Extreme conditions

Update on this square: 

now, in April, it looks like this:

In the background you can see the hoardings put up round a site where a building was demolished. It is a copy of the wonderful frescoes in the Diocesan Museum just next door.

On Sunday this tree was blown down by the high winds in Jaca city centre.

There's been a blizzard more or less all day today. I found this bike in the street this morning.

Ice

Yesterday's snow has given way to sunshine and dripping. It started melting in the evening and the water froze in sheets. I've never seen the streets so dangerous! Our rooves are loaded with snow which is slowly slipping down; you always have to look up before you go in or out, but at the same time, a magical row of icicles- with the evocative name of carámbanos in Spanish has formed under the eaves.

Even more snow

This park bench shows the depth of the snow

Our street after cleaning

Watering can

Untouched

Trees' bad hair day

Nandina berries

It snowed yesterday and again today. Thick, fluffy snow. Loading cars and rooves and branches. The cars are pretty well buried.

Snow, snow and more snow!

I went to Huesca yesterday to do some classes. Knowing I'd be finishing at seven in the evening, I took some essentials just in case the weather was bad and I had to stay. It was, however, a beautiful evening; you could see the stars shining, a bit of wind... I drove home. This morning, before 6.30, we realised that there'd been a BIG snowfall. Well, if it was big at 6.30, by 10 it was tremendous. I rang Huesca to say I wasn't going, Rafa tried to get the car out of the garage and failed to get up the snowy ramp. The other car was parked on the street and he struggled to Sabiñánigo in that, very slowly and carefully. It's three in the afternoon now and I think it's finally stopped snowing. The snow is wet and fluffy. Driving is complicated. Everything looks beautiful. I had to beat my garden plants to take the weight  of snow off them. Soon the 30 cms or so on the rooves will start sliding down and we'll have to look before going in and out of doors.

Breakfast time

Plaza de los Sarrios

Overloaded plum tree

Overloaded letter box!

La Garcipollera

Just up the Aragón valley from Jaca is the village of Castello de Jaca. It suffered terribly in the floods at the end of last year; the river bed is still full of branches and rubble sent downstream by the floodwater which took the side off a house. 

On the first of January we went for a walk from Castiello to the Garcipollera valley. The video shows an old bridge with water cascading down into receiving tanks where people go to swim in the summer. There's a lot of water coming down at the moment.

Adventure!

Today is a national holiday, El Pilar, and the trees are beginning to turn. We took our old, recently repaired Ford Escort to Zuriza in the western end of the Aragonese Pyrenees. It was lovely. The beech trees in the valley were beginning to change,

we walked for some time and then drove down to a place called Borda Arracona where we ate a delicious dinner of  "migas" - breadcrumbs fried in lamb suet (not for eating more than once a year) salad, then for some wild boar stew, lamb chops or leg of lamb, washed down with red wine. 

migas a la pastora

This was on the wall above my head.

Up to this point everything was great. Andrés, who had only drunk water started to drive home. It was about four o'clock. We were going along the picturesque Foz de Biniés when the car died. Rafa and Andrés went for help; there was no phone signal there at all. David put up the warning triangles and we waited. A car stopped and we asked the occupants to pick up the others and take them to somewhere with a phone. An hour later a towtruck arrived and rescued us. Rafa and Andrés had been taken to the Guardia Civil in Ansó, where they rang the insurance, who sent the tow truck and ordered a taxi which picked us all up from the Cuardia Civil and took us home. What a day! Monday, back to the Ford Garage.

Trip to England

Broken pier in Brighton

"Hang on lads, I've got an idea" at the De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea

The Pyrenees on the way home

It was raining when I arrived on Sunday 23rd September. It was raining when I left Ringmer on Monday 1st October. It rained most of the week I was in England. Saturday was sunny and Sunday it didn't rain. The rest of the time it was mild and wet.