Gypsy Dreams in Andalucía!

Hi guys!

I know I am WAY behind with posting, but I have finally arrived in Spain! About a week and a half ago I flew into Granada, the capital of Andalucía, and for the past few days I've been staying in a hostel in Baza, the medium-sized rural Spanish town which I now call home.

The past several days have been filled with getting a bank account, not getting a SIM card, getting a SIM card, getting locked out of the Immigration Department, getting bureaucracied by the Immigration Department, getting thoroughly underwhelmed by the Immigration Department, getting the hell out of the Immigration Department, escaping to Baza, learning Spanish words for apartments, looking at apartments, getting brain-fuzzled in Spanish, dropping into my school, meeting everyone single teacher at my school, getting brain-fuzzled in Spanish again, running out of apartments to look at, setting off the detectors in the supermarket on a daily basis and walking every inch of Baza until you could hire me as a tour guide. Yeah, I've been a bit busy. Also everyone thinks I'm way cool because I'm from Australia and I speak good Spanish - I can only vouch for the veracity of the first part though! Anyway, here's some pictures of Granada and Baza:

Granada Cathedral by night

The street beside the hostel, Granada

The monastery of Saint Geronimo

Plaza de la Merced, Baza

Avenida Jose de Mora, the main street of Baza

An 'earmacy' in Granada

The trees along the roads are orange trees!

Another building in Granada

Plaza Mayor, Baza

An alleyway in Baza

Parque de la Constitucion, Baza

Looking east over Baza

Baza by twilight

Looking southeast from the Baza municipal library

Parque de la Alameda, Baza

This park has real trees and grass!

UPDATE: I have an apartment! Moving next week just before classes start.  I'm now in every sense a settled resident of Spain!

An Gearasdan

It's been four days of absolutely stunning weather here in Fort William, probably the best I've had since I've been in the UK. It's ironic, because the other staff are telling me daily that this is unusual and it's normally horrible and rainy. Four days in, they're looking a little foolish and I'm still laughing!

Welcome to Scotland, folks! I'm aware that I'm egregiously behind with the blogging; I apologise, and I'll make it up when I have time. At the moment I'm in the Highland town of Fort William, known in Gaelic as 'An Gearasdan', or 'The Garrison'. I'm on my second HelpX placement as the daily cleaner at the Fort William Backpackers, and it's pretty fun so far. I'm working with several different people, including Pablo and Javi from Spain, Laureen from France and Reggie the night porter from England, as well as Caroline the manager from Canada, and the work's pretty straightforward - stripping and remaking beds, washing sheets, cleaning the bathrooms and kitchen, vacuuming and mopping.

I'm done by lunchtime while the four-hour cleaners finish up, so I've had afternoons free to do my own thing. My first day I curled up miserably on the couch all day drinking orange juice and jelly while my body pulsated with a flu-like virus I picked up on my travels, but thankfully I made a full recovery overnight and since then I've gone for cruises on Loch Lhinne (Fort William sits on the shore), hiked the substantial Cow Hill behind the hostel, explored ruined Inverlochy Castle and rambled through the town.

Fort William started in the 1600s as a defensive settlement, built by order of and named for William of Orange. It's right at the foot of Ben Nevis, the UK's highest mountain, so a lot of the people here are hikers doing the 6+ hour trek up and down. The whole area is full of beautiful mountains with lochs in the valleys. We had some great, clear views of 'the Ben' from the loch cruise, and again today up Cow Hill of the whole Highland region. Oh, and today I met some Highland cattle! I gave them and their lovely horns a wide berth :)

O'er hill and down dale

Saturday started out with breakfast at the hostel, a full hot English breakfast, to which I did not do due justice. When I had finished my pitiful efforts with the pot of yogurt, I packed my hoodie into my rucksack and headed down into Hartington Village.

With the Hall’s WiFi supposedly on the fritz, I settled down in the Beresford Tea Rooms to use theirs while I devoured a jam-and-cream scone and a cup of tea. When I was done, I ducked over to the general store for some basic provisions and set off on the ‘Pilsbury walk’, a 6-mile round trip from the Hall through the hamlet of Pilsbury.

Though both Hartington and Pilsbury are in dales, the trail between the two went right up on the ridges, so as I headed along the road out of town I kept my eyes on the hills. Past a farm gate the trail turned sharply up the hill, and then my introduction to hiking in the Derbyshire dales began. Between there and Pilsbury the trail ran along the public footpath – that is to say, a thin grass track across farmer’s (often occupied) fields, sometimes marked only by the tread of passing feet, and you just had to pray they’d been human ones.

Then, to pass between all these fields you were invading, were the stiles – made of stone or wood; sometimes a slim opening alongside a farm gate for you to slip through, other times a series of steps jutting out over a wall and down the other side; and frequently coupled with a gate, making an obstacle course as you swung over the too-slim stile, kicked the gate out, then landed on the ground and dodged sideways before the gate hit you on the way back.

It was quite an adventure, and the views were the crowning jewel. Everywhere were green grassy fields, separated by the dark line of drystone walls. It was such a different scene to the countryside I'm used to, and it was beautiful. I was almost back to Hartington when the dark clouds overhead rumbled ominously and little raindrops started hitting the top of my head. I had just decided to leave my tree-shelter and make a run for it when the heavens opened and I got drenched! I got a lot of chuckles as I walked through the village square and stopped into the supermarket to buy dinner before heading back to the hostel to dry off.

Sunday was a bit of a different day. Having discovered the previous day that I couldn't withdraw cash in Hartington,  I caught the first bus of the day into Buxton and found the first ATM I could to replenish my supply of pounds sterling. With an hour to the next bus, I found a supermarket for some quick shopping and some other errands before grabbing some lunch and wandering uphill towards the next bus stop. As I had a little explore, naturally I found a bookshop, and walked out with a couple of secondhand James Herriotts!

When I returned to Hartington the sky was threatening more ominous weather, and I was quite content to hole up in the library (yes, this hostel has a quiet room/library as well as the communal lounge, kids' room and Internet room) with some chocolate and my new books for a few hours. Having been sufficiently lazy for the day, after a soup dinner in the communal kitchen I grabbed a map for a short, easy dales walk from reception and set off about 8 o'clock for an evening stroll. You can guess where this is going - nightfall was much closer than I expected and I found myself at the bottom of Biggin Dale in the dark, with no torch, little food and water and nothing warmer than a light cardigan. So I backtracked, took the second shortcut homewards to avoid the muddy return route in the dark, spooking the whole way, and followed the main tracks back to the hostel, where my hour walk in the twilight was revealed to have been far from it!

Monday I had another big walk planned - the Three Dales Walk, from Hartington through Biggin Dale to Wolvercote Dale and thence to Beresford Dale (and looping around to Hartington). The route went around some of the paths I'd followed the previous night (and some I should have followed, had I not been out so late!), down into the dales and then along the river Dove, where I spotted 11 ducks, one dipper, one unidentified bird and one very fat, happy trout. It was a very nice, green walk, quite different to the walk over the hills two days earlier, and I took my time over it.

Arriving back in Hartington, I settled down at the tea rooms, dying for a scone and a cup of Earl Grey, and after a hour I retired for a nap back in my room. I decided to have dinner at the hostel (they have good food!) and spent my evening, as usual, curled up reading in the library (or sitting at the other end of the hall browsing the wifi, which was not so broken as reported...!)

Hartington church

Looking out over Hartington

Looking down into the dale

Stile!

Crossed the ploughed field without falling in!

Heading out of Pilsbury

'Bridge'!

The Derbyshire dales

Drystone wall!

Hartington

Hills and dales around Hartingon

Hartington from the other side

Over the hills towards Biggin Dale

Biggin Dale

The Dove River

Wolvercote Dale

Somewhere around Beresford

Pilgrimage

Thursday was an interesting day. After having extended my stay by a day the night before and spent the morning in research, I left the hostel at noon on Thursday with a bold and perhaps overambitious plan – hire a car at Heathrow Airport, drive to Bristol to find a WWI soldier’s grave, and drive back in time to see another West End show.

First off, show tickets. The Underground to Leicester Square seemed to take too long as I dashed out of the station, made the snap decision to buy slightly more expensive tickets to my favourite Phantom of the Opera, and then back on the same train in the opposite direction towards Heathrow Airport.

Once there, I stumbled around until I found the shuttle bus to the Europcar depot, the only company I could find that didn’t have a minimum age of 23 to hire cars. That’s not to say it was an easy process. Having first caused a sensation by asking to hire a car without a prior reservation, I then sent the staff into a tizzy by producing a licence that they’d never seen before. On the cusp of being denied a hire because their Big Book of International Licences had no record of my Victorian probationary licence and couldn’t vouch for its validity, I produced my International Driving Permit containing enough rules and restrictions to allay their fears.

Thus it was that around 3 o’clock I pulled out of the Europcar depot and promptly got lost in the rabbit warren around Heathrow Airport. Some astute sign-reading soon put me right and got me onto the M4 without too much difficulty, and then I was on my way to Bristol. Once the initial terror wore off, it was actually kind of fun. Thankfully the English drive on the left, like us, but I turned on the windscreen wipers more than once when I tried to change lanes!

It pretty soon became clear that it was a race against the clock, though. Heathrow is almost an hour from the city by the Underground, and with Phantom starting at 7.30 I needed to get back to Heathrow by 6 if I was to make it. With Bristol only an hour away it seemed like I had time up my sleeve, but with the clock dimishing noticeably and the distance not so much, I was definitely cutting it fine. A quick stop of about five minutes to grab some food and I continued hell-for-leather towards Bristol.

I made the turnoffs in all the right places and found myself, shortly past the impropitious hour of five o'clock, in the tiny hamlet of Leighterton. Almost on the other side of the village, I found the cemetery, where are buried a handful of WWI soldiers from the Australian flying squadrons stationed in Leighterton who never saw a battle are buried. One of them is called William Parkes, and he enlisted in Creswick, Australia.

After 20 minutes or so in the cemetery, during which time all hope of making it back to London at a reasonable hour went out the window, I jumped back in the car for the return trip to London. This time I got all the turnoffs right around Heathrow, managed to get out of penalties for not refuelling the rental car, and didn't even blow a gasket at the London Underground for taking so long to get me back to the city.

I bolted down Haymarket and made it to Her Majesty's Theatre just before the intermission in Phantom. The music, as always, was just wonderful, and one of the ushers has been inspired to study the story further after a soliloquy on why the actor playing Christine missed the crucial moment that defines the tragic love of the story - aka I went full Phantom nerd on someone and they thought it was so beautiful they want to know more.

Today was much less exciting - at noon I left the hostel bound for London Euston station, from whence I took a train north towards Manchester, changing at Stockport for Buxton, where I waited for the next bus that took me along a scenic 45-minute route to Hartington Hall, Jacobean manor and stunning youth hostel in the village of Hartington in the Derbyshire Peak district. After dinner I went for a walk through the town. It's all so classically English - all the stereotypes of stone buildings, multi-coloured flower gardens and pubs named after long-forgotten famous figures take life in this little dales town. It's James Herriott and Pride & Prejudice country, and it's gorgeous.

Go West (End)!

Tuesday I was up early with a plan. I took the usual bus towards the city, got off at Bermondsey Underground and took a train to Canary Wharf, from where I took the Dockland Light Rail to Greenwich - home to the Cutty Sark, the world’s fastest clipper!

The Cutty Sark worked for around 50 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and since the 1960s it’s been in dry dock, with a supporting structure around it to take the weight of the ship. I quickly made my way up through the lower holds to the main deck, where I sought out the ‘Ben’ that I’d been advised could answer all my questions. He did, and we proceeded to shoot the breeze for maybe an hour or two about everything nautical. After he headed off for his lunch break, I watched the professional riggers at work on the main deck and inspected the superstructure underneath, before dashing home to change clothes.

On Sunday, I had discovered the discount theatre box office at Leicester Square, and promptly decided to spoil myself with tickets to a West End show. I was so delighted with the concept that on Monday I decided to extend my stay in London by a night and buy tickets to a second show. Tuesday night was Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games at the Dominion Theatre. I popped out of the Underground at Tottenham Court Road all dressed up and excited. The show was good, though not what I was expecting – instead of simply being a showcase of Irish dancing, they tried to incorporate a storyline as well as singing and other musical elements – but when the chorus got up to dance, my goodness, did they dance!

Today was a quiet day – despite making sure I was out of bed at a reasonable hour, eating breakfast, packing my bags and being downstairs before checkout time, I didn’t leave the hostel for a couple of hours, sitting online trying to plan my adventures. Eventually I heaved my pack on my back and relocated to the hostel where I’d spent my first night in London, which was closer to the West End than my second hostel, which was booked out by this point anyway.

By the time I made it to the hostel it was only half an hour to check-in, so in the end I hung around, got settled in and did some more trip research. At 4.30 I headed out for a rendezvous – my good friend Robin from Enterprize has just moved to London for work, and we’d arranged to meet outside his new workplace on the Strand at 5 o’clock. We wandered up to a traditional English pub in Covent Garden, where we had dinner and a couple of drinks, before making our way to Victoria Underground station, from where Robin headed home and I headed up to the Apollo Victoria Theatre for musical no. 2 – Wicked!

The show was spectacular – the storyline itself is wonderful, but the actors really brought out the comedic element that was written into it and their voices truly made the songs take flight. A good theatre performance is uplifting and inspiring, and this one was. I collapsed into bed a happy girl tonight!