Trawler Travels: Waiting for spring in the Guadiana

early morning on the Guadiana

Since New Year, we have settled in to our new routine. Up at 7am and prepare for school. Often the river is misty in the mornings, certainly in January/February, when it was still barely daylight as we set off to school. It is always a pleasant trip – motor ashore in the dinghy, walk up past the Chirringuitos beach bar, past the farm with the bouncing lambs and braying donkey, through the archway between two rows of houses, then across the road to school.

local house draped in flowers

After waving the children goodbye, Dave and I had five hours to ourselves. We often start the day with a walk up the hill to the molinos (windmills), where we get a lovely view down over our boat at anchor, or up towards the castle. Then we pick up any groceries we need and bread for lunch (only available in the morning), and head back to the boat.

For several weeks, we spent our ‘school hours’ painting inside the boat. Katie’s cabin, the galley and the sitting area have all had a good sand down and a new coat of paint. Never an easy job while you are living aboard, but it looks much better for having been done. Dave has also been keeping on top of the varnishwork on deck.

winter varnishing in the sun.

The children are both doing well at school, and seem to be taking it in their stride. Katie’s Spanish is much more advanced than Reuben’s, but he has learnt a lot, and is steadily working through his Spanish ‘Lengua’ book at school. Katie would happily stay here for longer, and we did entertain the idea for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be much opportunity to find work here. Both children are missing their friends and Reuben is looking forward to getting back to ‘normal life’ at Topsham school. Of course, Katie will be starting at secondary school in September, so things will be different for her in any case.

There are three other English children in the school, two of whom also live on a boat, so they have become obvious friends – mainly for Katie as they are all girls. Reuben has also made friends with a Spanish boy in his class called Miguel. He came back to the boat once for a play and had us laughing with his antics. He and Reuben seem to play well together, despite having only a basic grasp of each other’s language.

Katie, Hannah, Lily & Katie heading home from school.

Reuben & Miguel playing football

We have also met lots of cruisers here, some based here long-term and some just here for a short visit. All nationalities seem to find their way to the Guadiana – British, Irish, Scottish, French, German, Dutch, it really is a sociable place to spend a winter. We passed many an evening with our French friends Margot and Jeremy, and although sad to see them go, we were pleased for them to be continuing their adventure.

We have been for lots of walks along the river banks; a well-kept footpath leads right down to the sea on both the Spanish and Portuguese sides. Lots of people have bought little plots of land, or ‘fincas’, bordering the river, with either a solid house or a temporary home to live in – we have seen many caravans, wooden cabins and even a horse box! The ground seems to be very fertile, and gardens are full of orange trees, lemon trees, almond and olive trees. Figs, grapes, tomatoes, lettuces and herbs all do well here. We have been the willing recipients of lots of these fruits, and were given one blown-down branch from a lemon tree. Reuben stripped it of its fruits, and counted 52 lemons in total – one for each week of the year!

olives

lemon tree branch

surplus of lemons, limes & oranges

February was Carnival time. The school laid on one Carnival just for the children. Each class was given a theme to dress up as, and several songs to learn- in Spanish! Katie’s class were hippies, and Reuben’s were rockabillies. They paraded through the village, throwing confetti and blowing whistles, stopping twice to perform their songs. At the end, back in the schoolyard, their efforts were rewarded with sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks.

'Rockabillies'

'Hippies'

The town Carnival was the following day, and people could pick their own outfits. We dressed as pirates and tagged along with the parade. Local people had gone to huge efforts to dress up, and act out their group’s speciality. We particularly liked the men dressed as synchronised swimmers, one ‘swam’ on the floor on top of his blown-up lifering! The best-dressed prize went to a group who had made ‘old-age buggies’, with matching outfits, wigs, and even fake legs for all the participants - a huge amount of work. The day ended with drinking and dancing at the salon, which apparently continued until the small hours.

'Ros Ailither' pirate crew

Martina and girls as superheroes

Sanlucar town carnival

loved these baby octopuses!

In March, just as we anticipated the arrival of spring, the mild, sunny days ended and we got three weeks of rain! This coincided with a visit from Mike the Ferryman and Pam. From the moment they arrived, things went a bit wrong. Mike’s ears had ‘popped’ spectacularly on the plane, and he was in so much pain by the time they reached the hotel, that Dave drove them to the local hospital at the bottom of the river. Mike was prescribed painkillers and ear drops and returned to the hotel to rest. After a couple of days and several trips to various hospitals, he seemed to be improving, and we all had hopes of them getting a bit of a holiday after all. Unfortunately, Mike then lost feeling in one side of his face, which ‘dropped’, and what with that and complications with diabetes, he ended up getting admitted to a hospital in Faro.

Dave and Pam spent five days doing the 3- hour round trip to Faro, each time hoping that Mike might be able to come home. This was an exhausting time for everybody, not least because of driving through torrential rain, often in the dark. One day they drove through a severe bout of strong wind and rain and Dave struggled to see anything at all in front of the car. The next day, they found out that a tornado had hit Faro, tearing the roof off a shopping centre, and they must have been hit by the edge of it. Eventually, the insurance company found Pam a hotel in Faro, until they could fly her and Mike home with a nurse on hand. He has been in the RD&E since flying back, but I am glad to report that he has now returned home with Pam and we hope he makes a full recovery soon.

a brief outing for Mike & Pam in Alcutim

Despite the changeable weather, we managed to get some use out of the hire car. We visited Mike & Pam in Faro, and stopped off on the way back for tea and cakes at the tourist town of Tavira. We had a day trip to Castro Marim, near the bottom of the river Guadiana, and wandered inside the old castle walls, with its creepy room of medieval torture implements and timeless views over hundreds of salt pans.

salt mountains

enjoying the sun in Tavira

We drove north to Mertola, an important river town dating back to Classical Antiquity. Another imposing castle looks down over the river and the town, with its rows of tiny, colourful houses and orange tiled roofs cascading down the hill. Next to the castle stands a lovely vaulted church that used to be a mosque when the town was under Moorish rule in medieval times.

Mertola

orange tiled roofs of Mertola

Mertola church & castle

vaulted ceilings of Mertola church

On the Spanish side, we drove up to the Sao Domingo mining village. The site was originally mined for gold and silver by the Romans, then left untouched until the 1850s, when copper was needed for the Industrial Revolution. A Cornish mining company took charge for over a hundred years until its closure in 1966. They constructed a brand new shipping port at Pomerão and 11 miles of railway to transport ore there from the mines. They built rows of mining cottages for their workers, and even imported Cornish earth to the cemetery so miners could be buried in Cornish soil!

Apart from the many brick buildings and towers (many of which had stork nests on the top!), the most impressive thing at the mines was the leftover open cast pit, which now holds a ‘red lake’ of acidic sulphurous water. I’m sure it wouldn’t do you any good to swim in, but it was an extraordinary sight to walk around the edge!

abandoned mine buildings

the 'red lake'

weird colours of the red lake

We walked a couple of miles along the Pomerão end of the old railway track. Remnants of the old wooden sleepers are still there, although the metal tracks have long gone. What interested us were the railway tunnels, and specifically the bats that lived within them. We walked through five tunnels, armed with a big torch and wellies, and were rewarded with incredible sightings of over two or three hundred bats. They were only tiny, and most were hanging singly or in twos from the ceiling. One tunnel in particular had several clusters of bats all huddled close together, the largest one must have contained nearly two hundred bats together. In the smaller service tunnels off to the side, the roof was very low and we came almost face-to-face with a couple of these sleeping bats! Reuben was delighted, as these are one of his favourite animals. We were very careful not to touch or disturb them, and made as little noise as possible.

old railway sleepers

old railway tunnels

sleeping bats up close

a huddle of bats

Our final excursion with the car was a longer one – five hours drive east to Granada, and up the mountains to the Sierra Nevada ski station. After seeing all the lovely Topsham-in-the-snow pictures, we couldn’t resist the opportunity for the children to find a little snow of their own, and a chance to try out skiing. We were only there for two days but, after an hour’s ski tuition, Katie & Reuben were happily snowploughing down all the green slopes and had to be dragged away at the end of the day. A great experience, and loads of snow! While we had had unusual amounts of rain on the river, it had been falling as snow on the mountains, and cars were literally buried at the roadsides in the resort!

buried car!

Sierra Nevada ski resort

Reuben on our snowy balcony

on the slopes!

Loving the icicles!

The good news about all the rain is that everything has bloomed. The once-dry ground is now covered with a lush covering of green grass and dotted with flowers. It’s lovely.

Spring has arrived in the Guadiana!