subterranean adventures we'd then had a walk around the town centre and along the beach in somewhat windy and cloudy weather, decided that Ribadesella was a nice enough town, and returned to our campsite.

After our second visit to the town during this year's summer holiday at Vega, Ribadesella has gone up in my estimation. The historic centre of this market town is full of gorgeous old buildings and the beach is lined with colourful villas that I would love to explore. Admittedly, we visited out of season - Ribadesella is one of the main resorts along this stretch of coast and the outskirts of town are filled with vile holiday flats, but at the beginning of September I found the town to be friendly, unpretentious and rather beautiful. It doesn't die come September like so many holiday towns, but rather it seemed that the locals reclaim it and life goes on as normal until the tourists hit the town the following season.

View from the car park - low tide in the estuary

The beach at Ribadesella

Somebody let me at them! Wonderful, wonderful buildings.

Wednesday is market day in Ribadesella, as we were to discover. The market stalls included the traditional as well as the more modern, imported-from-Asia, items unfortunately found in most small-towns around here nowadays.

Cheese stall selling locally made produce

Matt bought a smoked cheese, made in Llanes - the next large town along the coast to the east, and declared it delicious upon tasting.

Even had it not been market day, I still would've enjoyed our wander around the town. I must've been too busy trying to keep warm in the cold wind during my previous vist as this time all sorts of decorative gems caught my eye:

One in a series of tiled murals along the esturary walk, showing scenes in the history of Ribadesella.

Painted tiles on a gift shop facade

How to make posting a letter more fun

After walking around the town we made our way up the hill to the east of the beach, overlooking the beach and town.

We then made our way back down to the town for lunch. On the way we happened across a very handsome and friendly gentleman and I stopped to flirt for a while.

Even Matt was tempted to take him home. But when he jumped down as we were leaving, lay down on the sunny path and happily started to clean himself, without giving us a second glance, we decided that he mustn't have a bad life where he was and decided to leave him in Ribadesella.

A splendid three-course lunch followed my little flirtation. As veggie options do not abound in Asturias, I normally hate going out for lunch. However, we found a wonderful old tavern that was willing to do me a salad and egg and chips - my usual lunchtime fare - and I was very impressed by the multi-ingredient salad that came to begin with and also with the main course that followed: home-made chips and egg fried so that the yolk was just starting to turn solid around the edges but was still runny in the centre - perfection. After many, many lunches involving the same dishes, I am now an expert critic and this was the best lunch I've had since I've been here. Matt praised his seafood paella, followed by an equally tasty grilled sea bass (apparently). The set menu also included a bottle of red wine, water and desert. Matt opted for the creme caramel (a Spanish staple, but this was a posh home-made version) and I had blackcurrant cheesecake, which is one of my all-time favourites. Deserts are normally the weakest point of Spanish lunchtime menus, but on this occasion they were more than up to scratch.

After another brief wander around the town to walk lunch down, we headed sleepily back to the car with the idea of having a siesta when we returned to the tent.

Boat graveyard in the Sella esturary

I carried on snapping until the last minute, giving Ribadesella the accolade of favourite town on the Asturian coast while I did.

Lazy days

For our summer holiday this year we chose to go to Vega. Plans had been made to venture further afield to France or Portugal but due to time and monetary restrictions we opted for our favourite campsite on the Costa Verde instead.

As mentionned before, packing was not easy and I did indeed, after a hard afternoon's preparation, slurp some of our camping beers before we went. I thought I had acheived the near impossible in remembering everything we'd need for ten days away, but upon arrival it transpired that I had committed the cardinal sins of forgetting a)the brown sauce b)the cafetiere and c) the corkscrew/bottle opener. To be frank, I was only bothered about the last item on the list, for obvious reasons, and before I could properly panic the problem was easily solved when Matt produced his Swiss Army pen knife. The omission of the HP sauce was quickly forgiven but Matt was less than pleased about the lack of cafetiere for his morning cup of coffee. However, with some ingenious designing, Matt created his own coffee-maker using the top half of a water bottle tipped upside down with a small hole made in the lid, which worked a treat using coffee filters. This was highly fortuitous for me as Matt is nigh unapproachable without his morning caffeine fix.So  I breathed a sigh of relief when he declared his tester cup to be as good as one made in his cafetiere.

Elbi investigates - she was probably making sure we weren't taking the cat food with us

Our home for ten days

We enjoy going camping at Vega for several reasons: each pitch is surrounded by small hedges which makes it private, Vega itself is a traditional, unpretentious village - something that's hard to come by on the Asturian coast these days, and the beach itself is huge and unspoilt. It never gets too busy as it's out of the way and the car park is small, which limits visitors. Also, the walk to the beach from the campsite is lovely in it's own right. First you walk through majestic eucalyptus woods with a small stream running by the path.

Fallen eucaliptus leaf



Enough to make you feel dizzy

Then you pass through an apple orchard. A couple of times, at dusk, we've chanced upon a young deer, which has always bounded off as soon as it's heard us, and always before I can snap a photos, but not before we had the opportunity to watch it apple munching.

Passing through the orchard, you come to large, open fields...

...and then, once you've walked up the field and reached the brow of the hill, this sight welcomes you. I always feel like running down the hill, Julie-Andrews style, to the beach, but every time I'm inevitably wearing flip-flops which would make such a venture highly foolish.

We were kept company at the campsite by several cheeky robins, who had no compunctions about begging for food - quite literally, on one occasion a presumptuous little red-breast landed next to my camping chair and then proceeded to jump up and down, wings flapping while it chirped shrilly at me to demand food. Feeling that the little chap had earned it, I gave in immediately and went to look for bread. After this they appeared at every meal, and in between mealtimes too.

Matt even gained an audience for his guitar playing

Wondering what the racket is

I took full advantage of my holiday to laze on the beach and read, interspersing my lounging with walks along the coast and, on the one cloudy day, a trip to Ribadesella (coming up in the next post).

Hmm, now where shall we sit?

The local entertainment

If I didn't already know how bad my sense of balance is I'd like to have a go

Signs of other beach patrons

The sea looked inviting enough, but in fact it was the coldest I've ever known it at Vega. It felt as though the waves were slicing into your feet when they washed over them. Standing in the water for more than a few seconds was painful, but if you did manage to stay there for longer it became refreshing. I only managed a good wetting a couple of times and avoided swimming completely.
As I was developing a beach belly, we did a couple of walks along the cliffs. We managed over 10km one day, due to Matt's insistence more than my eagerness. I can't say it did anything to reduce my waistline but it did banish any guilt I had about consuming more beer and food.

The Camino de Santiago follows the coastline in this part of northern Spain, the blue and yellow shell sign marks the way.

Looking back at Vega on one of our walks

On our last day we braved the far end of the beach, which is nudist. There was no-one else around so we whipped off our togs and, as everyone says, it was indeed very liberating. After a few minutes we noticed a fisherman up on the rocks to our right, heading our way. It wasn't the fact that we had no clothes on when he passed that was embarassing, but rather that, after ten days at the other end of the beach our bottoms were a luminous white compared to the rest of our bodies. Next year I'll try that end of the beach before my tan develops.

We spent most evenings by the tent, enjoying the simple pleasures of eating, drinking and talking. We tried the sunset on several occasions, although low cloud prevented us from enjoying it fully. Still, we didn't do too badly:

And we got to make friends with this woolly fellow on the way.

We're lucky enough to have Vega almost on our doorstep - it's only an hour away. I wouldn't complain if we end up there again next year. Anyone fancy joining me?

Normal service will be resumed shortly

Yes, I am back from my holiday and I shall tell you all about it soon, just let me have a good night's sleep first and get the house in some resemblance of order.

Here's a picture to keep you going in the meantime.

My almost-summer-holiday plans

The sun appeared this morning as if it were generally known that today is the first day of my summer holidays and this joyous fact should be celebrated with a bit of sunshine. The first thing I did was to put the washing machine on. Matt, optimistic as ever, predicted it to cloud over by lunchtime, though I still have a second pile of washing waiting for the machine, just in case.

And what, you may ask, do I have planned for this first wonderful day of my holidays? The answer: cleaning. The house is a tip, we have more visitors coming tomorrow (Simon and Sue - with more books from Amazon for me, hurray!), and we haven't had a thorough clean since before I started running around madly at work during exam time.

After that I intend to enjoy myself. I still have a bit of work this summer - we've had some new students appear demanding lessons in July and we still have some that have resists/university entrance exams in September, so Cris, my boss and I are alternating weeks. Luckily, I had cunningly planned a visit from said friends this first week of July, so poor Cris has to carry on for an extra week before she gets a rest. I, on the other hand, get to frolic round Asturias with Sue, Simon and Matt, and I'm looking forward to it greatly!

Things that make me happy about living in Spain, part II

The 1st May in Spain is Dia del trabajador or Labour Day. It's also a national holiday. Hurray, a day off work! One of the great things about living in Spain is that we get more public holidays than anywhere else in Europe, 15 I think, compared to a miserly eight in the UK.

Added to this, each town will have its own fiesta. Ours is 30th November, when the town celebrates Las Cebollas Rellenas - stuffed onions being the gastronomic speciality of El Entrego - and all the restaurants use this as an excuse to charge lots of money for special, stuffed-onion-based menus that attract people from all over the region. A strange reason to take a day off, but I'm not complaining. We also get carnaval off here too, on Shrove Tuesday, so that puts the count up to 17.

Even better, we also have puentes or bridge days. Say, for example, a public holiday falls on a Thursday, the Friday is considered a bridge day and is often taken as a holiday too. The best time of year for puentes is the beginning of December. The 6th is Constitution Day and the 8th is the Day of the Immaculate Conception. This means the 7th is always a puente, plus the 5th and the 9th can be puentes as well if they fall a day before or after the weekend. This year we haven't been taking the bridge days off (I worked yesterday). Next academic year however, Cris, my lovely boss (said in all sincerity) has announced, with my full backing, that we'll be giving a letter to all parents at the start of October stating the days the Academia is to close - including the bridge days. Now that's what I like to hear.

Tennis trauma

My Easter holiday started this afternoon, and very welcome it is too. I have five whole days to myself without having to worry about lesson planning or what I'm going to to with my class of four-year-olds who have a limited concentration span of about two minutes, unless they're watching telly.

These last three days of classes have passed uneventfully, all the children were already on holiday from school and were much better behaved in class in the Academia as a result. Also, we've been playing more games and watching films, which is more fun for me too.

However, I did make the mistake of using Woody Allen's Match Point in one of my adult classes. I wasn't much of a fan of Mr. Allen's before, and I'm still not. I watched the film over the weekend and was not impressed. For a start, the film is full of unconvincing British stereotypes, in particular the dodgy London landlord whose lines were full of words like geezer and mate. Also, there's the upper-class friend whose every second word, it seemed, was 'bloody'.

Secondly, Woody Allen either knows very little about tennis or is trying hard to ingratiate himself with the British. For a start, the main character, who, we are to understand used to play tennis professionally before giving it up to coach, has no idea what he's talking about. When asked 'Who was better, or tougher, Henman or Agassi?' replies, 'they were both great'. What tosh. For a start there's no need to ask that question as the answer is obvious. But having been asked, the only possible answer is Agassi. Hmm, lets see: Andre, eight grands slams, and one of the few players to have won all four - Tim, zero. He never even made it to a Grand Slam final, not even at Wimbledon. Andre trained by running up hills in the LA heat and Tim, we presume, practised fist pumping in the mirror (and he was still never any good at it). I'm possibly being rather unfair on England's until-recently-favourite tennis player. My dislike of the man has as much to do with the reaction, the fawning, of the British public to his performance as much as his usually uninspiring, lacklustre play itself. That and having to watch his matches on Eurosport while other players, those in possession of more flair and more character, were not shown, grrr. As a quick aside, I did once email Eurosport to complain about this and the next day they carried on showing Henman and all the commentators made a great effort to point out what a wonderful player he was at every opportunity, pah.

Agassi: Better and tougher than Henman.

So anyway, to get back on track (although, by the way, I do like Andy Murray, he does have character) this section of the film only served to make the two main male characters in the film totally unconvincing to me. A view enforced by an earlier line when the ex-professional player mentions not having the same talent as Rusedski or Agassi - please! Greg had his moments, although my favourite was his outburst at Wimbledon a few years back (and Boris Becker's reaction) rather than any display of talent (however, at least he made it to a Grand Slam final) but to lump him together with Agassi just won't do (and what about Federer? Does Woody Allen not know he exists?). And such a wet, uncommitted, passionless reply to the previously-mentioned question made the character's actions later in the film just as unbelievable.

Federer: He's really very good.

So there it is, rant over, I can get on with enjoying my holiday now I have that out of my system.