Swimming and so longs Part 3 - by Theo

Rosie has a new book, Tommy, El Perro, about a dog who loves water except when it comes to bath time. Rosie is clearly his opposite. After a lovely al fresco lunch at Bianca's we formed a bucket chain to fill her paddling pool with warm water before her son, Ollie, happily climbed in. Rosie could not be tempted (or, indeed, forced) into the water. Kate tried, I tried, Bianca tried; Rosie is definitely not a water baby.

We didn't even bother trying her in the pool - she was more interested in the pool cover than the water - but the rest of us enjoyed a refreshing dip in relay. Bianca's very lucky to have such a facility on hand, and such an acquiescent son in Ollie, as she is 8 months pregnant and suffering a bit in the high temperatures - 38 degrees today. Yet another baby we sadly won't be around to welcome into the world.

Later on Belen and Cesar popped round for a quick drink and a promise to see each other soon. I'm glad because they couldn't make it to our Dia de Deportes and were away in Cordoba this weekend, but it would have felt wrong leaving without seeing them - they were of course the couple that put us up the first 3 times we came to Madrid. Our sojourn here would have been much poorer without them.

Hasta luego todos.

Swimming and so longs Part 2 - by Theo

Rosie is still on a two nap regime (of her own choosing) which means that heading anywhere is always a logistical challenge in order not to end up with an irate toddler. This theory was duly put into practice when Jon suggested spending Sunday in Cercedilla, a mountain town in the Sierra to the north of Madrid, where there are some swimming pools fed by mountain springs called Las Berceas. There are of course plenty of swimming pools in Madrid itself, but with temperatures due to hit 38 degrees in the city, the relatively cooler temperatures of mountains definitely appealed.

With this in mind I took Rosie out for a mega-playground session that morning in order to get her nice and worn out, with the hope she would sleep happily in the car. We then arranged to meet Jon by the metro stop - he lives near us, but was coming from his girlfriend's in Canal. He was slightly late as he had popped back to his flat to grab his swimming trunks. Sure enough, shortly afterwards, Rosie nodded off in the car and slept most of the way there getting about 45 minutes nap-time. Less than she usually has, but we figured it would even out with a slightly longer than normal nap on the way back.

Las Berceas is gorgeous. Two large pools with deep and shallow ends set among lush lawns under shady stands of pines trees surrounded by forested mountain slopes. Absolutely stunning. The approach wasn't the most pushchair friendly, but do-able, passing under the tree-top rope walks of the adventure park next door. We found a shady spot and set out our rug and Rosie's play tent. It was about this point that Jon realised he had somehow, despite making a detour to get them, forgotten his swimming trunks. Kate and I tried hard not to laugh too much. We soon solved the problem though, as I lent him my (non swimming) shorts to swim in. This meant I later had to walk back to the car and drive home in only my (rather skimpy and tight-fitting) boxers. Kate did take a photo, but I'll spare you.

The water, when we did get in, was extremely refreshing - just what was required. After our attempts to entice Rosie into the water the previous day we didn't even bother trying her in the pools - much too cold for her liking. She was quite happy though, chasing after balls that weren't hers, counting pine cones and later walking around the adjacent picnic site (occasional tannoy announcements reminded the swimmers that picnicking wasn't permitted on the lawn.)

Refreshed and fed, we headed off about 3pm to let Rosie have her second nap, though we were soon no longer refreshed as the car was like an oven and the air conditioning is badly in need of a recharge. Still, she quickly dropped off and stayed asleep even when we pulled in to Canal to drop Jon off. As he jumped out I noticed something under the passenger seat - his swimming trunks!

Swimming and so longs Part 1 - by Theo

The first of our three bathing and bidding farewell dates saw us gatecrashing a lunch party at Kirsty's down in Rivas. Kirsty had invited round some friends and their children from the Sticky Fingers playgroup, some of whom we knew, for a roast chicken lunch (hence, why we hadn't originally been invited). I was pretty impressed with Kirsty pulling this off seeing as she's 6 months pregnant, the mother of a toddler and her husband was away in Almeria! Kudos! So, with 5 babies and toddlers napping, and a newborn mewing in her mum's arms (Kate kindly took over so the mum could eat) we added ourselves to the merry chaos. Well we had to - we had to return her play ring that we'd borrowed, as we'd forgotten it last time we'd visited.

We forgot it this time too, so I spe... drove in a sensible fashion back home to get it while Rosie had her afternoon nap. Doh!Kate and I both enjoyed a swim in Kirsty's pool, though Rosie was not keen in either the main pool nor the paddling pool, preferring instead to attempt to build the world's largest ball collection (her current obsession) and hang around in the sitting room.

It was a lovely day and we're really going to miss Kirsty and Juanmi when we get back; it's a real shame we won't be around to greet their second child or see Emily Grace grow up, nor the general relaxed, laid-back attitude towards children that seems to prevail here in Spain.

Not that the hispanic love of children rubs off on everyone. As we lazed in the pool one of the other mothers present mused wistfully about how great it would be to have a swimming pool. "Well" I said, "most of the new build apartment blocks have a communal one and they aren't that pricey." "Oh god no!" replied the mum of two "then I'd have to share it with other people's children! Horrible!"

Loafing in the Lot - by Theo

After the wonderful hospitality of different generations of the Kuhfelds in London and Kent we arrived at Dover docks at 7.15am braced for a short crossing and then a mammoth drive. Rosie, who has proved a better flier than her mother and better sailor than her father, is not the world's greatest car passenger so we dreading the long haul from Calais down to Ste Croix in the Lot valley region. However, some judicious timing, several breaks on route and Kate's tireless entertainment efforts kept our PFB generally pretty chilled when she wasn't asleep, so when we finally arrived Chez Cathy & Jean at 10.15pm we were merely frazzled and not on the edge of mental breakdown as we'd anticipated. The warm welcome and soup we were met with at our home from home went a long way to restoring us.As we were not the only visitors at Labouysse, Cathy & Jean's converted former tobacco drying house was at capacity. They had very kindly given us their double room, allowing us to be able to actually move around without tripping over various baby paraphernalia, while Kate's Aunt Frances was in the spare room we usually occupy, her cousin Erica was in the caravan that usually serves as Cathy's painting studio while our hosts themselves had set up a bed in the old oven room in one of the other buildings. Amazingly bathroom queues were at a minimum all week!I only met Frances briefly at our wedding and had never previously met Erica (who Kate last saw over 10 years ago), but they were excellent company, taking to Rosie immediately (and vice versa), politely allowing me to win at backgammon and keeping the franglish flowing over the lunchtime banquets Cathy provided. Trips to the local swimming lake as well as various friends of Cathy's with swimming pools were very much on the menu. Rosie was rather lukewarm about swimming, unlike the pools which were generally a bit cooler, though with much patience she was generally enticed in.Kate's sisters Anne-Marie and Claire were also in the area, staying with Kate's former step-dad Tim round the corner at Lebreil, so a trip round there for lunch was very much in order as was a delicious lunch (again) at fellow expats Mike and Brenda. On a slightly cooler day yesterday Claire and Mia walked round to spend the day chez Cathy and join us loafing around in Cathy's garden, eating her food and playing games. Frances and Erica have departed today, heading on to visit friends in Germany, and we are leaving tomorrow ourselves, thoroughly relaxed and fed-up (in a good way!), heading home to Madrid via San Sebastian.

swimming and studying

My plan to spend every morning/lunchtime last week in the pool was scuppered by an e mail Kate received on Tuesday night. Anabel, the training coordinator at International House, needed some extra students for her course for new Spanish teachers, with the lessons (which would be free for us) running from 9.30am until 11.30am every morning - were we available?

It was very nice of her to think of us - we'd obviously built up a reputation as 'good' students - but I was a little confused as at the end of the last course in May she had told us that there weren't any more until July. When we turned up on Thursday, it became clear that what she had meant was - "there weren't any more for your level." Kate and I, previously among the best students in our Spanish classes, are now firmly chasing the game, having joined a class that is clearly more advanced than our last.

Our very first exercise centered around a tense we'd never come across before, the pluscuamperfecto, which is formed by using the imperfect tense of haber as an auxiliary verb with the main verb in past participle. As this is basically the same as French, and as its usage is the same as the English past perfect, we were quickly able to grasp the salient points, though our usage continued to be clumsy as we'd only just got the hang of past participles, preterito and the imperfect tense, let alone using them in unison. Confused? So were we.

Here's an example:
Cuando llegre al stadio, el partido ya habia empezado = (when I arrived at the stadium, the match had already started.)
'llegre' here is in the preterito indefinido, the Spanish equivalent of the English present simple, 'habia empezado' being the pluscuamperfecto of empezar (to start); like the English past perfect its used to talk about a finished action in the past that had happened before something else happened. So in order to use this tense correctly we had to remember the endings and formation of three other tenses!

Later in the class we were thrown into verb collocations - which verbs are followed by an infinitive and which by a gerund. Seeing as we've never been taught how to form the gerund, this was definitely asking us to run before we can walk.... we're just about keeping up! However, I haven't let all of this set me back; I've still managed to go swimming 6 days out of 7 this week!

the joys of living in Barcelona

What with the stunning architecture, vibrant nightlife, cosmopolitan vibe, shops, monuments, parks, the football club, the festivals, and the state of the art public transport, it's easy to forget that one of the attractions of the Catalan Capital is the 2kms of sandy sea front.

Taking a break from our lesson planning this afternoon, we strolled the 500 yards or so from Ilse's flat in Pouble Nou down to the beach, past busy skate ramps and basketball hoops. While not as packed as it must be in the summer, the seafront was still well populated with family picnics, courting couples, cyclists, rollerbladers, fishermen, strollers, surfers, sunbathers and swimmers.

Yes you read those last three right. Here in Barcelona the typical weather for November is cloudless blue skies from dawn til dusk. Water temperature a balmy 18 degrees. It's strange to think that while our Northern European neighbours are shivering under slate grey skies, Barcelona is basking in sunshine and it's warm enough for us to go swimming. Which we did.

things I have learnt about my wife (part 2.)

She was a capable rollerskater and has a shady past in synchronised swimming.

Our honeymoon is a constant voyage of discovery!

If you can't stand the heat....

... change your plans and go swimming.

Theo and I have become the last word in flexibility and seamless last-minute plan-changing. Our initial itinerary involving a visit to the Reggio cheese market on the way to Lake Como was abandoned on the autostrada and instead we turned off just after Modena to go north to Verona and Lake Garda.

After skirting Verona in search of that necessary evil, a supermarket, we arrived at Lake Garda, which was initially hidden behind a line of hotels, campsites and beach shops. But once the view began to open up we realised both how huge the lake is (more than 55km long, 16km wide in places) and how beautiful, especially towards the northern shores, as pine-studded mountains rear up to cast their reflections in the water.

We found a campsite that was thankfully relatively cool in the punishing 33 degree heat where Sheena could be parked under the shade of olive and alder trees and where a gentle breeze could be felt coming from the lake. Basically, our main motivation for going to the lake (rather than heading for Venice as we'd originally intended) was simply to have some respite from the soaring temperatures.

So we've been making the most of it. Three dips in Lake Garda itself and another three in the excellent campsite swimming pool. Last night in Bologna, Theo and I were still feeling uncomfortably hot at midnight. Tonight at dusk, the air feels pleasant, the scent of barbeque is in the air and we may take another swim before we turn in. This is the life.

One final thought: here at the Lake Garda campsite, apart from us, almost everyone is either German (probably 70 per cent) or Dutch. At the campsite on the Adriatic, where we were two nights ago, it was almost entirely full of Italians. Is it related to the salinity of the water, I wonder?

putting your foot in it....

This is me picking Sea Urchin spines out of my foot after putting my foot in one while swimming at Cecina. Sadly our idea for a mass game of Operation on my foot (who can remove a spine without making Theo scream in agony) were scotched by a nasty knee-jerk (literally) reaction we discovered when Kate had a go at digging one out with a needle.

I had 15, though I'm pretty sure some of them are still there. Well, I managed to drive to Siena and Florence as well as walk around them with no trouble, so they can just come out when they are good and ready.

Pisa

On our way south to Rome, it made sense to call into Pisa as it was on the way and gawp at the Piazza Del Miracoli, which truly is a beautiful place. We both envied the students chilling out on the lush lawns (though they were probably just tourists, the students no doubt being way too cool and/or hard working to be seen doing such a thing). The leaning tower itself is surprisingly quite amazing and didn't disappoint. Not that we weren't expecting it to lean or anything, but just that it didn't seem in anyway lessened by the expectation.

What was also fun was watching all the tourists taking photos of themselves "propping" up the tower.



Naturally, I had to have a go - when in Rome (or on the way) and so on. Here's my effort.

Kate thought the whole thing was rather infantile and reacted in a very mature way as you can see.


Not quite in the spirit of things.

That night we camped by the sea near Cecina and swam in swarms of whitebait. Weird.

Baptised in the brine

It takes a supreme effort of will, determination and mind over matter to submerge your warm, mammalian body in cold water, but I'm proud to report Theo and I have both done the deed. As it happens, I managed a short dip in the Atlantic in Biarritz last month - in fact, that's exactly what it was. I dipped my body in, almost got swallowed up by the crunching undertow, kicked in slightly panicked fashion to escape the brutal offshore current and just about managed to extricate myself intact. The whole experience was somewhere between exhilarating and terrifying - and the water felt only a few degrees above freezing.
The Mediterranean has supplied a much more mellow swimming experience, although the water temperature is most kindly described as "refreshing". Most of the Spanish wouldn't countenance going into the sea as early as May - but we are made of sterner stuff and have been in two days running. It must be the Celtic blood flowing in our veins. It also helps if there's a pleasant, wood-honed beach bar nearby with reviving hot drinks to help get the circulation going again. And in a real emergency, it also sells spirits. Added to that it's run by Jasmina's mum, Myriam, a very friendly English-speaker and has a stack of British glossy magazines on the counter to flick through while your husband is playing backgammon with a friend (Andy - we persuaded him into the sea with us, but I'm not sure he was all that grateful). We're going back there tonight for a barbeque. With drumming.

Of Monts and Molehills

Well as Kate has done a fine job letting you know what happened while still in England, it falls to me to let you know what we've been doing since getting to France. If you are short of time, here's a summary: stayed overnight in Cherbourg, drove to Mont Saint-Michel, took photos, drove to Dinan, checked into hotel.

Thanks for reading, do check back soon.

For those of you with more leisure time or a more pressing need to avoid doing any work, it's slightly more complicated than that. Our French is taking a while to warm up, so trying to first find a mechanic and then explain that we needed our headlights adjusted, straight off the boat while trying to get my head around the French traffic system was a bit of challenge. However we did it - sort of; we've put stickers over a section of the headlights to avoid blinding those on the other (left-hand) side of the road. So armed with a handy map of Cherbourg from the tourist office we decided (as it was now 3.30pm) to stay in Cherbourg rather than to push on to anywhere else. Priorities: a shower and to sort out the arrangement of luggage in Sheena. Last night had been comfortable, but cramped.

The Map pointed us in the direction of a campsite. After a few obligatory wrong turns we found it, only to find it was closed. Well, actually it was open, but all the shower and toilet blocks were locked up. Still there was running water on site, flat ground and it was near the beach, so we just decided to stay - if anyone turned up we'd offer to pay, but the unlocked gates seemed to suggest that they weren't too bothered. Well we'd always intended to do some free camping. This still left the issue of showers.

We solved this by going swimming. Not in the sea (tempting, but probably more than a bit nippy this time of year) but in the piscine next door. The plan was, have a dip then use the changing room showers. Brilliant. As ever, nothing was quite that simple. The next problem was that I only have Bermuda Short style swimming trunks and, for reasons unclear to me, these are banned from French swimming pools. Hmmmm. After fronting it out with the receptionist ("oui, oui, j'ai le malliot correct") I decided it was safer to go through in my boxer shorts, which, handily, were black and close fitting trunks. Had to tuck in the Calvin Klein waistband - could have been a bit of a give away - and felt unable to risk using the water slides, but otherwise Kate and I very much enjoyed our little dip, feeling buoyed up by our problem solving skills.


Suitably refreshed and cleansed we headed off in Sheena back into town to Carrefour, one of those gigantic French supermarkets, to buy a picnic dinner and the most obscene chocolate patisseries ever. We were both feeling much better by now, having managed both breakfast and lunch on the ferry. We felt great, sitting out behind Sheena in the warm evening sun eating bread and cheese with fruit and salad, sipping Champagne (thanks Jon and Sarah!) and toasting our good fortune. Later, after a romantic beach side stroll we retired to bed, feeling like we had just about everything worked out.

.... oh dear.
If the presence of countless molehills was anything to go by there used to be a pretty healthy mole population at the Collignon campsite before we arrived. After some rather fluid bowel movements the following morning this is probably no longer the case. I felt like I was committing mammal genocide as I madly dug with my shovel and squatted, intestines heaving, in the early dawn. All yesterday's optimism at our returning health - mine in particular - vanished pretty quickly. Kate's stomach was at least holding up, though the poor darlings lungs were behaving like those of a 60-a-dayer after a 3 mile swim through treacle. It was in rather duller spirits that we made our way through splendid sunshine and rural roads to the glorious Mont Saint Michel.