Pyrenean fiestas & walks

Check out Jayne over at Pyrenean Notes, who’s plugging the fiesta in Plan, up in the Huescan Pyrenees, and writing about other interesting stuff like mountain walking.

Christmas tree

It’s kind of a game: you bring bits of tree down from the hills and stick them onto a tree in the valley.

Dead lawn cures (commercial break)

Catalonia is following Huesca and heading towards imposing hosepipe bans, and rising consumer water consumption means there’s a lot more of this on the way. However if you’re smart your garden won’t end up looking like a Saudi golf course when the council turns off the tap. A sustainable planting strategy–there are good ground-cover alternatives…

Dol(l)men

Hippies think that dolmens, as well as being graves, are there to kill people on or point out the stars. I think it’s much simpler: nature is very bad at propping several stones upright and capping them with another, so a dolmen is a sign that there are humans around and they are smarter than…

Horny goddess

MG Cole writes from a farmstead on Bala Lake: I am disappointed that you, a Welshman, don’t publish more stories of interest to dope-crazed New Age pillocks and consumer goods purchasers like myself. Here then is an authentic photo of Hungarian stag-princess, Violant, on her way from the Lands of the Morning to her wedding…

Reflets sur l’eau

When we went down to the beach last Saturday to see how much of it had survived last week’s storms, a little old man was sitting on the wooden decking of the walkway drinking beer. We sat next to him and exchanged pleasantries while he finished one can and opened another. Thus emboldened, our Cordovan…

Twilight of the pigs

Binéfar is a town of roughly 8,000 in La Litera, an agricultural region on the Aragonese northern fringe of the Ebro Basin. La Litera is less well-irrigated than lower-lying areas, but has always been capable of producing significant quantities of useful flora and fauna. However, economic mismanagement, token land reform, and a boycott of the…