Wednesday September 22^nd

As I write this we are driving to Denia from Vejer. We left the house about 10.30 this morning.Almeria is a dry desert like place spoilt by the “sea of plastic” under which they are growing lots of tasteless fruit and vegetables which fill our supermarket shelves in UK. It is sad to see nothing but white plastic for miles.

We have been very busy over the last few days. We have had our front door totally revamped by the fabulous Jaime who I wish lived in Baildon and could do all our jobs there. He is quiet, unassuming, and talented his charges are always reasonable and he knows exactly what he is doing. The door from the inside (from the patio) looks almost exactly the same as it always did with the enormous bolt but from the outside it looks brand new. After we leave he is coming back to oil and varnish the wood to match the rest of the wood on the windows etc.

Yesterday we went to the Catastro office in Cadiz. We had made an appointment to see a guy called Jose Luis de la Rosa. In his best Spanish Bill endeavoured to explain the fact that we have spent most of the last 5 years trying to get the paper work sorted out on the property in Vejer. We have never understood why it could possibly take so long. Usually people like us never get to the Catasro office it is mainly sorted by solicitors etc but as ours appears to be making no headway whatsoever we decided we would take positive action. When we arrived we had to sit and wait for about half and hour and then we were escorted to Jose by a security guard. As soon as Jose realised we were English he appeared to become very animated and as Bill was explaining the situation he got out a thick tome from a drawer under his desk and we assumed it was some sort of reference material with regard to ancient Spanish properties. How wrong can you be it was a book about the Collingwood family (Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood was second in charge to Nelson) and Jose reckoned to be one of his descendents. He flicked through the book all the time we were talking to him about Casa Angel looking for photos, passages, descriptions of his famous ancestor and pointing out to us the importance of the man.

We kept trying to bring the conversation back to the house. Jose made a few phone calls and kept shaking his head and then pointing to his forehead indicating he was exasperated with the inadequate staff at the other end of the phone. Eventually he said it would all be sorted in about 6 months (we have heard this many times before). I said “Espero que si” he said “Seguro que si” watch this space.

Last night the elusive trio Jeanne, Paul and Bruce turned up. They have kept a very low profile this visit I think this is for a variety of reasons. They told us they want to put up their prices. More expense! I would like to have had one last saunter around Vejer last night but we had loads to do getting the place straight before we left and packing all our gear. We left some of the camping stuff behind, pillows, a bucket, a bowl (the bulky stuff). This doesn’t mean we won’t attempt camping again on our way through France it depends how we feel at the time. Maybe we will find an old caravan and end up towing that back!

Heading for the comfort of Cynthia and Terry’s luxurious villa now ……. Heaven!