Here in Spain we like to celebrate the Saints days, with each town choosing a few Saints each year to celebrate as their own, on top of the national holidays. April 25th,, dia de St. Marcos, is celebrated here in Villanueva del Trabuco and the surrounding area each year in a big way. On the weekend nearest to the day itself, the campo starts to fill up with tents until it seems like the whole village is camping or picnicking in the country side. It’s an amazing sight and causes great excitement during the preparations, especially amongst the young adult population who seize the chance to be independent from their parents and camp with their friends. Our children are no exception and the planning starts well before the event, with decisions to be made about who they will be camping with, and where to pitch their tents. Then of course there is the food shopping and raiding of the kitchen for anything to boost their hoard. Some years they are lucky and the weather is glorious, resulting in the kids and their friends sneaking home for a quick swim in the pool. At other times the torrential rain has stopped play, resulting in early morning Land Rover rescues of soggy teenagers, and the towing out of cars bogged down in the mud. Not deterred, and ever optimistic, the plans are made each year and fingers are firmly crossed. With perhaps the exception of the main annual fiesta, the St Marcos celebrations are the highlight of the year.
A focal point of the camping and picnicking is Los Cien caños, the water source at the foot of the mountain behind our house, five kilometres outside of Villanueva del Trabuco, just off of the Zafarraya/Los Alazores road. This is a very popular tourist attraction at any time of year, with day trippers from the towns and coast driving out to see the source of the Guadalhorce river that flows into Malaga. The hundred pipes sticking out of the mountain side are quite an incredible sight, with the water gushing out. Sadly though, with the droughts of the last few summers, the water coming through the pipes has dried up completely during the summer months, though it still flows from under ground. Hopefully if we ever get any rain this winter, the water will continue to spurt out right through the summer, as it used to do when we first moved here.
A slight down side to the St Marcos fiesta is that we get a lot of people streaming past our farm on their way to the site. This in itself is not a problem, but for that particular weekend we do start to feel a bit like public property, with cars slowing down to stare at the horses and sometimes actually pulling in to park on our cobbled threshing circle, to wander down with their children to see the horses. Though we do take people horse riding by appointment, our land is private property and is quite obviously a landscaped garden, with many plants, trees and flowers. It is slightly frustrating to have people wandering around as if it is common land. Oh well, its only once a year and it is natural for people to want to show their children the horses, we just wish that they would ask first. We have recently fenced all of our land off, which should solve the problem. It is not that we are anti social, but we have our guests to think of, and also we do not want the responsibility of other peoples children let loose with the horses. If there was an accident, we would get the blame. Actually, to be fair, sometimes when we have had big parties for our children’s birthdays when they were younger, there were so many cars on the threshing circle that passers by stopped to enquire if we were a restaurant. One year for Elizabeth’s birthday we staged a cintas competition with the horses for the kids, and even put up fiesta bunting. Quite understandably on this occasion it did cause a bit of confusion among passers by, some of whom stopped and wandered down to the field, thinking it was a genuine fiesta. My dad has often said that we should put some tables out and serve cream teas! (For any of our prospective holiday clients, don’t worry, we don’t have big parties when we have guests in, we always respect the fact that people come here on holiday for peace and quiet.
Recently I did have cause to take exception to one particular large, expensive looking passing car. Its middle aged Spanish occupants actually stopped and started to pick my flowers from the verge by the road. I have had daffodils stolen in the past, much to my distress, but this time I was actually witnessing the couple quite blatantly helping themselves to my marigolds. When I approached them and explained that they were picking flowers that I had planted myself on my land, they actually had the nerve to stand and argue with me, saying that the land was by the road and they were within their rights to pick the flowers. I pointed out that the plants and flowers there were quite obviously not wild and were bought at garden centres, some even still had tags on. I explained that it was pointless picking them anyway as they would be dead tomorrow. They merely argued that they wanted to dry them, and carried on picking them. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. They said that they were from Malaga, though why they thought that would excuse their behavior I have no idea – it was as if the fact that they came from a built up city gave them the right to help themselves to flowers from the countryside. I really don’t want to start putting signs up but it is very upsetting when people don’t respect your privacy. Oh well, I suppose it is a very English thing to be possessive of your property, I will just have to try to relax a bit.
This winter we have had so little rain so far that my gardening chores have been much easier. Normally I have to start strimming the grass around the shrubs and borders, but it has hardly grown this year, which is quite worrying. If the farmer’s crops are affected in the same way we will have major problems with horse food this summer.
On the other hand, life has been great with the horses, with lots of riding and no mud!
Another thing that we haven’t had to deal with is mice. Last spring after a heavy spell of rain the mice decided that they would move into our bedroom. We have never had problems before or since (and luckily no problems at all in the guest accommodation), but our bedroom is upstairs in the part of the house that was used in the past for grain storage. With the ceiling and floor being constructed of beams and cane, it is easy for small holes to appear, and mice can get through spaces so tiny you wouldn’t think it possible. To start with I would hear the odd scratching, but when I whispered to Clive, or turned on a torch, it always stopped. After a while though, the mice stopped trying to hide their presence, and on one occasion I turned on my bedside lamp to see a very cute one sitting on my bedside table. They stopped being quiet and started to party, squeaking as if they were laughing at us. We tried poison, but that was a big mistake as they would then die under the bed and we would only find them when they started to smell. We bought an expensive electronic mouse repeller, but that was useless. Finally we resorted to old fashioned traps, which did the trick. We didn’t sleep for weeks, it really was a nightmare. We have now sealed up every little hole we can find, so fingers crossed for this spring.
Talking of last spring has reminded me of another traumatic incident. There are electricity cables suspended high across our land, supplying the farms on the mountain opposite us. One day Clive noticed that one of the cables looked very frayed. We showed our neighbor, but he said that it wasn’t a problem as there was a very strong inner core, and that it wouldn’t break, so we thought no more of it. A couple of months later after a horrendous night of thunderstorms, resulting in a power cut, I went down in the morning to feed the horses and my blood ran cold – laying on the ground in the middle of the horses field was a live electric cable. The power was still off, but we had no way of knowing if the service engineers might try to re connect at any time, not knowing what had occurred. I watched with my heart in my mouth as Clive used his electrician’s pliers to get hold of the large cable and drag it out of the field. One of the young horses, Twiggy, had panicked and had her legs caught up in it and my stomach was doing somersaults, waiting for Clive to remove the cable to safety. It really was one of the most frightening moments of my life. We rang the electricity company and four hours later they eventually turned up, and had the cheek to tell Clive off for touching the cable – apparently it was a very dangerous thing to do – Ha! Ha! Clive would not have dreamt of it if he hadn’t had the correct tools, but it makes you wonder what would have happened if we had just sat back and waited for the authorities to get round to doing something.
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