Spain - Part 1

View from the villa

Can't believe we've been here 6 days already - so glad we decided to make this a longer holiday, only just beginning to relax!

So we got here ok, Tom was impeccably behaved, especially as we had to get up at 3am to get the flight here.  He was so shattered by the time we got on the plane that he slept for the first hour, which was fab.  He was just beginning to get fidgety and bored when the plane descended so all in all, good timing.

We arrived in a soggy, rainy Spain????!!!!!  Never seen weather like it here before.  Torrential rain, and not all that warm, in fact the weather was better in Birmingham (how often can you say that?)  Anyhow, we picked up our luggage and car and found the nearest supermarket to get some groceries and lunch.  Then off to Frigiliana to meet Eddie in a pub who was going to show us where our villa was.  It all sounded a little dodgy, until we got here, down some very minor tracks - there was no way we would have found it on our own.

The villa was nice, and the view - well, we couldn't really say, it was still hammering it down with rain.  In fact it rained just until the sun went down, when finally it cleared and we saw some mountains - looks good.

Galloping in Nerja

On Tuesday, it dawned clear - hurray.  We got up too early though, the sun doesn't rise until 8.30 so we had breakfast in the dark, the cold and dark - no heaters in the villa - not a great start to a summer's holiday!  The sun finally got to us around 9.30 so we went outside to greet it and warm up.  The villa is in a stunning location, in the midst of mountains, and overlooking the sea (about 8km away).  We decided to go into Frigiliana (Frig for short) for a walk around and to get some more provisions (we were out of beer already).  First stop was the children's play area for Tom (from which he saw a green 'Petit Train' oh dear), we managed to drag him away and then went in search for the Spar that Matt had seen on Google Earth.  Google Earth was out of date, there isn't a Spar!  By now it was late, I found a little grocery store and managed to stock up on beer and bread.  We then found ourselves by Balcon de Frigiliana, which had been recommended to us by some friends, as it was getting on for 2pm we thought we might as well try it out.  Had a lovely meal.  Tom did really well too.  He had been miserable as anything this morning - whinging, whining etc, but he had a very disrupted day yesterday and hadn't eaten much.  As soon as we sat down at the table he demanded bread and ate 4 slices of it as well as most of the food we gave him to try out.  After that he was delightful: ran and skipped all the way back to the car which, to be fair, was some distance away.  Came home, Tom went to bed, the weather clouded over,  so we stayed in for the rest of the day, although managed some time to play around the pool - splashing balls into the pool is the best game in the world.

Wednesday it dawned clear again so we headed into Nerja.  Went to the Balcon de Europa at the heart of the old town and which looks over the sea.  Was a very pleasant town, we strolled around the old parts, got ourselves some snacks for lunch and then some very lovely ice cream.  It was beginning to cloud over, so we headed home, Tom went for a nap and we chilled out.  It was cloudy and dreary for the rest of the day unfortunately, once again we stayed in and made our own fun, mainly around balls and the pool.

'Enjoying' the hot springs

Thursday it rained, rained, rained and rained.  Not gentle rain, but full on heavy torrential stormy rain!  Not great, so we decided to go to the caves in Nerja.  We were expecting a couple of stalactites and stalagmites, but no, we got a huge huge cave full of thousands and thousands of stalactites and mites and columns and lots of other formations. Quite simply the best cave system I have ever seen.  There was too much to take in.  Tom was in a good mood and decided to count at the top of his voice every stair he climbed and descended and so gave everyone in the system an English counting lesson (it would have been ok, but quite often he would miss out a couple of numbers, so I'm not sure anyone could have learnt from him!)  When we came out, we were shocked to find clear blue sky and sunshine??!!  We found a nearby play park so Tom had a play whilst we wilted in our jeans and tops.  We decided that as it was so nice, we would grab some food from a supermarket and head back to the villa for lunch.  This we did, but then the clouds closed in on us and before we knew it we had torrential rain again.  This is how it pretty much stayed for the rest of the day.  We ended up playing hide and seek in the villa.  The villa is pretty small with very few hiding places but the game lasted for quite a while - mainly because Tom is really bad at it - not a problem though he really enjoyed it, even if he was bad.  His idea of hiding was to walk in the next room and when we called out 'ready or not' he would come and find us.  We have some way to go with that!

In Alhama de Granada

Friday, hurray, clear blue sky and a weather forecast to say it will be nice for the rest of the day.  We decided to take a day trip and headed to Alhama de Granada where we were told we would find some hot springs.  The drive there was spectacular, up through the mountains, hairpin bends, amazing scenery.  Got to the hot springs with only one wrong turning which was pretty good.  There was a hotel at the Hot Springs, but they charged entrance and seemed to concentrate on therapies (not great with a 2  year old in tow).  However, down by the river there was an outlet for the spring so we headed there.  When we got there, there were 3 very large Finnish women and about 5 Arabic men, the men (bar 1) headed out almost immediately and after about 15 minutes the Finnish women left so it was just us and the Arabic man.  Tom really enjoyed himself, he spent most of it climbing onto a rock and jumping off it into our arms and the pool - great fun.  If the other man wasn't there he would have had a wonderful time splashing etc, but we had to reign him in - a spa is about relaxing not playing after all.  We must have spent a good hour there, before we dragged ourselves out, got changed and then headed back into the town for some lunch.  We have managed to adjust ourselves to Spanish time, so we get up around 9am, have lunch around 2pm, Tom naps around 3 to 5pm, we have dinner at 7pm and Tom's in bed for about 8 / 8.30pm.  This means that we have lunch at a typically Spanish time and not the English time of 12 which makes life easier for using restaurants etc.

Chocolate ice cream - the aftermath

We found a nice Plaza for lunch, Tom did well again enjoying calamari and chips and nearly all of my egg custard pudding.  We then went for a wander - really nice, ancient old town - proper Spanish set on the side of a gorge.  Had a really nice feel to it, before heading back.  Got back to sunshine - yahoo, so spent most of the afternoon playing around the pool - Tom decided that being naked was best and happily played all afternoon as such.  We have brought his potty with us and have been having nappy off time in the afternoon to see if we could train him.  We haven't had much success yet - he either holds it in or wees in situ (ie not on the potty).  On Wednesday he held it in all afternoon which meant that he woke me up at 2am on Thursday morning with a full nappy, I've not had to change his nappy at night time for over a year! We will keep trying though.  In the evening we had a bbq, during which we were joined by 2 cats - not to Tom's liking, so in the end we had to give up and eat inside.

Saturday, woke up to another clear and sunny day - big smiles all round.  After breakfast we decided to go into Frig to do some more exploring.  This time we went into the old part of the village - and what a pretty village it is too.  Ancient, narrow, clean, cobbled streets with whitewashed buildings either side - looks amazing with a deep blue sky above.  We had a good amble along, looking in shops and taking in the scene.  One small boy though was very keen to get to the square so he could have a ride on the green train - we couldn't deny him this twice, so on we got.  The driver was good enough to let Tom get in the cab for a photo and to ring the bell - but Tom did his shy thing and refused (not a problem, I got to ring the bell instead!)  We did a circuit of the new town in the train and then headed back into the old town for lunch.

Frigiliana Old Town

Found a tapas bar, sat down to find the owner was English and had a huge stack of toys for little ones to play with.  So Tom ended up with a huge bag of lego and very content he was too.  We had a selection of Tapas, all very nice, which Tom ate as well without too much encouragement and then headed back to the car and then the Villa.  In the afternoon, Tom had nappy off time as usual and today he used the potty not once, not twice, but three times and no accidents - wow!  We were so proud of him as he was of himself.  Just need to build on it now.  It was a lovely hot afternoon - yahoooo, Matt and I even managed to get ourselves into the pool - which was very brave as believe me it was FREEZING - the result of too many cold days.

Biker Tom

At last. Tom is now finally tall enough to be able to manoeuvre his Kiddimoto balance bike properly. We made some progress on the old railway line at Ironbridge yesterday, but he made a giant leap forward today. We went to the Forestry Commission land at Haughmond Hill, which has lots of nice flat paths, and he rode his little heart out. We think he probably rode it between 1.5 and 2 miles altogether. Once he realised that he could balance and that he could get up easily if he dropped it, there was no stopping it. He actually preferred going "off road" into the undergrowth than ride along the boring old path. I did point out that his Triumph Daytona is a track racing bike, not a motocrosser, but he was having none of it. The video clip gives you a good idea of how well he can ride now.

Anyway, we're off to Spain tomorrow morning, but we're taking the MacBook, so we should be able to blog while we're away.

Sick Boy

Sorry didn't take any photos this week
This one is 2 weeks old

We didn't have a very interesting weekend.  We took Tom to the barber on Saturday morning and had to cope with a full-on meltdown from him - snot and goo everywhere, which meant that he didn't end up with the smartest of haircuts - all his own fault.

Tom wasn't very well this weekend, he got a temperature on Saturday afternoon and ended up striped and feeling sorry for himeself.

Sunday he was better, we did the Coalbrookdale Watercourses walk followed by lunch at the Greenwood centre.  The walk wasn't completely fun, Tom whinged his way round but did manage it by himself.  We found a Geo-cache box under one of the bridges which would have been fun, except it coincided with Tom hitting his Dad on his glasses which resulted in shouting (Dad) and crying (Tom).

We went out on Sunday night - went to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which was good.

That's about it.

Pink Lizard Cake

Oh, Tom is much better now and managed two wees yesterday, one on the potty and another on the loo - huge smiles all round.

 I haven't put up much about cakes recently, mainly because I have been so busy with them that I haven't had any spare time to blog about them.  Business seems to be going well, unfortunately I am having to turn away all potential wedding bookings due to the house being on the market, apart from that all is ok.

Magazine where you can find 5 of my cakes

Here's my latest creation - a cake shaped to look like a favourite pink lizard soft toy a 1 year old girl has.  Was fun and very big.

Almost forgot - some of my cakes got published in a cake magazine this month - I was very excited.

Trains and bikes

Where to stash naughty boys

We've had an unseasonal 3-day weekend as I decided to take Friday off so that we could all go and play trains on the Severn Valley Railway without the weekend hordes in attendance - a good decision as it turned out. The SVR had its annual diesel gala and ran a huge number of trains on the day (9.00am until after 11.00pm), and we counted at least 13 preserved diesel locomotives in use, some of which were in amazing condition given their age. A huge green engine called "Atlantic Conveyor" won our prize for being "Wow Train" of the day. There wasn't a speck of dust on it, inside and out - a real credit to whoever looks after it. We kept remarking that Tom's grandfathers would probably have enjoyed the day too.

"Western Courier"

Tom kept going very well all day -  the only slight panic coming when the (extremely loud) exhaust note of "Western Courier" (big maroon engine in photo) spooked him. Otherwise, he spent most of the day pointing shouting "train", "coach" or "truck" as appropriate. It was also quite a good exercise in getting him to learn his colours as the engines and coaches came in a real variety of shades. We had regular trips to the buffet to keep ourselves fed and watered (it's hard work, this playing on trains). As is often the case on days like this, he was asleep within a minute of getting in the car to come home. Not much doubt about what he was dreaming about on Friday night.

"Defiance"

Given what an exciting time we all had on Friday (especially Nik, who went out drinking with pals in Ironbridge in the evening) and the fact that the weather forecast had (correctly) predicted a nasty day, we decided to have a quiet Saturday. We headed into Wellington so that Nik could stock up with cake ribbons at the market. We made a fundamental error by walking through Wellington station and not hanging around long enough to see a train - cue grumpiness, crying and a refusal to walk from you-know-who. We eventually convinced him to be a bit less petulant, ran various errands, had an early lunch in the pub and drove home via Wylie & Holland, my local motorbike dealer. It's normally a bustling, lively place full of bikes of every kind, but the showroom looked terribly bare and lifeless this time. Perhaps the recession has hit them. If so, I hope they manage to weather the storm - I've always had excellent service there and I do like drooling over all the new Triumphs in there. Nik was out babysitting Mae (Tom's girlfriend) in the evening, so I had a quiet evening in - sadly, not even an old cat for company these days.

Today looked like being a nicer day, so we decided to get some fresh air at Attingham Park - our nearest NT property. There's a good playground that Tom always enjoys charging round and we thought it was high time he got to grips with his Triumph Daytona balance bike that we got him last Christmas. Up to now, he's been a bit scared of it as it (obviously) falls over when he lets go of the handlebars. So, we allowed him to get his courage up in the playground, which he did to excess as you can see from the video - I've never seen him so dizzy. We must have been in there for almost an hour, but it worked, because as we took a stroll through the woodland walk, he finally realised that riding a bike is great fun. We still had to hold the back of the bike, but he did all the steering himself and kept going for long stretches - maybe 100 yards at a time - grinning from ear to ear. So, a great success all in all. We now need to take the bike with us when we go out, as frequent practice should cement his new-found ability and enthusiasm.
We had a quick lunch at Sam's Cafe at Long Lane, our greasy spoon of choice. Tom demolished a sausage sandwich (smothered in ketchup), but Nik and I held back as we're going out for dinner at the excellent Miller & Carter in Wolverhampton tonight - I recently hit another work-related milestone, so this is our treat for reaching it.

Weekend away

Wow!  What beautiful weather we have enjoyed this week - in the high 20s, deep blue sky and sunshine

The Manor House, Eardisland

On Friday we headed down to the very picturesque village Eardisland in Herefordshire to meet up with the Chester Shell crew who we enjoyed a nice weekend with last year (we seem to have been accepted into the crowd).  Sara had found a gorgeous black and white manor house in the centre of the village for us to lodge in.  12 bedrooms, huge gardens, hot tub and very comfortable.  We made ourselves at home, met Jessica (Sara's new baby - who is 9 months old), very cute.  Before too long Maggie, Tamsin and Jenny turned up with Lisa.  We thought that Tom and Tamsin would want to play with each other again (as it was only 3 weeks ago they last saw each other), but Tom was too shy and Tamsin too full of energy.  Nevermind, we found Tom some curry and gave him dinner which he gulped down.

He ran around the house enough to accept going to bed without any trouble (phew) so we had a good relaxing evening eating curry with the 20 others in the party.

Saturday we went to the local National Trust property, Berrington Hall, it was ridiculously hot!  Had to put suncream and sun hats on.  We had a little look round the property and a picnic with the others under a tree, but then decided to go back to the house - Tom didn't sleep very well on Friday night (he was in the same room as us) and was grumpy.  So, we put him down for a nap and then went for a dip in the hot tub (which would have been relaxing if we hadn't had to share it with 3 excited little girls)  Oh well, they seemed to enjoy it.

We lazed around in the afternoon playing in the garden (there was a trampoline in the garden which Tom enjoyed playing on as long as no-one else was on it and he wasn't made to jump on it!)  The men then set the bbqs alight whilst we did bath and bedtime with Tom.  By the time we came down, food was ready which was fab.  We then had a relaxing evening before retiring to our wonderfully comfortable beds.

Sunday we had a lazy morning including two dips with Tom in the hot tub which he loved before heading back.

Nik & Tom by the River Arrow

We didn't really do that much this weekend, but it was nice to be somewhere different with nice people and very good for Tom to be surrounded by so many people - as is usual, he just began to relax with everyone as we left on Sunday.  He did do quite well though during the weekend, I on purpose took a back step and tried to back out of playing with him to try to get him to play either with himself or the other children - there were plenty of them and they were all willing to play with him, but a little too rough for his liking.  Maybe next year he will be big enough and confident enough to play with them.


Oh today he showed signs of wanting to brush his teeth rather than just chewing his toothbrush:0)