Swins 2010 2011 tour, where are we now?: Thursday 2nd June 2011, BP and she's found another shopping centre!

Yep, yesterday we decided to drive to Alcampo at the commercial centre on the “Ronda”, ring road around Castellon, near to the Nike outlet and Leroy Merlin, also to check out the train and bus time to Valencia. Trying to park in the free station car park was a joke and the local Spanish on seeing someone, especially if foreign, will try to direct you to a space they have their private car in and move it so you can get in and then try and charge you money for the service, we just drove straight out again.

Alcampo turns out to be in the middle of a huge shopping Mall! Didn't buy much but I had an overwhelming urge for a Whopper, er...from Burger King that is. After a short “conversation” we did, €7.70 for a burger, haven’t had one for over two years but I was sure they were cheaper than that. Filled up with Gasol (diesel) at €1.24/litre, not bad and then back for boules.

Christian, our neighbour had gone somewhere (?) to pick up his trailer because he had been fined three times for pulling his car on an “A” frame, illegal in Spain. Hells Teeth! Wished I'd got a picture of it as it was the “Mother” of all trailers, I think I could have got the MS on that one. Every bloke that walked past spent about half an hour admiring it.

So as we did not get the train times etc. we decided to cycle in today, OK 22 miles +, but no problemo to us now. The bus station is for long distance journeys, even saw one for Berlin! The train station next door is massive and basically the trains run to Valencia every 20 minutes or so.
Back through the town, coffee and then down Avenue del Mar to the port of El Grau and then back via a boardwalk along the beach that an English couple, Steve and Anita, had told us about, much better than the road which we had used for a total of 5 months.

Boules me, after SWMBO won, yesterday, dinner and then the Bourne trilogy that Steve had lent us. Brian, an Irish guy, had told Tricia that they had lots of DVDs and we could swap as we had now seen ours about a gazillion times already. Went over with our section and all they had was free stuff you get with the Daily Mail, “Upstairs, Downstairs”, that sort of thing, er....no thanks. But he did have three that looked as though they might be OK, see later.

Friday 3rd June 2011, BP and we are Jonny no mates again.

The car and caravan that parked right behind us went first thing and then Christian and his wife Nell, were on their way, after struggling to connect his trailer, and with his three slide out Cayman Monaco and trailer was now, apparently illegal again at 16.8 metres long, 1.8 metres too much! Might as well have kept the “A” frame!

Today, being a bit overcast, we are going to drive to the newly opened Brickomart, near the Alcampo centre, nothing much else to do I guess, and we did.

Game of boules which was curtailed by rain and darkness, she's 1 up.

Gazebo on sale for €37 so we will go again on Monday when we can get parked in the car park because it's full to the gunnel’s today. Also called into the mall to get some Union Jack cups but eventually didn't, only two. New Chinese market opened along the road and had a look in, big! Walk around the town and the beach and then chicken for dinner which I did not eat, just not hungry.
They have a weird T&C's for internet here, one day €8, one week, €15 and then 30 days €25 and I only wanted 2 weeks, so it's the 30 days and try and sell it when we leave for, well, anything.
Bourne then bed and the next morning, born again, geddit!

Saturday 4th June 2011, BP and a run to Oropesa.

To go and see a big craft market which turns out is not on the 4th June but the 4th July, still 13 miles cycle ride and a coffee can't be bad I guess. Got back as the heavens were turning black, thunder roared and it rained a bit. Walk to Lidl (MGBAKI) for nothing really, Mercadona shopping. Replay of the last boules game, she won and then another fresh game which I won.

Last of Bourne tonight along with pizza and some red wine, oh all right, lots of red wine.
Sunday 5th June 2011, BP and the bloody Spanish are noisy, dirty and leave litter all over the place.
Yep, that about sums them up I'm afraid, whenever they turn up the whole place goes, literally to shit. Toilets become pretty bad and there is always food left in the sinks, kids chuck litter everywhere, run across pitches, but I guess this is their country but I'm paying €15/day for MY pitch and clean facilities. Rant over.

Started with poached eggs on toast with marmalade on toast to follow, then coffee and the online version of the Telegraph.

Anyway, today it was the 22 miles run to Castellon with a stop at the port for a coffee and we came back the inland route and the “killer” bank against the wind. It's really just a slight incline but at one and a half miles and against the wind, it is a killer. Stopped to watch some 10 year olds playing football, well it's live!

Got back and watched Nadal beating Federer 3 – 1 to win the French open for the 6th time, captain wedgey strikes again.

The Spanish were having a BBQ in the middle of our Calle, with smoke everywhere, nice.
There's this Dutch guy across from us, arrived just after us, he just sits in the same chair, looking in the same direction every day! Never seen him actually move, his wife just cleans around him.
Two things you should not do when you've had a few sherbets and it's late at night and you come up with a “great idea”. One, don't wallpaper the house and two, cut your own hair.

About 25 years ago we had just moved into our second house and were living in deepest Hertfordshire in a village called Buntingford, which was vainly clinging on to life in the hope of a bypass. I think every place we've lived in has been wanting a bypass and usually get it just after we leave, Buntingford did! Waiting, again, probably in vain for the Forest Row bypass, maybe they'll have a whip round for us to leave? Anyway, one night, the kids were in bed and the present Mrs Swinhoe and I were wallpapering, and mean wallpapering, not “Wallpapering!” As it was getting late she decided to go to bed and continue in the morning as I had a week off.

At the time I was going through my “home brewing” thing and could turn my hand at wine, red and white'ish, beer and larger. What they lacked in taste, colour, clearness and “legs”, they made up for with brute alcoholic strength, always added “extra” sugar to give the extra kick, more like a boot, some thought. I printed up my own wine labels, naming them and adding the odd remark like, “Don't drink on an empty or full stomach!” and “For a good clear out, two glasses only!”

Small problem is sometimes I gave up bothering with bottles and just decanted it straight from whatever I was brewing it in, wine in demijohns, larger in a 5 gallon plastic, pressurised, beer barrel. So the only time when you knew you had had enough was when you fell down and you were clinging onto the floor to avoid falling further, or pee'd in one of her clothes drawers, or when you woke up the next morning to absolute silence except the banging of doors.

With a nod to one of my favourite Monty Python sketches.

“A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh home made table wines. This is a pity as many fine home made wines appeal not only to the East Sussex palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain.
Chuck Hatch Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Southborough Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.
Château Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn.
Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the East Grinstead Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1990 Coq du Andy Murray, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: eight bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Crawley Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour.

Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Penshurst Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.
Another good fighting wine is Groombridge Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.

Quite the reverse is true of Château Chunder, which is an appellation contrôlée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends.
Real emetic fans will also go for a Hailsham Muddy, and a prize winning Cuivre Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Colemans Hatch, which has a bouquet like a Crawley gas fitter's armpit.”

And:-
“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table,
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed...

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, with half a pint of shandy was particularly ill,
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day,

Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.”

Back to Buntingford and the papering.

So I had another pint of, well something and then had a brilliant idea! Why not finish the wallpapering so she would have a nice surprise in the morning. Well I zoomed round, no need to take off the light fixtures, 13 amp sockets etc., I can easily cut round them perfectly, in and around the windows, no problemo! Don't bother putting the paste on the paper, bosh it on the walls, apply paper, cut to size! By about 3 am I finished the lounge and the adjoining dinning room and with a self satisfying smile finally go to bed.

Wake early the next morning to abject screaming! “What the bloody hell have you done!”
Goes downstairs and I have to admit it was not perfect, “Did it for a surprise, for you, Pet”. “SURPRISE! SUR-BLOODY-PRISE!, if I get another surprise like this again I'll kill you. Look at it! Some of the wallpaper is practically horizontal, looks like a mad man with an axe has “cut” round the lights and why, for God's sake, are all the windows papered over?” “Fix it now or you are dead meat!” Always painted the walls since then, down to experience I guess.

Which brings me around to the hair cutting. Usually get my hair cut when we fly home, so about every three months or so. Unfortunately the “or so” may be a few weeks and my forelock that I'm always tugging for SWMBO gets rather long and unruly. So last night probably after one too many glasses of wine I decided to “trim” it a bit, well trim moved on to “cut”, but it did feel shorter and the was a surprising amount of hair on the carpet. So cleans up a bit and off to bed.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGG!” “What the hell have you done to your hair! Have you plugged yourself into the mains socket again! Did your head catch fire!”
So I'm now wearing a baseball cap, pretty much all the time.

Back to Sunday evening:-

SWMBO is not best pleased ATM, as she has lost at everything and tonight after being beaten, badly at boules and then cribbage, she threw the cards all round the MS, I went down and bought her a bottle of Cava (€8!) to calm her down and it worked as she is now sitting writing her diary and silently cursing under her breath.

Watched some movie about the Windmill Theatre, very forgetful.
Monday 6th June 2011, BP and a few jobs I think.

Washing was one, so filling and emptying again. SWMBO went for a walk around town whilst I lost and then found my tyre pressure gauge, drained and put away the hoses, fixed the slowly emptying washing machine (she told ME what to do, thinks she should have been an engineer in a previous life, yeah, about as good as Swanny is), checking the tyre pressures and generally “deeing” things that had been awaiting completion. Next it's shopping at Mercadona, then boules?

Food shopping in and the gazebo bought from Brickomat in Castellon, 3m x 3m, blue and at €37 a bargain. Back and a game of boules and we learnt a lesson. A French guy was playing on the next pitch with his wife and spent all his time accurately knocking her ball (sic) out of the way, full toss (this is getting worse) every time. SWMBO started doing this and managed to get a game! Still 2 – 1 to me but the smile is back on her face, then she lost at doms.
Fried veggies in my chilli oil with chicken, hot on many levels. Then watched a, loaned by Brian, God awful DVD called “The Hotel New Hampshire”, about a dysfunctional American family running a succession of Hotels, give it a miss.

Cut down on the BAW tonight as I have been snoring and SWMBO has been retiring to the R&R bed in the middle of the night and constantly telling me about it for the rest of the day.

Tuesday 7th June 2011, BP and if the forecast is correct it's going to chuck it down today, it's 8'ish and it certainly looks like it. Mind it was bloody warm last night and never dropped under 20°C!, duvet off, windows open. SWMBO (and me to a certain extent) is going to be in for a shock, temperature wise, when she gets back. Driving around and it's 24°C and she is cold, and in the evenings when it's not much less than that, she's pulling on a fleece!

So today it looks like staying in and reading a lot.

First, as SWMBO is entered into “The Race for Life”, July 17th, she is always wanting to go for fast walks, so off we went and put on my famous “Postman's Walk”, left her trailing. As the RFL is only 5 km (about 3 miles in old money), it's hardly worth putting your boots on! Boules, me 2 – 0.
It's now 5:15 pm and, as predicted it's persistently chucking it down with the odd peel of thunder thrown in for good measure, apparently it's going to be a bit of a show tonight.

SWMBO sent me down to Mercadona to get a bottle of Rioja to dinner tonight, I broke my raincoat out of hibernation for the journey, I was pointed at a lot by my so called fellow campers as I walked along in the streaming rain and when I walked in the store, it all went quiet?

Doms, me and as she lost again I hid in the toilet, as hurled dominos are a lot harder and more painful than playing cards, until she calmed down. Tried to watch an Irish film about the “Troubles” but it was so depressing we switched it off and watched “As Good as it Gets” with Jack Nicholson, and he drank all my wine!

Bed after listening to Adele's “21” album again on the headphones and falling asleep in the “comfy” chair.
Wednesday 8th June 2011, BP and going to be in the 30's and 16°C in England, hell's teeth and by the cringe!
Up early, SSS, breakfast and the plan is the fast walk backwards (not really backwards), well the other way round (oh God), the same route but in the other direction!

Valencia tommorow!