Snappy London

Stormy Seas

Leaving Frankenstein Country

Carpets of orchids by the roadside

Travelling through Griffin Vulture country

Snowy mountains

More unidentified roadside flowers

Tugs in waiting

Wounded soldier

She arrived three hours late. All was quiet for a very long time. No vehicles appeared. Her bow doors had jammed. We waited and waited and waited with the bikers, truckers, dog walkers, cyclists, car fiddlers and brightly dressed shorts wearing returnees. She eventually turned full circle in the dark to let vehicles out of the stern... backwards for many. A few more hours passed. It's hard to get comfortable in a super vehicle when you want to go to bed. The cafe was re-opened. People quietened and the less restless slept in their cars. Lucky old camper and caravaners. The leather-clad bikers must have been freezing, which could have been the reason for the cafe re-opening. 

In the early hours of the morning we made it onto the boat, doing a u-turn inside and parking awkwardly. We abandoned the car in the ship and headed for the cabin and a bed. The fact that the boat was a wounded soldier gave me the creeps. Bow doors and all that. The sea was initially lively which doesn't suit my overactive imagination. I couldn't think of anything else but Kate and Leo swimming along dark corridors. I coincidentally happened to be reading a short story about a drowned husband. A giant rolling sea-saw, juddering and creaking. I wore my head torch on my wrist just in case. 

Here I am at home writing this. It didn't turn out badly after all. Another adventure looms. Off to London tomorrow.

Sepulveda

Pretty blue tiny butterflies

Griffin Vultures taken on my tiny camera

Spot the Dipper

Poppies to Vultures

3 300 miles done and 164 species so far... Bird of the day is migrating Honey Buzzards.

Said goodbye to Golden Orioles singing in the rain again this morning at Concilio

Poppies were the stand-out flower on a long journey today

Poppy and wild flower travelling scenery

Back into Stork country

From poppies to vulture territory - Sepulveda

Has a Dracula/Frankenstein feel...

Singing in the rain

Woke up in the tiny village of Concilio to the sound of Golden Orioles singing in the rain. I also woke up with 'the giggles' this morning. I didn't actually wake up in the traditional sense as I'd hardly been to sleep due to snoring. Maybe it was hysteria - brought on by staying in a converted cow shed. It's the most fabulous place, a beautiful house, with lovely home grown food and attentive host. For some reason on 'waking', my every thought was cow-related. Every thought and everything I looked at had connotations of cows and sheds and I couldn't stop laughing. This then led on to a more in-depth conversation/discussion (mostly one-sided), about the aura/mood/ambience remaining in the building related to its history. I managed to pull myself together for breakfast and then began making up silly songs to well-known tunes - after breakfast (not during). I've come to the conclusion that cows really are happy and possibly a bit daft - like me (today). 

I took loads and loads of feeble pictures, all very snap happy and in fairy-like rain. There are no titles. I suspect that cows aren't too hot at putting sentences together.

From Horizontal to vertical

Artichokes. Every spare patch was filled with artichokes where we were staying at L'Aldea, Ebro Delta. We were bound to get them for dinner, having watched a wheelbarrow filled to overflowing, head for the house. They arrived a second time, as a second course and I didn't like them. 

If I'd known what the third course would be, perhaps I would have tucked in with relish. They are a combination of avocado/mushroom/asparagus - all at once. Not a good colour/texture/taste. Slightly bitter too. Maybe it was the recipe. I hadn't planned to showcase them here, but they deserve it, for the memorable leaden aftertaste.

Choked down artichokes

Left watery Great Reed Warbler habitat and headed inland to Los Mallos de Riglos and Lammergeier country. 

Should I focus on the climbers or the vultures?

The climbers of course

There's always something to take pictures of in mountain villages

A touch of Riglos colour to finish the day

Numbers

A summing up number list.

Bird count so far is 161, so beaten last year's 158. Phew.
Yesterday -  60 in total, which was our best yet.
New birds yesterday - 8.
Today - 56 in total.
No new birds and we're leaving the Ebro Delta tomorrow, with no more watery spots 'til we get home, which doesn't count.

1 star bird today - Great Reed Warbler. The more we heard it, the more we saw it... and then photographed it. At the end of the day we even left one singing loudly at the top of a reed. It sounds more like a musical instrument than a singer. 

1st May 2015
There was a load of unusual human activity for a Friday and we travellers were perplexed... until we realised mid-G & T that it is 1st May and probably a public holiday. That, or else people don't go to work in Spain on Fridays. As we were convinced that today was Great Reed Warbler Day, May Day came a poor second.

11th hotel 
That's the number of this one - although it's more of a B & B with dinner. We think it's a re-claimed finca, as of some of my pics. It's on the edge of town/rice fields and is in a lovely setting, with a field of artichokes at the back, an aroma of jasmine and brightly coloured geraniums-in-pots around the house. 

We were the only guests on the first of three nights and are resenting the arrival of the half dozen May Day crowd. Travelling before the 'season' begins, means that we have the majority of hotels to ourselves and we've got used to having all the attention. It doesn't mean that we necessarily get attention - as per nearly no coffee at breakfast this morning and no-one to meet and greet us when we arrived. Had a terrible feeling we might be homeless for a second time. 

Spanish hotels are the subject for a whole other blog BUT I need to get this off my chest. Why is there nowhere to put your things down (other than the floor) in bathrooms (yuk)? Why are there so few (usually none) hooks to hang towels, especially when you don't want new ones? Shower heads?! A whole blog to themselves. Bathrooms and bedrooms which look clean but aren't. I don't have long black hair. Why do we have to pay the full price for a parador when the builders are in? Lights in passages and toilets which are on very short timers. Thank goodness for the torch on my phone, which has saved me a time or two from having a panic attack - usually in a frighteningly black toilet. Towels like exfoliators! Don't mind a mid-term towel (fluffy is a luxury) but when it actually hurts.... Phew - feel better for that.

3rd fish night - coming up. 
26th fish night in total.

The following isn't a hotel (ha ha) but it makes up for me not being able to take a picture of the Great Reed Warbler on my tiny camera. A man came puffing into a bird hide today with a camera the size of a hotel - it was enormous. Humungous. He proceeded to take it out of the huge camera bag on his back and he puffed and gasped as if he'd just run the London Marathon. He then pointed it in the direction of the water, annoyingly puffing and gasping, and proceeded to machine gun - that's what it sounded like - goodness knows what. He hardly drew a breath. I am reliably informed that it was 'the biggest lens I have ever seen'. 

Not a hotel... but my Squacco Heron 

Taken with one of the smallest cameras you have ever seen - from a distance.

Typical drive-by Ebro Delta scenery

...and some more

Mallard Towers

I don't like to admit it, but am getting quite fond of ducks. It needs more work.

Back to hotels...

Food and language are to be written about.

I'm supposed to be such an adventurer... ha ha. Have just eaten black rice, made black by, probably, some awful internal organ of a fish. It wasn't right. The black was so black it made our teeth, lips, tongues and probably other bits and pieces, very black. Writing about it makes me feel black. After some rigorous teeth cleaning and gargling, I'm trying to re-stabilise self by drinking some Miles tea accompanied by a Tesco shortbread biscuit. Lets hope both have internal cleansing powers.

Another old ruin