Onions & Carrots

This morning we decided that we needed to do some more work on the vegetable patch. We had dug an area over a week or so ago and planted some lettuce plants in but we had to dig some more as our friend Sheila had got us a whole load of onion plants that needed to go in the ground pretty quickly. So we dug two patches over either side of where we had planted the lettuce and pulled out all the weeds and started to plant the onions. We planted the onions in alternate rows and interspersed them with rows of carrots. The idea behind this is that having the two plants growing side by side will confuse the bugs and pests. The green bush you can see amongst the onions and carrots and lettuce is a thyme bush.

Our vegtable patch

Helen in happy mood

On other fronts we have sorted out where we need to put all the electrical sockets and switches and I will start putting it all in over the next few weeks. The steps are moving forward with the lower step now just requiring a final top coat of concrete to complete. The van import is moving slowly but should be sorted soon. We have some more furniture turning up tomorrow, one item is a new mattress as the current one we are using is not very comfortable at all hopefully with the new one we will sleep better. I also have a desk and office chair turning up.

A walk on the wild side

Due to feeling a bit down (well to be honest I for one have been feeling very down for the last few days) we decided to have a day off from work or thinking about work on the house. As we live next to one of the Island walking routes, we felt that it was time that we try the walk out. Now this walk is one of the original donkey tracks connecting the villages on the island, it runs down the ridge (lomo) that we live on and then down in to the branco between Franceses and Gallegos. it is about 2Km from our house to the bottom of the branco and drops around 600m. It took us around 1 hour to get down to the bottom of the branco via some fantastic views. at one point the path arrives at the edge of a cliff over looking the sea some 400M high.
One goal of the work was to see if we could get to the sea unfortunately we could not, we managed to get within 50m of it but due to a 6 or 7M drop in the river bead we could not get any closer.
The walk back up nearly killed us both...

20 20 vision

The only 20 20 vision we have is hindsight and at the moment that is rather depressing.
Yesterday we finally got an Internet connection, we can not get a phone line at the moment and if we could it would not support ADSL. The local town hall provide a wifi Internet service based on line of sight systems and ofcorce we don't have line of sight to the local transmitter.. (mind you we have not inquired about it). So we decided to go with a 3G USB modem, but the one we got will not do Internet sharing (explicitly stops it) also it appears we don't have a 3G signal at this end of the island. If only we have asked more questions or more to the point not rushed getting the system we may have got something that would work better but we are now stuck with what we have. It will do for now though.
Looking back we did not plan the move out here very well, we brought with us lots of things that we are not going to use for many months and have shipped things that we need now. Also due to over loading the van we lost things that we now need. I do wonder if Driving down was the best solution, as we have to import the van and that is tending to be more of a problem that we thought.
The thing with hindsight is that it is perfect. but we don't have a time machine to go back and change the things we have done wrong so we have to cope with the mistakes and try not to make more. One bit of advice to others thinking of doing something like this - take some time and get the plans right and ask the right questions..

Fun With Satilites

As Theresa said in an earlier post, we now have a limited satellite system, limited as all we can pick up is a few channels - mostly Sky news and the BBCi streams, but the idea was so that we could listen to Radio 2 which we can receive so it seems to be for filing its purpose...
Having never used a satellite before we first thought that the system was not working as we could not receive a thing.. it was only after many hours and getting a second LNB (as I thought that I have damaged the first one) that I found that the pointing of the dish is very sensitive.
The first night we have a simple system with the dish (a 1m thing that Theresa has christened Jodrel bank junior) siting on two breeze blocks. This worked OK except that the dish kept blowing over. Now it is mounted on the pole that holds the washing line up, better but as the pole is not fixed that well the dish can rotate a bit so it is OK for one Astra satellite but not that good for the other one... which is why we have limited stations.

But having access to Radio 2 has helped a lot to over come some of the feelings of isolation we were having.. Some would say why come to La Palma and then cry out for British Radio.. Well two reasons; firstly our Spanish is not that good so it is very difficult to listen to Spanish radio (and TV) and secondly, the Spanish Radio station we like is not available at our end of the island. The only radio that we can receive does not have a strong signal and keeps fading out or being swamped by Portuguese radio from Madeira.

Where does the postman call

Two days a go I put up a post box, on the understanding that the postman comes up the pista (steep road) that our house is on. But then some one stopped to talk to us as we walked along the road it would appear that he was the local postman (or one of them) no uniform and no official transport (just a clapped out car). he does not go up the pista so the box was no good outside the house - we could not quite workout if the box should be placed at the bottom by the half oil drum or that the half oil drum was the post box... So now I have taken the box down and we don't now what to do, collect the mail from the oil drum, though I think others may pick it up and distribute it as they go up the hill, or put up our box (or a bigger one) at the bottom of the hill. We will have to wait and see on that one...

More work done on the steps this morning, ok some of the drains are in and a few more rocks have been put on other rocks, the main thing that helped was, as we now have power I could used the cement mixer so mixing the stuff was not so bad but I still have to lug it up to the steps.. Also the old cement mixer is a bit on the decrepit side, it works ok but you have to unplug it to turn it off as the switch does not seem to work at all. The mixer also seems to be firmly fixed in its current location, behind a nice lily...

The Lord Said let there be light.....

Today was a monumental day for us. We were a Sheila's this morning after we had been to town to drop some more paperwork off at the customs agent who is dealing with the car import. while we were there we received a phone call from the engineer who was coming to the house to fit our meter. So Sheila gave him directions to find our place. After lunch at Sheila's we did a little shopping and headed home a low and behold there on the outside of our house was a brand new electric meter. So after a quick check we switched on the circuit breakers and confirmed, YES we have electricity!!!!!!!!!!

After one short false start where I had not quite wired one socket correctly (OK the wire was hanging out) we confirmed that all the wiring I had done was OK and we now have one mains powered light and a couple of sockets. It's not much but it does mean we can now have a fridge which will make a large difference to the shopping.

On another front Helen has managed to get the satellite up and running so we now have Radio2 playing in the back ground as I am writing this.

Paperwork and other items

This morning we went to the customs office to start the process of importing the car over to Spanish plates. However as we were going through the paperwork we got to a certain point where it appears as we brought the car less than six months before we brought it into the country we couldn't do it directly through the customs office but instead would have to go via a customs agent. So we trailed across to the harbour where one of the agents is, A few bits of paperwork later and things are staring to move. I need to get a few documents, and it may cost us a little more but it is in progress.

On the other front we have also spoken to the electric company and opened our account, now all we have to do is wait for the phone call to tell us when they are going to connect us.

The Work continues

More work on the steps completed today, I am not sure if my rock wall building is of local standards but I hope that it will stay up. I started to mark out the bottom part of the step that needs to be brought up to the level of the current entrance way. The plan is to have it as a curve from the gate. This is a bit hit and miss at the moment as I am making the design up as I go along.. partly due to the start of a wall that had been placed there by Manolar.

Theresa got the 12 lights in our bedroom wired up to the main battery today, putting the junction box in the wall for the 12v lighting was a bit of a mess as rubble stone walls are quite hard to channel out.

The wall before we started hacking about

You have to dig out several stones (hoping that the wall does not fall down) and then replace them with lashings of concrete.

And here you have me trying to fill in the new hole

Probably not the best way as these walls are damp in the center, and should be allowed to breath. we will need to put the wiring in the box in a few days once the cement has set. Also need to repair the hole in the floor.

I also put a coat of paint on the walls in the loo / shower, needs another coat and in a few places the white wash scrubbing off the walls but it has made a difference.
We are at Sheila's tomorrow - another try to get the electric on...

When The neighbours come calling

What a start to April, at 2:30 this morning one of the neighbours, slightly worse for drink, came calling (well hammering on the door was more like it). At first I thought that he was worried due to the smell of smoke coming from the house after the problems we had had with the cooking fire last night. But No he was asking if we have got the electric on yet. Well that is what we think he was after But at 2:30 in the morning!!!! we managed to get rid of him after a bout 10 to 20 minutes and then tried to get back to sleep. The hole thing had quite shaken both of us.

We were due to go to Sheilas in the morning and could not get out of the house quick enough this morning. I just hope that this was a one off occurrence, because I feel a hole lot more like just going back to the UK today and I think that Theresa does a bit as well.

Power from the Sun, and too much smoke

A lot done today, Solar panel is up, its a bit of a Heath Robinson affair but seems to function well, I am not sure of the state of the battery that we have borrowed from Carlos but it seems to be holding up well. We have to carry the battery down from the roof each morning and back up in the evening but we can now charge it here
We also set up the weather station, no connection to a computer at the moment - that will have to wait until we have mains power (our little 60W panel works well but does not do wonders).

We had one minor problem tonight, cooking dinner on the fire ended up filling the house with smoke. It seems that cooking on an open cooking fire is not as simple as it seems. ( first we could not get it started now when it is going it fills the place with smoke. Have we done the right this in coming here? In a way I want to go home...

We have arived, mostly

Well we are here - for better or worse.
The trip down was rather fought with problems.
first we were stopped by the French Police for being over loaded. 13% in fact, around 300Kg. The result of this was that we had to pay a fine of 150 Eros. and to stop us getting stopped a gain we decided (or should I say I decided) that we had to lighten our load. We had thought that we could possibly hire a car and then move some of the load to the other car (well 100Kg would move just having one driver in each car).. But we decided that that was not a good option as most of the time we would be apart. So ther result was that we dumped quite a bit of stuff - most of the heavy bits, two UPSes one 75A/h battery and other assorted heavy bits. The van handled a lot better afterworlds but some of the stuff that was dumped will never be replaced.

The rest of the trip we were very nervous and on edge incase we were stopped again. This also messed up the Berther cam as I did not feel happy about running the cam with the police there...

We came over the pernees in a blizzard... it looks very pretty when we could see but most of the time all we could see was white all around and the back of the truck in frunt of us.

The next thing that went wrong was that the ferry was 11 hours late, the result of that was that we missed the connecting ferry and had to stay two nights in Tenerife...

We did manage to pick up Tabby ok.. but the ferry trip was not that enjoyerble for her, she was sick and messed her box so we had to clean it out which ment that although I was not feeling too sea sick at the start, atfter that I was.

We arived in La Palma at 10:30 feeling a bit off and very tired and frased. Sheila meet usjust out side the port and haded over the keys, she has very kindly made the bed and got some food in for us. The last 45Km of the trip were done in darkness and we arived at our new home at arond 11:30, but our trubles with Berther were not over, She was still too over loaded and would not go up the pester (steep road) to our home so we parked her on the road at the bottom and went o bed..

This morning we had to carry half the load out of Berther up to the house, befor we could get her up the pester, unloading took around 2 hours and a lot of energy. The rest of the day had been tken up with getting bits we need.

The fun this evning was trying to get the fire alight so that we could cook our dinner. The problem was that we did not have much kinding and mst of the wood was damp. But with the help of a air pump for the matrice we got it going, some time resbling a small blast fernice. Just the batries in the air pump were giving out (and our pashence) the fire desided to catch and we did have supper.

Also managed to get the 12v lights up today, runnig off of a car battry borowed from Calos.

The Long and Winding Road

As I sit here in a hotel room in Sevilla, I'm thinking back over what has been a very eventful and stressful 5 days. Last Sunday we left our house in London and headed out on the road. Since we left the UK on the Monday morning we been pulled over and fined by the gendarme, Driven over mountain passes in snow blizzards. Crossed several international boarders. Looking back on it now it has been a lot more of a challenge than I had originally thought, and I have made several mistakes along the way the biggest was overloading the car in the first place. This lead to the first of our problems, We had made a quick coffee stop, and as we were leaving the service area we were pulled over by a couple of Gendarme. After looking in the back and seeing that we were full to the top they took up to a weighbridge and then back to there office. At the office they told us we were 300Kg overloaded and that this would be a 135euro fine. We were allowed to continue but later that night we pulled over by a bin and unloaded a number of the heaver items we had in the back of the van. I'm a little annoyed at myself for having to do this as in hindsight we should have shipped more than we did, but were are now down to a more acceptable weight(I think). Ever since then I have had fits of apoplexy every time I see a police car or a police officer, I am so worried about being pulled over again and still being over weight, But if we do at this point we can just post stuff to home.


Driving across the mountains in Spain was an experience some times we were driving through complete whiteout conditions, for a while we were following the snow plough up the mountain pass. Several times we came to a compete halt for periods of around 30min, other times we were squeezing by with one wheel on the road and the other on snow. Once the snow had passed and we started to come down on to the plains the scenery started to change to a more familiar Spanish style.

I am a little worried about the drive tomorrow as we have to drive to Cadiz to catch the ferry over to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but the motorcycle Grand Prix is on this weekend at Jerez which is just north of there and there is likely to be large queues on the auto route and a large number of Guardia Civil patrols.

The Road Trip Has Started

Well we made it.... This last week has been hell, Why is it that we ALWAYS get the timing wrong! We had just under two weeks to get sorted out, and we could have done with another week, and a bigger van!
Yesterday we tried to pack the van, and ended up with more stuff that space in the van... So we got up at 6:30 this morning and did it again, but left some non essentials out - like our TV... DVD recorder and still the van is packed solid, most of it packed very well apart from one bag of tea which keeps slipping out and hitting me on the head.
I will admit that it has been a very trying last few days and I have honestly contemplated not going, even this morning after we realised that we still had too much stuff to go into the van, if I had knife to hand I would not have left.
But here we are, 10:00 pm in the Travel inn Folkestone, two hours on the road behind us and no problems (and 8 days ahead of us). Tomorrow we leave England on the 10:50am EuroTunnel service, and then the real adventure begins.
To Any of our Friends that we did not get a Chance to say goodbye to, we are sorry but this last week has been too hectic, there is an open invitation to come out and see us, but could you hold off for just a bit so that we can get the Bathroom built.

Oh Arrrrr

We Are Now Officially Farmers..

Yes, we finally signed all the paperwork for the house sale on Friday at 2:15 pm, it ended up being a bit rushed as the notary closed at 2:00 pm and they wanted to go home.... It was a bit of a letdown and we got nothing in return for all the money we handed over, although the house and land was now ours.

As to the farmers bit, today we went to the house to have a celebrational barbecue, original it was just going to be us, Sheila and a friend or two. But as the current owners were still moving out and can only do that on Sundays (they don't live there normally just use it as a bodega on the weekends) we had a very pleasant afternoon with them as well. The guy that we bought the place off of informed us that as we owned the house and land we were now members of the irrigation committee i.e officially classed as farmers ..... and it seems that farmers and local people seem to be a dieing breed at the moment. The two houses next to ours are empty and possibly up for sale so we are not over looked at the moment...

Well although the place is more of a building site than a house, it is our building site.. and we are carrying on a good local tradition. The guys farther built the first one room house on the land in the 1950's and then went to Venezuela to work and earn money to pay for the place, his wife was left with one son (the seller) of about 7 and a sick 2 year old, a pig , a cow and some goats. She then built the kitchen and another room on to the house. While collecting water from a spring and fire wood and bedding each day.

This house has some very interesting history and I hope that we don't destroy it...

It's Fiesta Time

No we have not signed for the house but its carnival so everything is shut.
If all goes well we should be signing the end of this week .. If all the parties can get together. In the mean time I have been putting the floor plan of the house into Autocad and doing some rough designs for the kitchen and bathroom.

Current Layout of the House

The dimensions were taken from a photo of a drawing the seller did. I am not quite sure that they are completely correct.
Bed Room 1 is mostly done - just a coat of paint on the walls and ceiling and the windows. The wooden floor needs sanding and vanishing but compared to the rest of the house it is virtually done.
The Dinning Hall (named as it is both a hall between all the rooms and the dinning room) needs quite bit done to it including rendering the walls and possibly the ceiling and quite a few other bits.

The second Bed Room (Temporary office) and living room need a few things done but I can not remember much of there state at the moment.

As to the kitchen and new Bathroom, the current plan is to covert the water tank into the bathroom and remodel the kitchen as shown below:

Ya ha llegado mi dinero?

Well things on the house front are moving... Slowly.

But we do have some good news. The documents are with the notary who is now preparing the sale contract. The only slight snag is that the house is owned by 3 people as it was left to them as an inheritance, so there is the issue of how the proceeds are split. But this will only delay things a week as we just need to get everybody together at the same time to sign.

The other good news is that we now have access to the Spanish bank over the Internet, after much swearing and cursing, and discovering that it doesn't work in Firefox. This has also meant we are now able to confirm that the money has arrived from the UK and is happily sitting in our account.

Numero de Identidad de Extranjeros

Today we went into town to collect our Numero de Identidad de Extranjeros or N.I.E as it is know. This is your Spanish identity number. You need this number to open a bank account, buy a house or car, to work and pay socal security. So as you can see getting this number is a big thing. To get this number you have to go to a Extranjeros department at a national police station with your passport and a completed form (Plus Copies), then if you are lucky about 7 to 10 days later you can go and collect your number. So having picked the number up we went off to the bank to open account. So we now have a bank account and with any luck the money should be on it's way from the UK.

At Last ..... A House

Or is it a building site?

Well we could not afford much and the first place we looked at has gone up from 79,000 to 103,000. This place was not on our list as the web advert was not correct when we were drawing up the list , but after our second chose in Franceses was sold and the 3rd place was soooooo small we had a look at this one..
The house is a square concrete (and probably rubble) block with windows... Built in to the side of a hill (Like most places on La Palma). The entrance to the place is at the rear from a concrete road, with a parking space (which is higher than the roof).
All the living space is on the top floor with two small storage rooms below.
The living space consists of 3 rooms and a large hallway that doubles as a dining room ( or is that a small dining room that doubles as a hallway).
The Kitchen is almost from the last century (though I don't think the house is that old) and one of the features that Theresa (and I ) like, as it has an open fire come barbecue to cook over. It looks like the kitchen was a later addition to the house but did not have direct access to the rest of the place. So one seems to have been made! But is in need of finishing.
It looks like you enter the kitchen via a tunnel... We are thinking of a nice arched opening here... I like arches!

There is one room that is mostly finished and looks very nice, basic but nice. It's the main bedroom so at least we can sleep in some comfort.
The rest of the rooms need some work - from fixing the rendering between the beams to rendering the walls and putting down floor tiles.
Why buy the place I here you say? well at €62,000 around £40,000 its cheep and well within our budget. Also it has some land (around 1150 to 1500 M² depending on who you talk to) divided up into terraces which will be adequate for our needs. But mainly, although you may think us mad, we like the place.

Some of the vines on the land

A view of the entrance

Where it is on La Plama

Sold, Rejected and Dejected

Things of the house hunting front are going a little slowly. There are two main reasons for this. The first being the fact that were are on La Palma and things tend to happen more slowly here, and the other is the fact that we have both been under the weather with a very nasty bug that has been doing the rounds on the island. This has left us with very sore throats and feeling very run down.

But the house front is going ahead slowly, we have found out that our second choice house has been sold.

Second choice house which has been sold

Also we had a look round the outside of another house and discovered that it was just going to be far to small and require far to much work in order to get anywhere near what we would need.

Nice but just far to small

So we have now viewed 4 houses and 2 of them we can rule out as possibilities. The other one we have seen I am going to keep quite about for now until we have been able to sort out a few things. I promise I will tell all soon.

House #1

Small Finca at the north of the island consisting of 4 buildings and 5 rooms. The main house (if you can call it that) is a typical Canarian Farm (Finca) house with one room down stairs and one room upstairs, built into the side of the hill. There are no stairs on the inside and the upstairs is accessed from the outside (another typical Canarian or Mediterranean thing).
The building in the background is the bathroom (one of the best rooms of the lot) The building next to the main house is the old cheese making building and could now be changed into a small kitchen. The final building is a small single bed room.

The houses are reached down a dirt track, that is about 1 Km long. The drive from the dirt track is about a 35 degree slope and 100M long. At the end of the drive is a flat area just about big enough to turn a car.

My initial thoughts about the place was it is a lot smaller than it looked on the web. Also it looks a bit run down and not well kept. But the location is beautiful with pine, almond, chestnut and fruit trees. The following are what I feel are the good and bad points:

Bad Points

• Some of the buildings have no planing permission - this seems to be not as much of a problem as in the UK.
• Rooms are small but usable, with imagination.
• Electrical fittings need work.
  
• Electric has been cut off and meter removed.
• Layout of the land is not good.
• There is some evidence that a forest fire has been within 100 to 120 m of the house in the past.
• Possible that one of the doors has been forced in the near past.
• Quite a bit of the land needs shoring up (but what do you expect on the side of a hill).
• Will be in the clouds for some of the winter (min temp around 5 deg C)
  

Good Points

• The place is very quite and peaceful - not over looked.
• Is within 10 to 20 minuets walk of the local shop and Bus stop
• Has a lot of promise to become a very personalised place.
• Has a lot of character
• Has established fruit trees, not many but some nice ones.

The funny thing is that although the place did not live up to expectations I kine of like the place and could see myself living there though getting the place up to scratch will take some work and there is the problem with the planing permission.