Northern Spain - April 2010

The beach at Colunga - Asturias.

Unexpected church - somewhere in Galicia

La Ribeira Sacra - Lugo - Galicia. Near the vineyard...

View from an old house - abandoned village - Galicia

Abandoned village - offered for sale to Cesar - the whole village. 

Anyone want to buy a village in Galicia?

Mountain view - northern Leon - from La Urz

Back to Normal....?

Well, FR is well and truly home. He called us from the ferry on Tuesday afternoon as the children and I were coming back from school. Actually, at the moment he called, we were driving through our village, Almondbury - a normally peaceful little place just outside Huddersfield - just as all hell was breaking loose! We had a helicopter hovering just above us, three police cars and lots of police around, plus another three cars sirening their way up the hill; plumes of smoke rising from behind the bank; groups of kids just leaving school - then more police cars arriving.  Turns out that just as schools came out, there had been an armed robbery on the local bank - thus far, the robbers have not been caught. It's enough to make you want to leave the country! 

At around 9.30pm, a whole hour before we expected him, FR arrived home - and we had a lovely family reunion, with lots of noise and hugs and presents and more hugs and noise, before we eventually got the children off to bed. It's the first time FR has been away from the children for such a long time and he was just so glad to be back and to see them - and me - again. It feels now like we've been over the first hurdle on our big journey and we can move on towards the next one.

Yesterday, we talked and talked about all the things he had seen and all the places he'd looked at; about La Urz and the big house there and about renting options. I was quite right that he had really liked the vineyard in Chantada. We talked through all the issues about living on such an isolate hilltop spot - and it really is on a hilltop - imagine this every morning!

Spectacular, yes, but gives me vertigo to be honest...so, no to vineyard.

I am not sure that FR investigated Asturias as thoroughly as I had hoped. He spent a lot of time in Galicia because he found it so very beautiful - it was a gorgeous time of year to visit a place full of blossom trees and he enjoyed the food. He has taken some lovely photographs and I shall have to find a way of putting a link here so you can see them. He also took some good ones around Taramundi, in Asturias, which is place that had appealed to me from the start. He feels that although it also is very beautiful, it is mainly a lovely tourist spot to visit but not somewhere that he could imagine us living our daily lives in.

This amazing beach is 'La Playa de Catedrales' which is on the coastal border area between Galicia and Asturias - absolutely stunning, even in rather moody weather. There was a piece of land for sale just set back from this view and I know he was slightly tempted to build us a house there - he contacted the owner of the land, who said it would cost 200,000euros. FR had said, by means of saying it was out of our price range, that we couldn't pay more than 100,000 for it (still out of our price range!) and thought no more about it. Three days later, the same man phoned him to say he'd accept 120,000.  Both houses and land are very over-priced in Spain as people selling prefer to drop the price radically if someone is interested, rather than offer it for sale at a sensible starting price. It's what was happening here for a while but I think we've adjusted now.
On that note, (overpriced?) we return to La Urz. I seriously think that when Mateo and I go to look at it next week (volcanic activity permitting) that if we like it, we'll be making our offer to the owner pretty quickly. It is a huge house and not immediately habitable but with such potential that we could do all we wanted and more there. All the villagers are apparently very keen for a family to move in and FR seems to have forged a bond with many of them already - they are ready to meet us next Sunday.
And if I don't like it... square one is to find a place to rent and perhaps investigate Asturias a bit more...and to be absolutely honest, I don't mind this option. Normal will never be quite the same again, I suspect!

About La Urz

Whilst with his cousin in Santiago, FR made contact with some people who lived in a small village in the north of Leon - a place called 'La Urz' - pronounced as in 'urth' (or even 'earth').  Coinciding with meeting them was the realisation that perhaps Galicia wasn't for us. As we had ruled Catalunya out because the children would be taught only in Catalan in the schools - so it seemed that Gallego was the language being spoken more and more in Galicia. Cesar noted that many of the older people spoke to each other in Castillian Spanish but younger people were using the local language - which is fine but not what I want. 

From Tuesday to Thursday, he concentrated on looking in Asturias and I heard little from him - usually meaning there was nothing much to say. He said Taramundi was very hilly; Vegadeo was dull and Castropol the same...nothing much for me to get my hopes up that we were on the right track.

On Friday morning, he headed south towards his parents - who, incidentally, have been unable to fly to Majorca to one of their other son's because of the flight ban. They have only just left today - Sunday - over a week late. FR stopped at La Urz on the way and stayed overnight there.  We had a long conversation when he returned to his parent's house on Saturday and he had loved the place and the people and there was a house there that was big, habitable and for sale within our price range...

It has a lot of bedrooms and still needs some work doing to it - there is one area that has been used to store hay but which could become another bedroom. The people who live around here are creative, artistic people and they have children too. 


FR is so taken with this place and the sort of life it would offer us that I have booked to go and have a look myself after he gets back. I will go with Mateo so that he too can see whether he likes it. The place is surrounded by wild life, mountains, amazing countryside and only a short distance from the Embalse de Luna - where there are all sorts of water activities available. I have taken advantage of Ryanair's amazing offer of cheap tickets and Mateo and I will fly to Valladolid for £6 each! We will stay just 4 days and will be able to borrow FR's parent's car to drive up to La Urz and meet the people there and see the house. And make a decision.


It is not as exciting as a vineyard; it's not as near the sea as I'd hoped; it's not in the heart of any folkloric area and it's pretty isolated.  But I am going to see it soon and I will know when I get there if FR is right about it. 

Coincidence in Santiago de Compostela

Cesar phoned me on Saturday afternoon having looked at a wonderful house in a beautiful situation. He has a typical 'Cesar' story to tell me today by email. He has so far not been won over by the people of Galicia - and does not appear to be winning them over either!  He had gone into the village post office to buy a stamp to send a card to us, but apparently the old woman there claimed she didn't sell any stamps for England. Cesar says he 'tried to explain to her that as a post office, she should have had stamps for the rest of Europe' - at which point, the woman shouted at him quite a lot in Gallego - the language of the area - and which he did not understand word for word, but definitely got the gist. So he left and went into the bar next door for a drink.  Whereupon, the same old woman came in from a door connecting the two buildings... he says he ran away immediately.

Later on, he went to Santiago de Compostela - which is the 'capital' of Galicia and is the destination point of the famous Pilgrimage route - the Camino de Santiago. He had decided to spend Sunday there and soak up some atmosphere as it's always busy, always alive and he has become a bit fed up of what he has politely referred to as the dullness of the Galician people he has met so far.

He phoned me very late - sorry very early - on Sunday morning. Not drunk but very happy as he'd just found his cousin Nacho busking outside the Cathedral! Nacho plays flutes and gaitas, the Galician bagpipes and has travelled all over, including several spells in Edinburgh during festival time, playing on the streets - but this has to be a pretty cool coincidence!  Actually, turns out he is living there at the moment with his Irish girlfriend, but FR didn't know that and hadn't been looking for him - he said he just saw him in front of the cathedral and managed to go and sit next to him before Nacho noticed he was there! I expect Nacho would have been even more surprised to see FR than the other way around.

This is a photo they sent through to me this morning - FR on the left - I have no idea why they are by the sea - Santiago isn't!

Nacho has a myspace page with some of his music -  in some of the pictures he's the one with his hair really short - much nicer when it's long and curly. He's an absolutely charming, talented young man and I am so happy FR found him as he did.

Being an ENFP

FR sent me a text yesterday at around 2pm which read "I am in heaven. I'll look for an internet link later. I love you."  I sort of took this as a 'good' sign after the previous day's assessment of house hunting in Galicia but it left me very agitated and frustrated. Where was he; had he found somewhere; had he seen a lovely view; had he had a wonderful meal....??

Our arrangement was that I would text him to see if it was OK to call him on SKYPE - a necessity because for some reason, his phone has decided it will not ring out when someone tries to call him - I would have bought another phone but FR is not me. He is FR and will not spend a penny unless he really has to. So at 6pm, I sent a text saying can I call, to which I got the reply, not now. Aaargh. Not only am I an ENFP with an overwhelming urge to talk to my husband but one with no patience and a strong activist streak. I was pacing the floor, manically tidying up, eating endless biscuits and watching the minutes tick by. It was excruciating.
At 7.50pm, I got the text to say 'now'! So I whizzed off to the computer to make the call ..and SKYPE wouldn't work - or FR had very poor reception at his end. Whichever, it was even more frustrating than waiting to speak to him. However, we managed a couple of broken sentences from which I learned that he'd been to see a vineyard in La Chantada and later on, he emailed me a long email all about it. I've now located information about it and this is a picture:

 I think this looks rather nice and there are 12,000m2 of land that contains vines, cherries, pears and kiwis as well as a forest area with chestnuts and oak trees. And this is where FR was when he said he was in heaven. The area has a large 'embalse' which translates as a reservoir or a dam - often created by flooding valleys. This one is apparently navigable and FR said there were ships and boats on it.


OK, back to my title and what has this got to do with being an ENFP.. and what is an ENFP? I have a friend, Marion, who is a qualified Myers-Briggs practitioner, amongst many other things and it was she who introduced me to it some years ago. We had instinctively 'bonded' as friends without much need to get to know each other in any more formal way - typical 'N' and 'F' traits that we both share. I am not going to try and explain Myers-Briggs here other than to say it is a personality type indicator- type it into Google and check it out if you haven't come across it before. I used it extensively at work as part of our team building activities and it really did help to understand why some people behave the way they do. (And why others are normal!!)
I bring it up now because being in the situation I am currently - i.e. on the cusp of doing something very different, looking for new ventures and changing my life and that of my family in a radical way - being an ENFP is real boon. I thrive on the excitement of what might be, what we could do, how we might live. If ever a type was made to follow a dream, it's an ENFP. But it has to feel right. I am sure that if I was the one in Spain looking for our house, I would instinctively know when I had found it. FR, being a an INTP (probably) is not likely to tell me he has 'found it' in that sort of way - it's not in his nature and he tends to worry that I will get too excited, mentally move in and then potentially be devastated if we don't get it - however, reading between the lines of his email, I think he definitely likes this property in Chantada.

We ENFPs have one more lucky trait and that is that if our dreams are dashed - it's only momentarily because there's always another dream to be had, waiting just around the corner. In the meantime, I am swotting up on vine cultivation....

Keeping calm

OK, I confess. I wanted to write my next blog installment in a state of high excitement because FR had phoned me to say - "I've found it! Our home in Spain!"  But, he hasn't. My hope that the house in Meira, that looked so appealing in the brochure, would be just what we were looking for ..wasn't.

In fact, FR was quite down yesterday when we spoke because he'd been all day going around with Mark from Galician Country Homes - who has been extremely kind, helpful and enthusiastic about all things in Galicia - but thus far,FR has not been equally enthused. And he was tired. So I can't say exactly what he thought about what he'd seen because when he's tired, he does tend to exaggerate and also to use really bad language.  Listening between the expletives, I think he was saying that the villages are quite dead, very few children around and that what he had seen might possibly be OK after several years hard work but not what we had in mind. Personally, I think his view was also seriously affected by the fact that it was windy - FR hates wind - but he did concede that it was not cold and it wasn't raining, even though it seemed like the rest of Spain was suffering awful weather.  This is good. I've checked the forecast for today and it's not too bad; a bit chilly but no rain and only light wind...whereas in Huddersfield, it's a very chill 6 degrees and I've had to put the heating on.

So the search continues and I have to accept that it's early days. My mood wasn't exactly improved when the house down the road here had a 'SOLD' sign on it yesterday and it's been on the market for less time than ours. I know the market is subdued but we've only had one couple look. I'm desperate for more viewers; if only to make all the tidying up worthwhile.

The Easter holidays continue for the children and yesterday we went to the Royal Armouries in Leeds. They had all been so fractious before we set off that I had every intention of letting them take a weapon of their choice so I only had to bring the last one standing home. However, by the time we got there and listened to some pirate stories, watched some two-handed sword fighting and had lunch, they were all cheerful and quite pleasant company again. I found the amount of weaponry rather disturbing after just a short while and much preferred looking at the medieval pictures in the Tournament Field; whilst we were there, we found Guy, who was explaining how metal armour could 'bend' and that was very interesting. We all felt we'd learned something there and also got to try on some real armour.

I await news from FR with renewed optimism that today will be the day he phones and says, "I've found it!"

On being outnumbered

Three children, a tightened budget, half-term.

Yesterday, we gardened together and put plants into planters, cut back trees and bushes and weeded the scruffy borders. Today, I promised Kids Club at the Odeon, so we whizzed off to see 'Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief'. Mateo had read the book and promised it would be really funny. It went over Romy's 6 year old head as there was a lot of reference to Greek Gods - actually, there were lots of Greek Gods in it, not just references. Lots of technical whizzy stuff and the sense that the film was rushing through the book without due consideration. It wasn't really funny but it was quite fun. (In no way to be read as a film critique.)

We then trooped off to the library, where Mateo announced there was nothing left for him to read - he'd read everything. After a little more hunting, he found two that were new to him...and we didn't see him for the rest of the afternoon. I expect he's finished both by now. He can read faster than me and the only difference is that he remembers what he's read.

After a really late lunch, even for us, I swear, I lay down on the sofa and fell asleep! For almost two hours..

Meaning we didn't eat until around 8.30pm.

After I let them stay up to watch Dr. Who, which we missed last week, they promised that tomorrow, they will tidy up their rooms and make a start on clearing out unwanted toys and games.  It is going to be a hard day - every time we've tried this in the past, they end up loving things they haven't touched for months and months and I never get rid of anything!

Then FR phoned from Pravia, a place on my list of where he had to check out in Asturias 'because it felt right' - and he liked it there. 

He'd been to see one of the places we'd found on a website but said it wasn't us and I believe him. I so wanted to go with him so we could look together but now he's there, I know he'll know when something is right and when it is wrong. And whilst he hasn't found 'it' yet, he arranged for an estate agent to send me some pictures of what he'd been looking at today. 
This is something that would need completely rebuilding but it's a lovely wall!!
My list includes Luarca, Grado, Castropol, Vegadeo, Taramundi, Santa Eulalia de Oscos and Meira - this latter being in Galicia, rather than Asturias. FR has to go to all of these places. It's been difficult to find good web-based information about these places - you'll see if you follow the links that there is seems to be a sad lack of good web designers working in Spain. Now there's a thought!

FR in Spain

FR left for Spain yesterday morning and phoned me from the beach in Colunga today. We went to this beach about 4 years ago - on the Jurassic Coast of northern Spain. There are dinosaur footprints on the beach! And not just one sort of dinosaur, but big feet and small feet imprinted in the stone at the foot of the cliffs there. Herds of them all passing together - really amazing.
Just a man and his dog there today apparently.
We've talked a lot about going to Asturias to live and FR is there to look into the sort of property we could afford and to investigate which area would suit us best. I wish we could have all gone but the two weeks of Easter holidays is not enough and I want to keep the disruption to the children's schooling down to a minimum. They are really looking forward to going - which makes me feel that the 6 months they did at school in Spain 2 years ago was a good thing all round. Hasn't put them off, anyway!
I've started to look at Galicia as well as Asturias. It's awfully hilly in Asturias, seems a bit smoother the further west you go. And the houses there are big, with huge rooms and altogether more openness around them. Mark Adkinson from Galician Country Homes phoned me yesterday after I'd emailed about a property and did a good job of selling the province.. we'll see.
FR is sleeping in the car tonight - it's a big people carrier - hope he's OK. He will not stay in a hotel, preferring economy over everything but I know if it gets too uncomfortable, he can go to Leon to see family or down to Valladolid to his parents. Wish I were there with him.