LLeida and the posh Parador

Our next port of call was an unexpected gem, Lleida. We had a couple of nights booked into a hotel there and so a day and a half to explore the place. It is the capital city of the area and firmly Catalan. So much so that the name Lleida is the Catalan name for the place, not the Spanish one, but gets used even for official purposes. There are the usual mix of interesting buildings, rather nice government establishments: 

and at a hotel, a very interesting take on the wedding car thing:

The city had been fought over many times and had some pretty extensive fortifications built:

During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s the river became the front line between the opposing forces and you can still see bullet damage in some of the buildings along the waterside. The bombing by the Condor Legion (German forces working with the Spanish Nationalists) of the local school became rather too famous thanks to a high civilian and child death toll. 

Struggling up the hill to the old Cathedral of Seu Vella was well worth the possible coronary issues. A cathedral that had been turned into a fortress too:

As you can see, the weather was truly terrible - a serious shortage of clouds. 

We stayed in the Parador hotel, part of the rather nice little chain of unusual buildings that have been converted to hotels. They seem to have universally good food and staff too. Here is the original courtyard area of the convent that was covered over and is now a galleried area for the bedrooms and a lounge area for the customers:

All in all, pretty impressive. The original building dates from the 17th century and has been very tastefully adapted. Great place to stay:

Well worth stopping off there, hearing Catalan spoken which sounds even more confusing than high speed Spanish to us and enjoying the compact city life. So far, the trip was going well.

Getting Spanish by water and a load of bulls

As another escape from the wonderful UK winter, we'd booked a ferry to Spain and planned some cheap hotel / rental apartment stays that would keep us very amused for a month. After packing way too much stuff, we admired the weather forecast for the Bay of Biscay crossing. Plenty of red in the wave height forecasts:

made us happy to be on a pretty large ferry. They swapped out the ship due to operate the service from one of the normal (Salamanca, Santona) to Galicia. We were very happy to find our cabin was rather larger than those on the "normal" ships and that the bed had morphed into a double, not the two singles we'd become used to with Brittany Ferries. Pretty palatial for a simple ferry really and great for the two nights on board:

although we made it look a bit scruffy with our bags and stuff:

The crossing was a little bit bumpy and a quiet ferry became very very quiet thanks to the weather. Walking along the corridors was slightly more challenging than normal and the Club lounge was pretty deserted:

which worked for us. Having some form of sea-legs from our boating on the Nordhavn maybe helped us survive unscathed and manage the meals provided too.

After a good crossing (well, it was for us anyway) the drive to Pamplona reminded us why travelling by car in Spain is so good:

Empty motorways, lovely scenery, cheaper fuel and decent coffee at sensible prices in most service areas too. Our first stop was Pamplona. Most folks will have heard of it thanks to the annual bull-run madness. Look at this Bull run TV report video link for the full crazy experience.

We wandered happily around the town and of course the bull ring too. Rather different statues than you would normally see in cities:

and plenty of celebration of the long standing but to us seriously weird bull fighting tradition:

The rather odd people who take part get celebrated in some huge posters hanging outside the ring:

We felt that this cartoon was probably more accurate about how some of the participants in the run itself felt:

Enough about bulls. (Note how we resisted using the phrase "a lot of old bull" anywhere in this post - you should be impressed with our self control). The cathedral was, like many in Spain, stunningly beautiful. They were keen to maintain a hushed environment:

and to be fair, the building kind of encouraged that itself. Lots of open mouthed folks wandering about gazing at the opulence:

Not all the beautiful buildings were ecclesiastical though:

and a good wander around was most enjoyable:

The only sad bit about our three nights there was that the apartment hotel we were staying in had some electrical gremlins. None of the power sockets in the kitchenette area worked, no microwave either. Reporting it was a waste of time although the staff were ultra friendly and nice. One day we returned to find our electronic key cards would not work. The two new ones re-programmed by the receptionist also failed. Her master key failed. Yup, we were locked out. She had to find the device they use to configure the lock itself, plug it into the door, re-code it and finally we were reunited with our belongings. 

Mind you, a non-functioning kitchen area forced us to eat out and there were some good, sensibly priced restaurants.... Very interesting place all in all. The best coffee shop in town was still reasonably priced too:

Two excellent coffees for the price of one at Costa in a UK motorway service area. And this place was expensive compared to all those that followed. There were a few.... 

Beaches, hounds, boat cleaning - all very Autumnal

Back afloat, with the furry brown thing in tow, we did the expected thing - taking the doglet out for walks, ball fun, barking fun etc etc. Walks around the bay to Mermaid quay were good, as were those along the old railway track that head out of Penarth toward the country park. Izzy has a string of "favourite places" that she likes to pull towards. Usually they involve treats so every café and pub is fair game. High delight is the local pet shop and one Sunday she was very keen to go into the (closed) store. Standing outside looking hopeful: 

she refused to budge. If only she could read the "open/closed" sign life would be so much easier. Naturally the best place of all is the beach so we took the train to Barrybados, failed to meet Gavin and Stacey but allowed Izzy to indulge in her favourite digging and ball chasing games as per the video:

gf

We'd arranged to meet Simon, bearing in mind that Izzy and his Fox Red Labrador Moxie had a very happy time each time they met. Well, this time the chemistry was altered. They have another dog, Freddie who came along instead:

who is also way larger than Izzy and of course younger and faster. That didn't stop lots of chasing, barking and general carnage.

Apart from doting on the dog, we did some well overdue boat cleaning which was going well until the captain had a moment. His yottie boot slipped on a grab rail and he ended up straddling the door to the foredeck. Luckily the door was not quite high enough to raise his voice by a few octaves. It was not a good moment despite that and boat washing came to an abrupt and rather painful end. Far from ideal. 

Things perked up when Anne came to join us by train, we met her in Cardiff central station - a truly grim terminus for the capital city of Wales but needs must and all that. Izzy was suitably excited (suitably = massively) to see her mum as were we. Another Barrybados trip followed, meeting Simon, Nikki and their two dogs for a morning of complete chaos on the beach. Luckily a very tired Izzy slept in the cabin with her mum that night so we didn't get the full force of her snoring. 

Anne's return home was with us in the car, we were off to Toddlerville before heading to the ferry to escape the grey gloom and rain that seemed to persist this autumn.

Fred and his shed then a bit of boating

After a whole one night afloat, making sure that the boat still kind of liked us and all the systems seemed to be working OK, we headed off yet again. Basically it is because we are way too nice to the little dog. We'd booked a hound friendly place near Hereford for a week so she could explore new places, sniff them, bark at new people and generally have what she classes as fun. We just tag along of course.

The accommodation was a tremendous find. Called Fred's Shed it was a restored and converted farm building named after a stray cat that lived in it before renovation. We drove up via the car dealer in Three Cocks (yes!)  for a car service then on to the beautifully decorated and furnished place. Plenty of repurposed things including various bits of ironwork found when they were digging out the floor to install underfloor heating:

Most artistic, inventive and clever. We also were very lucky in that the owners Paul and Sarah are just lovely people. They joined us for a drink one evening and then Sarah did the same when she was alone a couple of nights later. 

Izzy disgraced herself big time though. Lots of barking, wanting to go out into the fenced in garden area at all hours and then she had the shock of her life. The owners have three fox red Labradors who bounded up to the other side of the fence and scared her senseless. Didn't stop the barking though. She was really on her worst behaviour, although back to model dog when in a coffee shop,  pub etc etc!  We blame Tina for pandering to her during her Isle of Wight stay during the summer......

Knowing that we were going to be in the area, John and Irene from "up north" (the folks who live near Newcastle) had rented somewhere nearby and so we managed to catch up with them for a while too. All good. We visited some favourite haunts (Leominster, Ledbury and Ludlow) plus a couple of forest visits so the badly behaved doglet could have some fun there.

Ludlow's interesting array of local shops had a few odd jars of onions on offer:

The marketing folks must have conducted lots of consumer research before naming them we guess:

A good week, in fact a very good one. If you fancy visiting that area, we strongly recommend Fred's Shed.

Back afloat, we had a couple of manic days trying to clean up the dirt and green goo that had appeared during our time away (5 weeks in total) and had a visit from Bernie (the guy who owns Mimosa, the Dunkirk little ship) and his dog Beau. We enjoyed lunch at the Pilot pub in Penarth, together with the sister of a friend of Bernie's. The friend was also mad enough to own an old timber boat and even wrote an amazing historical book about it. Have a look a the fascinating book he wrote about Sheemaun and the many varied owners sometime:

The lunch was a bit like an old Brian Rix farce as Bernie and the sister interpreted the purpose of their lunchtime meeting very differently. Naturally, we found it highly amusing. Bernie escaped though and stayed overnight on board with us. Beau took over Izzy's basket - amazingly with no complaints from her:

We then decided that the poor boat needed a trip out, just around the bay to warm up all the mechanical bits and the electronics. We picked a pretty warm and very calm day and headed off. Izzy was, as usual, unimpressed with the idea of having her lifejacket on but womaned up:

Our pretty normal wombling around the bay track ensued, following the deeper bits as seen by MarineTraffic:

Vesselfinder on the other hand has a way less defined and rather wrong view of our movements:

albeit more colourful.

Maintenance news:

Whilst we were in Canada, we had an email from the marina saying that someone had run into the back of the boat. That cheered us up no end. Luckily it was a very light outboard powered yacht and it had only dented the stainless steel rub-rail around the bathing platform and put some scratches on the stainless raised platform area. The yacht was new to the owner and he discovered how hopeless a little outboard engine is running astern trying to take the momentum away from even a small yacht. They'd sent us this picture of the damage:

If you try hard you can see the dent in the stainless rubbing strip. There again you almost certainly have way better things to do. Fortunately for us the Nordhavn is built like a small tank and after some careful inspection we found that the GRP itself was fine. Getting new stainless with the right profile, having it bent to fit and then put in place properly is not a simple task. Luckily for the guy who ran into us, it is also not one we want to undertake lightly so the boat is keeping her little battle scar for now.

After the exciting run around the bay, we gave the main engine an oil and filter change so it had nice clean oil in it for the quieter winter period. The Webasto boiler that heats the boat was treated to a new fuel filter. Izzy was treated to some chicken chews and the captain was treated to an exhaust pipe repair job after spotting some soot under the Webasto heater in the lazarette:

The flexible stainless steel hose that fits directly onto the heater gets pretty hot and tends to fail where it is clamped in position over time. Apparently, this was time so it was wrestled off the heater and silencer and the split / leaky end cut off:

This time there was enough "spare" pipe to allow it to be refitted and put back into service. Next time it will need renewing. We keep spare hose and the insulating wrap on board just in case. Over the years we've tried original Webasto hose, original Eberspaecher hose and once some cheap Chinese stuff. They all seem to fail in the same way at around the same time. Such is life.

Adding to the fun, we swapped out some of the galley downlighters to LED. Not because they had failed but because we needed a few good halogen fittings as spares. We have dimmers fitted to many of the lights on board and they only work with Halogen bulbs. Several of the old fittings had split due to age when we removed them to have the headlining replaced. It does mean a brighter galley area which will show any marks or mess more starkly. A major disadvantage.

All good things have to end, sadly

After our rather wonderful month in Canada, the time had come to return home. Annoying and unwanted but there it was in the diary - an upcoming flight booking. That had been fun to arrange mind you. Going from Vancouver to Heathrow was wildly expensive (70% more) compared to a flight from Seattle which is under a three hour drive from Vancouver. That isn't explained by a lack of competition on the routes, mainly due to the drop in UK - USA travel in the Trump era it seems.

We'd found a more convenient and way better priced trip though. Westjet from Comox to Calgary, then Calgary to Heathrow with the same airline. The only drawback was a LONG layover in Calgary but so be it.

Getting to Comox from Martin and Inge's house is quite a trek:

Yes, a whole 6 minutes in the car says Mr Google. It actually took more like 5. We had a coffee in the airport and said our sad farewells and several huge thank yous  then boarded the little 737 to Calgary. The misery of heading back was tempered by some wonderful mountain and snow views on the way:

but rather added to when a further 90 minute delay to our connecting flight was announced. Over 8 hours in Calgary airport was not tempting. We did some digging and found the inbound plane that we needed was going to be mega-late:

Over 3 hours late leaving Spain, wonderful. We found a nice enough restaurant to have some lunch in then settled ourselves into the lounge to wait things out. Luckily Westjet decided on a plane swap so we were "only" 90 minutes later than planned boarding the plane. That was a pain though, the lounge closes at a fixed time no matter how many delayed flights there are or people in the place. Flying is such fun.

Luckily the flight and crew were good, we had a rampantly gay Senior cabin crew man who made the most wonderful announcements, often invoking his "poor old Grandma" to encourage us to do what he wanted (like not stealing the blankets - something that hadn't even crossed our little minds). Arriving at Heathrow was a mixed bag - actually they pitched up on the belt very quickly to be fair but then we went into the Costa coffee place to wait for Anne who was kindly giving us a lift to Hythe. Drinking a very average coffee with a seriously over-day pastry at three times the price we had been paying in Canada was a harsh reminder of UK life.

Still, we were chauffeur driven back, unpacked, caught up with the Toddlers and the crew's brother  and happily collapsed into bed that evening to not sleep.

As well as boring things like dentist appointments, we had some fun. We collected Izzy by meeting Anne again at a local hostelry. She had Barney with her too - he belongs to a friend of hers and likes to photobomb whenever possible:

 Back in Hythe, Izzy was treated to a much needed but in her eyes unwanted groom:

At least we could see the eyes now and know when she was planning some badness. We finally headed back to the poor neglected boat but to borrow a line from The Full Monty film "for one night only". The good news was that the heating worked just fine. The bad news was that we needed it.

Butchart gardens and Chemainus

After dropping off our overnight gear and a small mountain of food onto Martin and Inge's boat, we went for a walk along the Nanaimo waterfront. Sometimes, in a foreign country, you think that you've entered a parallel universe. We felt that driving through the Rockies but it became even more obvious passing the local yacht club:

Somehow the space - time continuum seems to have been distorted there, allowing the club to boast that it has survived right up to 2031. We didn't feel any disturbances walking past and our watches / phones stayed on the current date so perhaps it was a temporary aberration. Once the club had the banner printed, maybe they thought they should use it?

A little overhead walkway to some buildings told you what you were heading for:

Seaplanes would not be a  typical mix in the UK of course. Restaurant, bar and probably tattoo parlour being more normal. Or Turkish barber shop with dubious ownership and merchandise. Still, they were right, the seaplane terminal amused us (well, the captain) a lot. This little video shows one of them taxiing around:

The video footage of take off and landings was not good enough to share - they carelessly did that beyond a sensible range for the phone camera's capabilities. Great to watch live though.

Back on board, we admired the Selene mugs that Martin and Inge had inherited with the boat:

bemoaning the lack of Nordhavn equivalents on our craft. We were then treated to dinner afloat and yet more of that excellent home made carrot cake. Being spoiled was getting to be the norm and, worryingly, we were getting too used to it.

The following day, we went by car and ferry to Butchart gardens. Martin had said "it sounds a bit lame but it isn't". Other friends had told us it was a must see. Bernie (remember him, the man with the Dunkirk little ship Mimosa?) even commented that we had to go. Wow. They were all totally right. Converting the old quarry into a riot of colour, ground levels and trees / shrubs / plants must have taken some vision:

and the instigators never got to see it as it matured either. Quite stunning in detail, size and scope:

with the flower beds being changed out for each season to give different colours and experiences. Amazing. We could post so many images but just go and look at their website for yourself. See, not everything is spoon fed these days.

The big fountain was a relatively recent (1964) addition but well worth it. Watch this video to see why:

Since Halloween was approaching (remember the Home Depot scary display?) there were plenty of pumpkins around, adding to the floral display adorning the old tractor:

The link to the indigenous people was displayed:

with impressive poles:

Being boating types, we had to walk down to the waterfront area and got this peek through the hedges to the small inlet and moorings:

It looked even more tempting as a spot to bring your boat to when we got down to the waterside itself:

An amazing place and we're so glad that our hosts made the big journey to take us there. It was a bigger one on the way back as the ferry that cuts out a big looped drive around Vancouver Island was going to be full. The wait time would have been excessive, so the big (but scenic) looped drive was the way home. We stopped in Chemainus for dinner and a look around. The town kind of reinvented itself after a huge sawmill closed by having artists produce lots of murals on the sides of local buildings. Look at this link - Wikipedia for more info.

the murals represent the history of the place and really are quite something to see in the flesh. You will just have to make do with images on a screen though:

This big panorama showed the logging and sawmill history very graphically: 

all the way through to shipping the lumber out by sea:

Before that, the indigenous people:

and grim reminders / commemoration of the local folks who fought in World Wars:

There were some old pictures of particular UK interest. This massive tree , requiring two trucks to transport it:

became a huge flagpole in Kew Gardens, London. After walking around the town admiring the many murals open mouthed, we visited a great Vietnamese restaurant that kept our mouths busy once more and rounded off the day rather nicely.