From the floor to the wall, basically, at some point………

We had a fun weekend last week in Pamplona (or Pampaloona as Tegan decided it was called) ambling around the streets and seeing the sights. It is a nice small city that has a pretty old town, notable for the running of the bulls and for the fact that the pilgrims route to Santiago de Compostella runs through it (this route actually went just past Can Santosha where we were staying too). We walked a bit along both of these routes marked on our tourist map and generally wandered around. One of the brilliant things about visiting Pamplona and all the other cities and sites during the winter is that while there are other tourists, there are not throngs of people and you can amble around easily, restaurants aren’t packed and the whole experience is much more chilled. 

Saturday in Pamplona was lovely and sunny, while on Sunday back at Can Santosha we woke up to snow. We really have had four seasons in a week here and it is incredible how it can snow one day, be sunny the next, then rain, wind, no wind, cold, really cold, but unfortunately not really warm! It was quite nice to stay in by the wood burner and lounge around a bit though. As we travel to all these amazing places the temptation is to want to go out and about for walks and trips to see places which is great, but means there isn’t much down time. We unfortunately didn’t get to see the squatter village we were going to see, but we did build a snowman, which Tegan named “French”.

French the snowman

Our weekend rest was followed by another amazing week of mud and muck and crazy weather, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Last week was mainly working on the floor, and this week involved mixing large quantities of “body coat” to go on the wall. Plastering this on the wall was the more easy bit as most of the work was in the preparation of the mixture, which this time included cow pooh (caca). So, the dung had to be found, collected in the trailer and mixed with sand, straw, and the barbotine clay mix (mud and water). Not too sure where the dung was sourced from but Siddhu went to collect it and then we had to wheelbarrow it from the trailer to the house as the track up to the house was too muddy for his van! We then had to mow the straw – this was Siddhu’s genius invention for making the straw smaller, breaking up a straw bale and then mowing it with a lawn mower! This was all mixed together with sand and bathfulls of barbotine (mixed this time in an old bath) and then stored inside the house to ferment before it could be put on the wall! So, yes we were now sharing a strawbale house with 2 other WWOOFERS, Siddhu and a giant pile of mud and cow pooh – can life get more bizzare?!

Siddhu mowing the straw

Tegan helping to mix the barbotine

Setting out the ingredients for the body coat mix- straw, sand, cow dung and barbotine.

Helping to build the box for the body coat mix in the dining room.

At the end of the week Siddhu and the two other Spanish WWOOFERS (Vero and Jose) went to a conference on bio building, which we were also invited to. However, since our Spanish hadn’t progressed much past “dos cervezas por favor” we reluctantly decided not to go. We did join day two of the conference though which involved going to visit some other eco builds in the area, and managed to see a house built using traditional stone masonry. Unfortunately the travelling around was so time consuming that we didn’t stay to see more than this and travelling around in a group of 40 with a small boisterous toddler was quiet tiring. We stayed long enough for me to attempt to drink wine the Spanish way and for Tegan to chat to the animals at the farm and then went back to the house to start packing for our trip back to France the next day.

  

Just about in my mouth!

Seriously unusual looking turkey

We have had a fantastic time here but again it was time to move on, partly as we had already arranged our next WWOOF back in France and partly because you can have too much of a good thing (and I REALLY wanted a proper shower!). In a way it is good to have to live without all the electricity, water and heating that we are used to just to make us appreciate them more. It has also been really interesting to see how you can build a house spending very little money using naturally sourced materials, but instead of spending money we were spending time and energy which is a really great feeling.

We feel like we have learnt a lot, not just about straw bale houses but from meeting Siddhu and Vero and Jose who are really positive and interesting people. Tegan thoroughly enjoyed herself, especially making friends with Vero and has been coming out with all kinds of new language – a sample includes, “Buenos dias, hasta banana, at some point, basically, similar, I think so”. This in part shows us how adaptable she is to learning new things, but also indicates which phrases we use a lot!

 

Tegan and her new friend Vero

A parting shot of an amazing place 

A holiday, a change of scene and lots and lots of mud!

Following our last WWOOF we spent 4 days being complete tourists in Barcelona which was just lovely. There was quite a bit of rain on the first day which was a bit of a pain (although Tegan is happy as she got a Mini mouse umbrella from the experience) but we found ourselves a cheap hotel outside the city and a short bus trip each day took us to the centre. We pottered around the sites and discovered that paying 10 Euro a day for the menu of the day option in a restaurant was the way to eat cheaply – this only went wrong once when we made a bad choice of restaurant. Tegan enjoyed running around the Parc Guell while we managed to get a fairly good look at the Gaudi architecture. This amazing architectural style is all over the city and quite incredible.

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Such a lovely pink colour…..

Through the arch in Parc Guelle

Some Gaudi inspired buildings

After absorbing the culture and recharging our batteries for a few days it was time to go to a new place – too much free time is never such a good idea when you are WWOOFING! As is usual with trying to find new places to go, it takes a bit of time to find somewhere that is right for us, and to find people that want us. It usually involves a bit of rejection on both sides and after we had decided not to contact the “Roody Noodies” as we called them (the nudist colony that only wanted 2 hours of work a day), and turned down an offer to deconstruct bread ovens we settled on Can Santosha near Pamplona. It took us quite a while to make the decision to go here though as the host sounded interesting, a bit bonkers, kind of fun, but above all was brutally honest about the conditions of the place, an eco build. I quote from his e-mail: 

“The project is in the first times, a few incomodities are here (small place for all the people, uncovered toilet outside, shower with heated water in the kitchen). In winter, water is available in only one tap outside (when not iced; if iced, in the same water tank, breaking the ice layer!). Electricity only when generator is on (short times on day, while working). Here, winter is cold outdoors (where must of the job should be done),  except inside the kitchen, where we are comfortably warm. Outdoors is moody, too, when raining, and sometimes snowed.”

But the project sounded so interesting – building a house out of straw bales! So we decided that we could cope with at least some of these “incommodities” for a week at least and decided to give it a go………..

Well, we have had the most amazing week so far, it is cold, but the scenery is stunning and mostly it is that crisp sunny cold rather than miserable grey. We did have to break ice on the water tank every morning for the first few days, the toilet is a bucket surrounded by straw bales, and there is only occasional electricity (when we need to turn the generator on to use the tools for work). But we have used the washing machine, and the bizarre internet connection (via 3G for those in the know???) and there have been lots of new foods to try, including sea weed – very nutritious apparently. I think above all the host is quite a character who seems to be positive about everything, enjoys having Tegan around and is happy for us to get stuck in. There are three other WWOOFERS here (a guy from Bulgaria who was here when we got here, and a Spanish couple who arrived after us and have been WWOOFING in Spain for 2 years). Our room is a snuggy attic room above the kitchen – really warm and cosy (although at only 1.5 m high at the highest point only Tegan can stand up in it!). We have even managed to wash in a giant plastic bowl – a definite achievement, since the water had to be heated on the gas stove first, and, well, Tegan was the only one that actually fitted in the bucket! 

We have done a load of different things…………I "plastered” one of the walls (with straw and mud) and we both did something similar with some of the floor, spreading barbatine (a mud/clay mix) and straw 5cms thick. Andy also had to clean some of the bee hives (and discovered quite a bit of honey!) and chopped wood with a chain saw. Tegan has been entertaining everyone and doing a bit of painting (pictures) in her spare time.

So below are a few photos of the crazy experiences we have been having – mud everywhere! We are now in Pamplona for the day chilling out and being tourists again. Tomorrow we are visiting a deserted village that has become a famous squat, with our host and the other WWOOFERS. There are several deserted villages around as there was a dam and reservoir built about 40 years ago and apparently the government bought up the villages and evacuated the people as most of their farm land had been used for the project. It seems they have stayed empty ever since. We are staying here at least another week and then plan to go back to France.

Can Santosha

Sawing logs

    

Mixing barbotine and straw

   

Covered in mud

Cleaning the bee hives

Laying the floor

The sink

The toilet

The Spanish experience, so far…………

Helene catching a bit of sun under a convenient palm tree

Oranges shining in the blue sky

Okay, so just to remind everyone that we are hard at work in Spain, and yes it is February! The weather has been truly amazing – one day of rain, but otherwise bright sunshine, and we even had breakfast outside this morning. It is not quite tee-shirt weather but it is warm and bright, just the kind of weather that makes you feel all happy and cheerful.

We arrived last Sunday via Girona where we stayed the night in a cheap hotel (fast becoming experts in cheap hotels as some of our trips are a bit long for one day with Tegan). Although we didn’t spend long there it felt like a place with a good vibe and we had a little amble around the streets, ate some lovely tapas (accompanied by “dos cervezas”!) and got enough of a feel for it to put it on the “must explore further” list.

We arrived in Alcover in the afternoon at Mas Rosich – a run down restaurant being converted into some gites. Alas host was nowhere to be seen and unresponsive to text messages, but fortunately Simone the Italian WWOOFER showed us round. I think we both got a slightly unsettled feeling when we arrived as the place did look a real dump and we still weren’t exactly sure what we were going to be doing. Added to which there were three dogs, two of which were huge and crazy (although not fierce in any way). I watched Simone taking them out a few days later – the dogs were walking him for sure and Andy has had the pleasure of feeding them once, lets just say that boisterous doesn’t really cover it………

We moved into our compact double room, complete with a bed that regularly lost slats from the base during the night and a cast iron bedstead sort of carefully propped up behind the bed. In general not a very good idea to move too much during the night! The place has three rooms and a kitchen where we have been able largely to cook our own food bought by the host, although she has also sent meals to the gite for us from her flat nearby. We eventually met her (Elaine) the evening we arrived, accompanied by plates of roast dinner and a whirlwind welcome of one way conversation, fortunately in broad Mancunian rather than Spanish! She left without telling us exactly what we would be doing, but the next day it all became a bit clearer.

We sort of knew there are two projects, one of which is a farm near Alcover, where Simone has been doing a bit of work, the other is at Mas Rosich itself. As it seemed that Simone was not all that keen to go back to the farm which he had done the previous week, we volunteered and he stayed to lay some roof tiles with Graham, the hired help (also English) at Mas Rosich.

So we went to the farm and spent the week helping to prune almond trees while Simone stayed and laid roof tiles and carried out other cement focused activities. Ron (the Scottish host at the farm) has 2500 almond trees apparently, and I think we pruned about 100, so he still has a fair way to go. It was quite methodical work and in the beautiful sunshine on the terraces overlooking some gorgeous views we picked up the pieces that Ron chopped off the trees and sorted them into thicker sticks for firewood to be loaded into the tractor (Andy dubbed this the “Glorious Goodwood”) and the smaller ones for leaving in piles on the ground. We were given pneumatic cutters (powered by the tractor) to help with the task – I have to say I did quite like these as they made a good noise when you chopped (a sort of “pssssst”!) and got through the sticks really easily. Tegan meanwhile played with the mud in the field, also collected sticks and left over almonds or sat in the backpack while we worked. It was actually probably the easiest job that I have done with Tegan as there seemed to be so much open space to amuse her.

  

In the mud

On Daddy’s back

Yes, I did say almond trees – these oranges were brought round by a neighbour! This doesn’t seem to happen much in Bristol……

What a view!

We also got coffee breaks and long lunch breaks (with beer), where Tegan got to play, so generally this was a lovely week.

She hasn’t quite worked out the peddles yet

A post lunch rest

However………..while we quite liked prancing around the almond trees and were given the choice to work back at the gite/restaurant site, we kind of began to feel like this wasn’t the place for us. We actually came to this host via a website called Helpx which is similar to WWOOFING but where things don’t have to be organic and we felt like we had come to people on the other end of the hippy spectrum (ie not anywhere close!). When Ron wasn’t on his farm, which he ran for a hobby, he managed an oil rig and while his almonds were actually organic he only did it for the subsidies. Interesting fact by the way – if you use enough of the right chemicals on your crops the EU give you subsidies, but take them away if there are not enough used. If on the other hand you don’t want to use any chemicals/fertilisers etc at all you get money for being organic – weird paradox. He also got so little for his crop that the only way he could afford to harvest it was by using volunteers. Anyway, while we never actually got to any discussions over the environment, we did feel like we viewed the world in quite different ways and although Andy had some engineering type discussions with Ron, we didn’t really click. There was a bit of a slave labour feel about the job – there is definitely a fine line when doing this WWOOFING type of thing and a danger that you are doing some kind of unskilled work because someone else (the host) doesn’t want to pay someone to do the work. The idea is for an exchange, of ideas, skills etc as well as the accommodation and food. We also didn’t think that mixing concrete back at Mas Rosich for a gite business was for us.

So, we made our excuses and having spent a lovely weekend visiting some of the local towns and beaches we have decided to spend a few days in Barcelona whilst looking for somewhere new to rest our feet. We would like to stay until the end of the month in Spain as there seems a lot to investigate. Even my GCSE Spanish is slowly coming back (although trying to string a sentence together does make my French feel rather fluent!). The weather is a definite bonus and while I have never been over excited by Spain in the past, the Catalan people that we have met so far seem lovely and Tegan seems to be a big hit everywhere – I think we are going to have to impose some EC type regulations on the lollypop quota regularly donated by her fan club of shop and bar owners though! Tegan is actually very full of beans at the moment and has taken to lying in her cot every morning holding little conversations with herself. This morning we woke up to hear “Tegan’s got hair, Mummy’s got hair, Daddy’s got….…….Daddy’s got little hair” – clearly an early morning philosopher!

We woz ‘ere

Tarragona amphitheatre

Cathedral in Tarragona

Having a little rest in the entrance

Is that “accessibility” I hear you cry?

Far to cold to swim, but worth a look maybe?

Another playground, at another beach

Continuing fruit trees and visiting Cathar country

Before the work continued for the second week we had a weekend off to explore a bit. This started by visiting the two Renees (there is Renees- Les- Bains and Renees-Le-Chateau). The former is supposed to be a spa town that apparently has been raided by the great unwashed who used the baths for a bit more than just washing (use your imagination) and led to them being closed for quite a while, and the commercial spa was closed for winter. The town was pretty dead when we visited although we were told that there was an internet cafe there (which is why we went). We discovered that this was in fact shut but were reliably informed by some helpful locals in a tea shop that if we sat outside a particular hotel in the car we could use their wifi – bingo! The other Renees is apparently the place that inspired the writing of the Di Vinci Code and while most of it was shut up for the winter it did have a Glastonbury high street type feel about it. I think it has become a hang out for all things alternatively weird and wonderful. It also had some nice views although the weather wasn’t that great and prevented us from seeing a lot.

The church at Renees le Chateau that famously (apparently!) inspired the Da Vinci Code

Tegan fairly uninspired by any air of mystery at Renees le Chateau

We also visited some amazing gorges – Gorges de Galamus and some Cathar castles. We went up to Peyrepertuse (apperently closed in January but you can still see everything that you would pay to see, but for free!) and spied a few others on the way. It was a shame that we didn’t have such nice weather as these castles were pretty amazing, all ruined and teetering on giant pieces of rock. We also did a fair bit of driving around the place just looking at the scenery, some of it really spectacular.

Crazy roads along the gorges

Tegan having a little leg stretch at the top of the gorge.

Peyrepertuse

Back to work again we went back to the orchard (or what will be one day). I never really thought that planting fruit trees would be such an involved process, but it seems that if ya want organic loveliness in your apples, apricots, plums etc ya gotta put the effort in! The new trees once planted needed surrounding with muck (horse pooh), leaf mould (that we had collected from the forest) and loads of straw, which was all quite fun to do. We then had to work on the 17 fruit trees that had been planted last year which involved weeding around them, adding muck, leaves and straw again. Surprising as it sounds this took us pretty much all week. It was quite satisfying at the end of the week to see our achievements (and feel our aching limbs – who needs to do aerobics?).

Hard at it with the straw

Moving the straw on the tarpaulin with a tiny helper (Fabien not Tegan)

The last couple of days of work though involved trying to clear the hole for the reservoir from brambles and clematis which have “roots of all evil” as we dubbed them. This hole was dug last year and has been work in progress for a while, but before any lining to hold the water can go in there need to be no plants to grow into it. Andy has been helping Ivan with the water engineering side of creating a functioning reservoir (I saw some spread sheets being talked about one evening) and I helped with the weeding. However it was decided after a few hours of weeding that this was a bit of a loosing battle and that a machine of some sort was needed to do some proper earth moving. Phew!

The digging did continue though on the terraces (or what will be terraces) with even more brambles and clematis (isn’t that what people grow up the side of their houses?!). I got the quite enjoyable job of slashing with a thing that looks like a machete (but with a blunt end) and I think is called a grass cutter. We managed to clear quite a bit of the ground before it was time to down tools and start to pack up for the next bit of our journey.

Slasher Jewell

Tegan has had a lovely time here and has spent a lot of time playing with Fabien both inside and outdoors. Often this involved Tegan bossily walking around and getting up to mischief and Fabien dutifully following. It was quite sad to say goodbye especially when Tegan gave him a lingering kiss and they looked like they were a sort of mini couple! We were also quiet sad to go as we had had such a great time with the family. All good things must come to and end and so it is off to Spain. Actually I am writing this from a hotel room in Girona so we are already here and off to Tarragona this afternoon. So far so good – watch out Spain!

Story time

Hiding under the table

 

Playing trains

How many pairs of gloves is it sensible to travel with?

We finally made it to our next destination in Aude after several days delay because of the snow. Having laughed at everyone at home in the UK under several inches of snow we had to stop smirking quite so hard when we heard that our host at Arques in Aude was snowed in. When we first heard this we stopped packing up and took a brief look at the weather forecast before realising that we too were “snowed in”. “Snowed in” is actually a bit of a relative term we realised as at my aunt and uncle’s home in the Lot et Garonne this actually meant hard icy snow on the road – bad idea to drive, but possible. In Aude this meant 1 metre snow drifts, making life slightly more problematic! Impatience eventually got the better of us and we set out towards Arques, managing to get to the edge of the village where our host Ivan came to pick us up in his not quite 4 wheel drive car, complete with all important snow chains.

We left the car where it was, hoping that any potential car thieves (not massively present in the middle of nowhere in rural France) would also be deterred by the snow. Fortunately it was still there the next day when we were given a lift down to get it, by which time we had settled in a bit and made friends with our new host family – a family of 5 from the UK, headed up by Klair and Ivan and livened up by three boys, the youngest of which is Tegan’s age. Tegan has taken to calling these three her boyfriends and seems to have slotted in fine showing up all her best tomboy qualities! The plethora of toy tractors, cars and things to pull, push and ride has made Tegan enormously happy, and consequently walking around the place has become a pretty hazardous activity.

Unpacking in our nice sized (but pretty cold) room has revealed that we have no less than 18 pairs of gloves – how can this be? We have between us 2 pairs of work gloves, 2 pairs of gardening gloves, 2 pairs of cycling gloves, 2 pairs of ski gloves (clearly we anticipated snow!), one pair of fingerless mittens, one pair of woolly gloves, two pairs of waterproof (or not as the case may be) gloves, one pair of rubber gloves (not too sure why), and five pairs of gloves that Tegan has and all but refuses to wear! I wonder if this is some kind of record………………….?

Anyway after 10 days of being here we can safely report that all is going very smoothly indeed, and that our hosts are not only really lovely and friendly but are so far people we have clicked with the best. We have spent most of the time preparing ground for new fruit trees which has involved marking circles in the ground (not of the crop circle variety), strimming the grass and then digging up the earth. This was made a lot easier by Ivan starting the job with his digger (oooh how pleased was Tegan when she saw that!?) and then we broke the ground up further with a mattock and greillenette. The greillenette is basically a two handled fork that breaks up the ground in quite a satisfying way as you can jump on it and push it and pull it, and it doesn’t break like a normal fork (at least not yet………..). This work took several days and is pretty back breaking but was worth it as the fruit trees have finally gone in today and we feel quite pleased with ourselves. I also built a fence around one of the trees (a mulberry, planted outside the main field) to stop the wild boar chomping it – haven’t seen one yet but apparently they are quite determined creatures when it comes to foraging for food. We have also collected a load of straw for said trees– we filled the back of Ivan and Klair’s van with it today. This turned out to be a lovely job as it was beautifully sunny and warm today (which also meant our first outside lunch for ages!). This is in contrast however to most of the rest of the time which has been a bit hit and miss weather wise.

Collecting straw

Trying to use the rake

The Mulberry tree in it’s new enlosure

The field of trees

We have managed to do quite a bit of work though – insulating the garage ceiling with some shiny bubble wrap (so that it looks a bit like a spaceman has been plastered to the ceiling), stacking wood and a bit of cooking on the rainy days. Collecting leaves (for leaf mould compost) and wood from the forest and picking and chopping parsley on the slightly nicer days. We have felt pretty productive here actually, which has a lot to do with the fact that Tegan is easily entertained by her new playmate Fabien. They seem to be very content to run around after each other and be watched by each others’ parents and generally share in the same mischief making. It is really nice to see Tegan with another 2 year old as she hasn’t until now had a chance so far to be around kids of her own age. Of course this means that there are two toddlers in the same space which can be a bit manic but there seems to be a sort of solidarity in the madness!

We plan to stay here for another week and then head to Spain. There are quiet a few things lined up for next week, including building some garden terraces and Andy and Ivan’s project to build a reservoir. Methinks that there is not really enough time to do all these things, which is a real shame as we have had such a good time here. We have also learnt a few things about gardening that we may try to take home with us (yes to our teeny garden!) since Ivan and Klair are market gardeners and seem to know all that clever stuff about when to plant things and what pots to use and how to prune things. Unfortunately the Jewell Ware combo thus far has only undertaken the type of gardening that involves dashing into B&Q in June and buying things that should’ve been planted in March but shoving them in a pot anyway to see what happens! This approach has not been entirely without success but watch out Bristol, we may actually become productive gardeners one day!