October '07

Catalan Lessons

This month we started going to school four times a week for Catalan lessons. All the villagers in Mas de B. speak Catalan amongst themselves, so when we are at the bar, it will be nice when we can understand what they are talking about without them translating into Castillian, or having the bar men interpret into English.

Water Woes

Just after the beginning of the month our borehole was started. The water diviner said we had a strong supply of water 160 metres down. Two days later, we reached 180 metres and not a drop of water was found. There were many shrugs and a large bill for a dry borehole was presented to us. Bugger.

Now we are going to have to arrange for regular deliveries of water from a local town and store it in a Bassa (30,000 litre reservoir). Luckily, we had not spent any money on the pump and generator required to pump the water up from the borehole, so at least that expense has been spared.

Weather

After a slightly colder period and a bit of rain, the weather returned to its usual 18-20c daytime dropping to about 12-14c overnight. There have been windy days when it blows a Mistral like wind off the mountains, but most of the time it is just sunny and clear.

Invasion of Foreigners

Twenty or so people from around the world invaded the village for a week, so they could meet some of their friends and it culminated in one couple having their baby baptised in the village church. I think the locals were a bit taken aback when they realised they were hosting a group of South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, a Finn, a Czech, a Swede and a few English peeps. Guess who was most pleased with the result of the Brazilian F1 race. :)

Eating the Wildlife

Last week one of the locals presented us with a dead rabbit. His wife had been concerned that we had not enjoyed some of the local wildlife, PG had to pop the rabbit in her handbag, so we could take it home. I casseroled it with garlic, herbs and vegetables. It was delicious. The next week when we were walking up to Bar Mario at the far end of the village, we looked into an open doorway and two men were getting ready to butcher 5 wild boar they had shot earlier in the day. Hopefully we will get our hands on some of that before too long.
I'm sure I could think of a recipe which would use our chillies in it and a bit of the local olive oil. If no Boar if forthcoming, then its going to have to be one of the shepherds flock that ends up on our table.

As we were walking through the village last week we saw this Racing Bike parked outside one of the houses. Could one of the village teenagers become the next Jorge Lorenzo?

Google Earth Us

High resolution images of our Mill are now on Google Earth The Moli de la Torta