Well, just had a really nice few days working in Spain. I have a place in a very Spanish town called Cuevas Del Almanzora about 15 minutes from the coast near Mojacar. I have been getting it ready for sale, visiting estate agents, hardware shops (which are far more interesting than it sounds, you can get anything from guns and hunting knifes to kettles and keys). Lots of cafe’s and even had a juice (not a real Jason Vale Juicemaster type juice I am afraid, it does not appear to have reached remote Spain just yet), in the local ice cream parlour. Lots of fresh fruit and salad. Got a few really nice runs in as well. 35deg on a couple of days kept them down to 5 or 6 miles but on thursday it was a little cooler and so ran off into the mountains for an hour and half. Just lovely and wild campo. All in all a very healthy and enjoyable few days. I love Spain a lot, it is such a nice place to be, or at least real Spain is, not the English enclave’s that exist over there.
I am now thinking of going over for a month just before both Cricklade and Swindon half Marathons and just train in the mountains around Cuevas, it should help with the hills around here. Nice.
The only thing that spoilt it was the trip back. The flight from Bristol was three hours late due to a fire/electrical fault at Bristol. Then as the aircraft was approaching Murcia airport it got diverted to Alicante because (Murcia) got closed down to allow a faulty (on fire) military jet to land. They eventually brough the aircraft back from Alicante to Murcia and we left 4 hours late. Got to Bristol ok and got to passport control. Now up till this point I was ok as they were all events that could not have been foreseen, so was still pretty chilled. Untill the girl at passport control told me and a few others to go down a certain que even though we had e-passports. They would then not let us back into the que for e-passport scanning. Well you will just have to go to the back of the que again. Well I decided enough was enough and launched into a tirade of poor customer service lack of concern to the customer etc etc, all the other passengers were cheering, it was great. The Border Control staff were absolutely awful in their attitude to me and a few others and not apologetic at all, I am also talking about the supervisor who I insisted they get out of her office. Of course I got absolutely nowhere so I am going to put in an official complaint. Just a sad end to a nice few days.
The Swindon Photojournalist 