Cant afford the petrol? then walk instead

It’s easy to criticize service standards when out eating and drinking in Spain so I want to share a good recent experience. Clients with me had their disabled grand-son Bertie with them and we stopped at the restaurant in Saliente by the petrol station. The food there is usually good and I knew there’d be plenty of room for Berties wheelchair. When the staff saw Bertie they could not do enough to help and a special meal appeared instantly for him and we were all excellently looked after.

I promote green issues as we only have this one blue planet and we need to look after it a lot better than we do. Lame reasoning from anyone that doesn’t even bother recycling for instance normally runs along the lines of what difference can one person make? Or there is nowhere to recycle. There are recycling points even in the smallest villages and its really easy because the blue bins are for paper, the green ones for glass and the yellow ones plastic and tins.

Bars are often the biggest culprits; one owner told me that they don’t recycle as it would take two hours a day to put the bottles in the bottle bank due to its shape?!? The bar must be doing excellent business indeed if two hours are needed every day just to get rid of the bottles. So the bar in question instead dumps the bottles in the bin which is only ten paces away from a bottle bank.

Currently with the high fuel prices it costs 50€ to fill up even my little car and selling houses means I do a lot of travelling. Recently I got a round robin email asking me to boycott Shell and BP to force them to reduce the prices at their pumps. Simple maths says this just won’t happen as most of the price of fuel is tax and duty. In Britain for example a £1.25 litre of fuel includes 21p VAT and a whopping 59p in excise duty leaving 45p for the oil company. Even if BP shaved 10% of their prices it’s only four pence off the price. Unfortunately we live in a carbon based economy and we all use oil in some way or another. Most of us drive a car and we buy food that has been delivered to the shops by road. Even the logs used to heat a house ecologically have been cut with a petrol chainsaw and delivered in a truck.

Simply we must all use less fuel. Is the journey really necessary? Walk if possible or ride a bike, share a lift. As the little jobs mount up around the house why not do them all in one car trip rather than lots of separate journeys. More electric and hybrid cars are available each year and okay not many will be suitable for long slogs on mountain roads but they are ideal for use in larger towns and cities. Murky Donuts have realised all those placcy bags they currently dole out free cost money and they too will be charging for bags from February. How many thousands, even millions of plastic bags will Mercadona save each year from their new policy? Quite a few less will be seen hanging from bushes or floating in the sea.

Mr Edisons’ original light bulb design will soon only be found in museums as only low energy light bulbs are now being manufactured. Every single person that does their bit to conserve the environment and reduce their fuel use has an effect when others do it too. Duracell now sell rechargeable batteries and they are not doing it just for green brownie points as they will make money from it. Our spending habits make businesses change as they need to make money. We cannot wait for governments to make laws instead our spending and lifestyle habits will make change happen quicker.

A Road Trip

Living in Almeria it is easy to forget what a large place Andalucía is and its easy to understand why for generations Almerians have felt more closely aligned with neighbouring Murcia rather than the far west of the country around Seville which is the administrative capital of Andalucía. Seville has the largest historic quarter in Europe and well worth a visit especially for culture vultures.

I have a house on my books near Baza and the owners have a donkey which they got from a sanctuary located at junction132 on the A92 motorway to Seville and so on the way we diverted and visited El Refugio de Burrito where over 70 donkeys live in comparative luxury. Very friendly docile animals it’s hard to understand how anyone could mistreat these hard working beasts. Some miniature donkeys there had been rescued from a zoo in Naples in Italy. I suppose the next step is to adopt a donkey and I picked up the form.

Close by is the Fuente de Piedra lagoon, the second largest salt water lake in Spain and it is home to a huge population of flamingos. The breeding grounds here are the biggest in Spain and the second largest in Europe with 6000 chicks hatching last year. There is an information centre but if anyone unable to read Spanish will be out of luck. Take a long lens camera and binoculars to see the flamingos at their best. The lake did not dry out this year and so the population has stayed. Salt was extracted here from Roman times right up until 1951.

Onto Seville and being the third largest city in Spain it is surrounded by industry but the ugly views soon give way to wide boulevards and there are glimpses of the Guadalquivir River. The cathedral in Seville is absolutely colossal being the third largest in the world. It is also the biggest gothic cathedral in Spain and construction started in 1401 after a large earthquake in 1356 damaged the mosque that stood on the site previously. The designers apparently said the following before building “Let a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad”. According to the minutes of that day, the new church should be: “a work such as good, which like no other.” One of the only parts of the mosque to remain is the huge bell tower which is easily climbed.

More impressive however is the Real Alcazar located next door. This started life in the ninth century as a military fortress but had a change of use under Abd al Rahman II and was converted to a royal residence. In 1364 King Pedro of Castile who was keen to use existing Moorish buildings had the palace extended and cleverly used a mixture of Christian and Moorish artisans and the result is the finest example of Mudejar architecture in the world. Room after room of beautifully frescoed walls, huge tapestries and stunning gardens. The whole site is easily a rival to the Aljambra Palace in Granada and for my money is actually more impressive.

The Plaza de Toros is the oldest in Spain with construction starting as long ago as 1749. Whatever views anyone has of the sport of bullfighting it’s an impressive building and should be seen. The annual Feria de Seville is held here each April and is one of the best known bullfighting spectacles in the world. By coincidence a bullfight was organised the day we visited with two of the most famous in the business booked to appear so I got a photo of DVenturas luxury tour bus.

For shopaholics Seville is heaven with street after street of shops that for us living in the Almerian backwaters can only marvel at. Take plenty of money as something will surely tempt you. For ice cream aficionados there are many stylish places to indulge in the guilty pleasure and I had the best chocolate ice cream ever. Then I had one the next day just to make sure.

Remote Mountain Views

As I stood on a thousand metre mountain watching a glorious sunset yesterday I reflected that this is one of the reasons I love sometimes having clients that want a rural retreat rather than say an apartment on the coast. Over the past four and a half years I have been lucky enough to explore many areas of Almeria and areas of Granada and Murcia. Areas that if I were not taking a property on, or visiting with a client then perhaps I would never have found in the first place.

Many clients prefer to have a villa with pool close to services or a town house perhaps so I have always made sure that there is a good selection of these for sale as well. Otherwise the bills would not get paid and my working life would be more difficult. Clients that are retiring often sensibly chose to buy a villa as for one thing everything is normally on one level, the house will be fairly new and so maintenance issues will not normally jump up and bite them on the bum. Fellow English speakers may also be closer at hand so the language barrier is not so hard and friends can be made more easily.

Four years ago Jose Luis a lovely Spanish colleague of mine told me of a huge cortijo for sale situated high in the mountains near Seron. He had not yet been to the property so we set off on a beautiful road that goes up over the Filabres Mountains close to the Calar Alto Observatory which leads finally to Gergal on the A92. Going cross country after we left the main road we stopped high up in the middle of nowhere. At times like these it’s good to have trust in people as there was no way on my own that I would have found my way back to civilisation. Off we yomped climbing steep slopes and fording mountain streams until after about an hour we found the ruined house. As a treat we had brought a simple picnic of bread, ham and fizzy pop and we sat in autumnal sun easily 4500 feet up in old money admiring one of the best views I have ever seen. Jose Luis having lived in the area all his life pointed out all the different mountain ranges that could be seen in the far distance towards Velez Rubio, Oria and Castril. Then we raced to safely retrace our steps as the sun started to set behind Calar Alto the highest peak in Almeria at 2168m.

Other work based excursions have taken me high into the Sierra Maria near Velez Blanco and one fine house in particular sits in 50Ha of farmland and mountain side. It is so remote that the nearest electricity supply would have to come from seven kilometres away so water comes into the house via a solar powered pump from a year round spring. Any client wanting to view this house is always told firmly that the house is in the middle of nowhere and then luckily only the intrepid make the trip. It takes an hour simply to get to it from Velez Blanco.

Another property I have for sale is in a beautiful yet almost secret valley between Albanchez and Lubrin. On the details it says that the house is remote and the nearest shops are 30 minutes drive away yet however much I warn clients they are never put off. When we get there the comments are always along the theme of ‘I did not think it would be this remote.’ Maybe dictionaries give two meanings of remote.
A client once said ‘well 30 minutes on a motorway is not bad so I thought it would be similar.’ It’s a beautiful property but only for someone wanting tranquillity and preferably in good health. That’s because it is remote.

Avoid ambulance chasers

Twice during the football season Andrew Brown the manager of Currencies Direct phones me without fail. It is always a few days before our respective teams do battle together on the playing field and last week was no exception as Liverpool FC got ready to travel to Old Trafford to play their biggest rivals Manchester Utd. Talking before the game means that neither of us will call after the match to gloat. By the time this is printed the match will be over and one of us will have been elated the other deflated.

With many couples moving each year to Spain to spend their retirements in the sun it is unfortunately possible that one or other will either get ill as they get older or perhaps sadly pass away. Often then there is the decision to return to the UK and the former home in Spain is put for on the market to sell.
‘This is a strange subject’ some may think to write about but the fact is that working in property sales for over four years here in Almeria I am still disgusted by the way some clients or ‘ambulance chasers’ try and then buy these properties at far less than market value. The poor surviving spouse normally relies on this money to support themselves on an expensive return to the UK. So if anyone out there is in this unfortunate position then I have full sympathy for you.
If anyone does make a ridiculous offer then please find the strength to tell them to ‘Go Away’ in very rude words.

I have had clients in the past that have openly talked to me about looking to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune. One chap even told me he was hoping to find a widow so desperate to sell her home she would accept a knockdown offer from him. Clients like that are quickly discarded by Findmeahome; let them try their disgusting tricks via another more unscrupulous agent. The property game over here is fraught with perils as many of us can testify to so at least by us showing these ‘sharks’ the open door it’s a step in the right direction.

As I write the first of the heavy autumn rains have been falling for the last few hours. My mother gawd bless her visits twice a year normally in May and September and in four years she has yet to have a visit and not need a raincoat. Anyone with important plans for these two months next year should drop me a line and I can safely guarantee that as long as you avoid the days she has booked for her trip it will be sunny and glorious.

Sitting enjoying the sun and the glorious sea view in BBME on Mojacar playa and enjoying some good food and chilled music the other day it was good to see everywhere looking a lot busier than the same time last year. This very newspaper reported occupancy levels up during August so let’s hope the trend continues as the Almeria Costa is a great place for a holiday whether someone is travelling from abroad or already living here in Spain.
It did make us laugh though when various British holidaymakers were overheard practicing their peculiar ‘Spanglish’ language. “Hello mate can I have a zumo?” “Can I have the bill por favor?” “Two large beers please gracias.”
Certainly we all have to start somewhere I know and just last week when in a restaurant I asked the waitress for a doggy bag for the leftovers in what I thought was my usual passable Spanish only to be asked to speak Spanish as she did not understand the language I spoke to her in.
Hmmm more Spanish practice needed methinks.

www.euroweeklynews.com/columns/stephen-amore/
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Music – food for the soul

OVER the years it has become a standing joke amongst family and friends that to get a good restaurant meal simply avoid ordering the same as I do.
Many times have I gazed enviously at plates of delicious looking food and thought why didn’t I order that?
Well all my bad luck rolled into one last weekend. It was Sunday lunch and a party of us wanted to try somewhere different. First choice was Mountains of the Moon near Turre. Unfortunately now that summer is at and end they will no longer be opening on Sundays. Next phone call was to a newish restaurant near Antas. The phone rang and rang but eventually a female voice bluntly answered ‘Hello’. Wondering if I had called the correct number I enquired whether I had called the restaurant. ‘Hang on’ was the gruff reply and after holding a while I put the phone down.
With 20 years experience working in the hospitality industry I know my phone etiquette which was always to say something like ‘Restaurant blah blah how can I help you’ and not ‘Hello’ and then ‘hang on’.
Next in line was a new steak restaurant in the Mojacar area. The phone was answered very politely yet I had to ask four times if there were items other than steak on the menu. Twice I was told they were out of fillet and then I was asked what time we would like even though I still did not know what was on the menu. With trepidation the booking was made and when we arrived the alarm bell sounded like Big Ben in my head. If there had been tumbleweed in the restaurant I would not have been surprised as we were obviously the only booking on the busiest lunchtime of the week.
Meals were ordered and all too quickly they appeared. The 8oz steak seemed to be at least 12oz which is off putting to someone with not too big an appetite and my 12oz steak would not have looked out of place in a Desperate Dan comic weighing in at an impressive 24oz I reckon. Quality not quantity should always be the case and our worries were well founded as the first mouthfuls proved both steaks were off. The complaint was very well handled and the chef said in five months of being open nobody had ever returned a steak. That’s alright then we thought.
Alternatives were offered and rashly we agreed as already the appetites had disappeared after eating off meat. I ordered ribs and a steak pie was ordered too. Less than five minutes passed and the food was at the table?!? ‘Good food takes time’ was the saying that went round my head. Gingerly I cut a piece of meat off and was rewarded by a mouthful of stone cold bloomin pig. Picking up the plate I took it to the kitchen and politely told the chef ‘I give up!’ Back at the table I was offered a piece of pie yet the damage was done, a chip was proffered which was almost raw. The mushrooms on the plate should have been on a salad as they were virtually uncooked. All in all an awful experience and now I know why the restaurant was empty on Sunday lunchtime.
Never mind I thought as the next stop was to see Clive and Maurice play at Titos a on Mojacar Playa. I can have a main course here. Eagerly I picked up the lovely menu and looked at the next table as a delicious and tender looking steak was admired and then devoured. Excitedly I went to make my order only to be told ‘Sorry the kitchen closed at 430!’ Of course it was after that. Clive and Maurice were food for the soul instead and they played a great set lasting nearly 3 hours. Catch them every Sunday before the end of October when the bar closes for the winter and remember never to order what I am eating for guaranteed culinary satisfaction.

www.euroweeklynews.com/columns/stephen-amore/
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Travels with Contiki

A passion of mine is photography and my best friend Mark is a professional photographer and over the years I travelled with him on occasions as his assistant (not a glamorous one just an assistant). Recently we travelled for a week through Switzerland and France. The shoot was for the travel operator Contiki. Contiki specialise in coach tours across many regions of the world for 18-35 year olds. A Contiki tour is a long established right of passage especially for Antipodeans and now grown up siblings of clients who met on Contiki tours 20 odd years ago are also now doing the tours themselves.

We spent 4 days in the Beaujolais region of France which not having visited before completely wowed me. The scenery is fabulous, reminiscent of South East England but without the traffic. Instead stunning sandstone villages and castles nestle amongst wooded hills. Tidy yet tiny little vineyards meander gently down the hillsides and there are wine cellars everywhere to visit. Our best mission had to be atop the highest hill in the area at dusk, where we created a very chilled scene of holiday makers (models) relaxing by a camp fire listening to one of the Contiki reps playing his guitar. All make believe but the shots were great. Mind you at 11pm in the pitch dark scrabbling back to base down a steep and rocky path laden down with props is a sure way to get the adrenaline flowing yet we all made it down safely.

Then a day in the Rhone valley near Hermitage to do some promotional shots for a chateau hotel Contiki use for guests in the area. Here we came up against some real Gallic logic. We were a crew of 10 people there at the hotel at Contikis expense to promote the owners hotel for him, we had been on the road for hours and so to keep costs down we had stopped at a supermarket and bought ourselves a picnic. The hotel sits in acres of parkland so we thought we could find a shady spot have a bite to eat then work all day to help the owners business. Oh NO! Only paying guests were allowed to picnic in the grounds and we were told to eat elsewhere and then come back to take the photos.
The owner is very proud of his crumbling old hotel that he took 3 of the crew on a tour which included the ancient but open and stinky sewage system deep underground (why?) Then he led them to the base of a Rapunzle like tower and persuaded them all to climb in the pitch dark to the top. After a long climb they reasonably expected a pretty view from the top but instead again in Gallic style the owner told them there was no key for the door and they would have to go back down in the dark again.

Then off to Switzerland and as the Art Director (another Mark) had cleverly brought walkie-talkies both cars played each other at lots of silly games which at one point had me singing the female part to The Dirty Dancing theme song. I-Spy followed with our car getting stuck on ‘C’ with the clue being a place to live, couse, capartment, clat, were all wrong and the answer was of course chalet.

It rained the whole time in Switzerland which was a shame as we were based near Interlaken in the Alps and so only had brief glimpses of the towering snow clad mountains. The highlight was our visit to the Trummelbach water falls. The melt waters of the mighty glaciers of the Eiger, Monk and Jungfrau mountains all pass through the falls with tremendous thundering force. Each year the melt waters drag with them over 20,000 tonnes of broken rock through the falls so helping the constant sculpting of the mountain. The clever Swiss have built a perpendicular lift inside the mountain and then created walking tunnels so that the force of nature can be truly and very wetly appreciated.The falls are a UNESCO World Heritage site and well worth a visit www.truemmelbach.ch

True to form as on most shoots, as we left early morning for home it was under a clear blue sky.

The Day of the Orchids

Not another word about almond blossom till next year I promise.

Having moved to the Bedar area recently I am in my element as the wet winter and sheltered micro-climate has meant there is a fantastic display of spring flowers and the first poppies locally were seen on Monday. The Chirivel couple I mentioned last issue – I shall call them B&M have been very helpful indeed as within hours of arriving here I stumbled across some beautiful orchids. These were duly photographed with copies sent via the interweb up to Chirivel where they speedily identified them for me.

A few days later B&M made a visit to Bedar and after some delicious tapas in the El Empalme bar on the crossroads we headed off along the dicey but beautiful looking mountain road that leads to home.

The previous owner of the house had told me 3 years ago of a well hidden mountain path that started close to the house. We intrepid 3 headed off up the tricky path and found even more orchids than when I was there a few days previously. Luckily, being south facing, the valley is very sheltered and these rare little gems of the botanical world are very much at home here. I hope you like the 4 photos in the article and B &M have kindly identified them as follows. If anyone thinks they may be different then please let me know by email.

Mirror orchid – Ophrys ciliata; the Sawfly orchid – O. tenthredinifera; Dull orchid – Ophrys fusca; Fan-lipped orchid – Orchis collina.

This is an excellent time to discover the beautiful Almerian countryside. Take a walk and breathe in the clean and fresh air and keep an eye on the ground as there are some fascinating plants to discover. Remember though not to pick or remove anything as this will upset the delicate ecosystem. With such extremes of temperature and rainfall this region experiences it’s a wonder that anything flourishes at all. Summer day time temperatures of maybe 42°C are contrasted with temperatures of -5°C on a cold winter night.

Over the past few months I have had a hankering for a proper Italian style thin crust pizza. Listening to personal recommendations it’s a long but necessary journey and plenty of establishments have been tried out but rejected until now.

For some reason many places idea of a pizza in Almeria is to cover a pizza base with masses of sloppy and near tasteless cheese and then to undercook the lot. At last I am confident to recommend the first place so far that I think does an excellent Pizza.

It is the Fuente Restaurant in Bedar and is above the fuente funnily enough. Crisp thin crust and you can design your own as there is a huge selection of fresh and delicious toppings to be chosen from. The chef makes all his own bases using 1/3 semolina flour in true Italian style. Cheap too and they also do a takeaway service. The excellent Aljambra beer is also served on draught and the delicious Penascal rosé wine is very reasonably priced too. Great mountain and sea views from both the restaurant and terrace with the rest of the menu well thought out and excellently prepared too.

There is a term that is all too often incorrectly used nowadays when describing food. When the starter arrived of Carpaccio of beef – so delicate were the wafer thin slices of beef fillet they were most definitely ‘melt in the mouth.’ Another visit there soon methinks.

Maybe I should consider doing a ‘website of the week’ column as I have come across a great one for any other cloud watchers out there. www.cloudappreciationsociety.org

I met an interesting couple recently and when we were admiring some amazing photos of tropical storm clouds on an owner’s wall they told me of the cloud appreciation society. A family member had given them a membership as a present. Ever one to spot a bargain I rushed home to log on and paid my £5 dues. I can report that member number 20726 is now active. There are members all from over the world and I join 120 other members in Spain, 13423 in the UK, one member in Vietnam and another in Gabon!!! There is an amazing photo gallery which I hope to add to with some of my photos.

My eco warrior antennae quivered yesterday as I discovered in Vera  there is a fuel station that sells bio-diesel and it’s a bargain 96 cents a litre currently which means that you can save money and help save the world all at the same time – fantastic.

Bio diesel is basically made from harvested plant matter and recycled cooking oils etc. That’s why there are used cooking oil recycling points springing up in some places. I will have to find out if its 100% bio diesel but it’s more likely that it is a mix with conventional diesel. Either way it’s another small step anyone can take to reduce their carbon footprint.

Findmeahome have had a very busy week and what has come out of it as well as a few sales is the following simple bit of advice which is aimed at all owners wanting to sell their properties.

Price your property correctly for the current market and it will sell!