Inter-season travellings, from Mallorca to the UK and beyond... Part 1: Leaving the Island and The North

Furby and I left Mallorca on Wednesday 26^th of September, took a ferry over to Barcelona and stayed the night there. We went for a walk the next morning down gorgeous, tree lined avenues and saw the Sagrada Familia church. It was beautiful and I wished we’d had more time to stay and explore the rest of Gaudi's work around Barcelona. But sadly our road trip was calling. Barcelona to Val d’Isere in 9 hours. I like to think that we made it to hour 6 before the cabin fever set in and our grip on reality became slightly tenuous. A road trip with J-lee furby was always bound to be fun but I seriously didn’t anticipate laughing as hard as I did. At one point there was 20 minutes of laughter complete with tears streaming down faces...brilliant! I think it was because I unwittingly burped mid sentence, and it was quite a burp, doesn't sound that funny and I guess you had to be there, but anyway we laughed, and laughed, and eventually had to pull over for a nature wee and then laughed some more. By the time we got to Val the temp had dropped considerably and let me tell you, 3 degrees Celsius is most definitely not flip-flop weather.

A lovely drive (funny too, thanks Hot Tub Technician for the laughs and the stalled Caravelle at customs), round lake Annecy took us to Geneva the next morning and from there we went our separate ways, Edinburgh was my next destination. Couldn't wait to be there and see my friends. NS came up from London too. JM is now expecting and what a change that made to our weekend. What would usually have been a boozy affair; turned into a very relaxed, leisurely, eating extravaganza. Let me give you a couple of tips, if you ever should find yourself in the gorgeous city of Edinburgh; please go to Mimi’s Bakehouse and Cafe Andaluz. The second one is somewhere that we tend to frequent often, but Mimi's was a new one for NS and me. Oh my goodness, this place is amazing! Just go, and if they have it, get a slice of lemon and poppy seed cake, it is divine! We shopped, we ate, we relaxed and we laughed, a lot, as usual. Brilliant start to my inter-season travels.

 

From Edinburgh to Kilmarnock via Glasgow was next on the agenda. Now people may well think it’s a bit crazy to go and stay with someone that you don’t actually know. In all honesty I too would’ve said that’s a bit mental, but I’m super glad I did. I have a Twitter friend, AC, we’ve chatted on Twitter for ages, then it turned out we had a mutual friend RH, how bizarre! So when AC was in Morzine earlier this year I went to meet him and his pals, sadly we only managed a beer together but it was great to finally see a Twitter friend in the real world. So when offered a wee sojourn to the glitzy town of Kilmarnock, how could I refuse?! I imagined that I was one of those glamorous house guests from the 20s/30s and thought nothing of taking up someone’s offer to weekend at their country retreat. I always used to watch Poirot and think how fabulous these people would just take off for a weekend at someone’s house they barely knew and it seemed to always be cocktail hour. Well, it’s always cocktail hour somewhere in the world and that rule applies in Kilmarnock too, happily! The vino tinto flowed along with good conversation! I was made to feel so utterly welcome; it was like catching up with old friends. We had a fabulous dinner at The Jefferson one night, highly recommend this place, divine food and great service. I was shown some cool places around Kilmarnock – yes there are some; don’t raise your eyebrow at the screen in that sarcastic way!! Anyhow, the point is AC and his ‘family’ were so great to me, thank you my dears!

Next I was off to the Midlands, reunited with my furby J-lee for a night of fun and a day of shopping. A mountain of food at Wing Wah, J-lee trying 5 new things (well done!!), pulling over to take a picture of a road sign (Butt Lane, come on, that is funny!) and Primark in Derby. Great fun and can’t wait to see her again in just a week’s time!!!! YAY! In the meantime I get her lovely messages on What’s App that make no sense, honestly it’s good that I know her and generally understand what she’s getting at.

Whilst in Middle Earth one must of course call in to spend a few days with two of the best people on all of the Earth, so it is that I ended up with the Clan Mcleod for a gastronomically amazing time. Every time I come to visit it’s an assault of the culinary kind, I try new things, eat delicious foods and drink amazing wines and whiskies. There is something very satisfying to me to be able to sit and discuss food for hours on end, to share food experiences and the Mcleod Clan always have amazing experiences to share, which I love! Highlights: baked camembert, Bunnahabhain whisky, Derbyshire oatcakes, homemade hollandaise, Omar Allibhoy’s pig cheeks, golfing, Mr. Mcleod being the oracle and knowing everything about everything, two donkeys, some llamas, goats that smell like goats cheese (funny that one?!) and creaky chickens. I’m always sad to leave the Clan Mcleod but I always come back, like a boomerang, whether they like it or not! Who knows, maybe next time I will take that job as a pizza chef at The Bull’s Head in Repton and live in your spare room?! ;) xxx

OK, that was that section. Tune in later for more from my travels around the UK and further afield.

To meat or not to meat....

This is super powerful, at least I think so. I found it on Facebook via Compassion in World Farming http://www.ciwf.org.uk/ they shared it from Animals Australia http://www.animalsaustralia.org/.

I beg of you to watch this and to share it with all those you know. Too many people live in ignorance of the provenance of their food and all too often meat is just seen as that, meat in a packet on a supermarket shelf. That meat was once a part of a beautiful, living creature with every right to a cruelty free existence, just like us. Watch, share, make informed choices.

As for the regular blogging about my tedious little life, I'm working on it and will hopefully have something to post later or tomorrow.

T minus five...

Packing, it's got to be one of the most tedious tasks. Especially when you have to cross reference to a huge inventory list all the time. Urgh. In five days we'll be on a ferry, Barcelona bound. We'll spend a night there, do some sightseeing the next morning and then take a long drive up to Val d'Isere. From there we go our separate ways and that's that, summer season is officially over.

The past few weeks have been tremendous fun, we finally had a week with no guests on the island so we got to do things that we'd wanted to do all season but couldn't. Had a day trip to Palma, a wild party time in Magaluf (happened to coincide with a big group of lads that Furby knows from the UK, bonus), we took some long drives out to faraway places and beaches.

The most spectacular of these drives was to a place called Sa Calobra, which you get to by following a twisting road that plunges 800m in 12km, with a 270 degree turning where the road loops under itself. It's a pretty hair raising drive but stunning, such amazing views. If you ever go there, when you're driving back up think about doing it on a bike, mental I know, but just contemplate it. I know someone who did it in 33mins this summer, Alberto Contador did it in 19! WTF!

Palma was lovely, we walked about the narrow streets, did a bit of shopping, had some lunch and just enjoyed the city ambiance. Magaluf was as you'd expect, basically a scene from Sun, Sea and A&E or one of those God awful programmes where a bunch of British kids go on holiday and don't know their parents a re spying on them. The booze is ridiculously cheap. We had a good time, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't go there for a holiday or be there more than 24 hours. We enjoyed it cos we were with a big group and to be fair, we could've been anywhere and had a good time. Didn't so much enjoy the fallen over drunk people lying in the street; the bloke who'd clearly been beaten up and had blood pissing out his head; or the aggro surrounding the half naked lap dancers, their beefy security and the drunk punters. Once a season, a cheeky visit to Magaluf is doable.

Lots of leaving/end of season parties happening this weekend so we should have a lot of fun...if only we can just get this packing done! Less blogging and more boxing stuff up, the boxes will not pack themselves.

Thinking of mountains, snow and Jake Blauvelt

This is amazing. Winter season, I can hardly wait for you. Back in the mountains. Back in Morzine. Back to early mornings, cooking, baking, cleaning, smiling, changing, meeting, riding, riding, riding, drinking, changing, cooking, hosting, changing, meeting, partying, sleeping. Lather, rinse, repeat every day for five months. Oh yeah, did I mention riding?

Jake Blauvelt's 'Naturally' Teaser a Snowboarding video by onboard

Free fig drive thru

Or maybe it should be a drive by, but that implies I'm poppin' caps in people's asses and that's definitely not what I'm up to! On the same little road where I met the hopalong sheep the other day, there are numerous fig trees at the side of this little road that one can feast from, for free (just like hopalong, but she eats the ones on the floor). When I say it's a little road I mean it's just wide enough for my van. So today, driving from one villa to another I stopped, rolled down the window and sat for a few minutes picking and eating sun warmed figs, straight from the tree. It's like the best drive-thru ever! (BTW, I know how to spell through, just in case you were wondering.)

Today I read an article that I wanted to share with you, because it features my beautiful friend Miss L who came to visit a few weeks ago. Here is the link: http://anke.blogs.com/anke/2012/08/the-wonderful-pottery-of-lucy-charlton.html Meet Lucy and her charming pottery.

Off to the pool now, it's sunny, my work is done and I need to top up my tan.

sheep recognize faces

At one of the villas there is a garden next next door that contains two very friendly sheep. They come to the gate and baaabaaaa at you and you can pet them. I popped by the villa today and one of the sheep was enjoying the shade of the fig tree, we stood and looked at each other for a bit, they have such lovely faces. I was chatting away to the sheep and telling her about another sheep I met on my bread run the other morning. She was in the middle of a tiny little lane I drive down, she was feasting on fallen figs and hopping along. She was missing her front right hoof so even though I had bread and papers to deliver, I decided to just chill and not rush the little hopalong. She was stuffing her cute little face with yummy figs. It was a nice moment and made my bread run quite a bit more interesting. So, I wonder if the garden sheep now recognizes my face? Anyway, enough musing about sheep....

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1107_TVsheep.html

Got a pleasant last minute visit from friends that we made earlier in the season. That is indeed a very welcome surprise!! Looking forward to the next week now, should be fun!

Hellos and goodbyes

The very nature of my job and my current lifestyle means that I spend an entire season, actually an entire year practically, saying hello and goodbye. Some are easier than others and some you don't want to say at all, goodbyes especially. Guests come and go every week, some you're sad to see leave because they were fun, nice, hassle free and others, well you're not that sad for whatever reason, to see them go. I've had friends come to visit all season and those hellos were awesome and the goodbyes were hard, because it's always tough to say goodbye to your nearest and dearest. Saying bye to my Dad was hard before I came out here, but he's doing well and we talk all the time so the distance doesn't seem insurmountable and hopefully soon we'll be saying hello again, I can't wait!

Some goodbyes you know are going to be hard, because in your heart of hearts you don't want to say them but you have to, for whatever reason. So today I'm feeling a bit down because I had to do just that yesterday. Of course I hope it's not goodbye forever but it has to be for now, because that's the way things are. How I'm feeling today has frankly taken me a bit by surprise, I knew I'd be sad, but didn't realise it'd be this bad. I hope I don't feel like this for long.

My furby is bringing me pancakes in bed to cheer me up. She's a star. She has a plan, it involves a bucket of whisky, karaoke and dancing....

the past month

Well wouldn't you know it, a whole month has passed. Time sure flies. In a stream of consciousness sort of way I'm going to tell you what I've been up to for all those weeks. Friends came out, Miss Lucy, Dan & Doro. Drove to cool places. Saw Europe's longest stalactite - in the coolest caves! If you ever get the chance you should go - Campanet caves, just down the road from me here in Mallorca. Watched a clusterfuck of cars at the Formentor lighthouse which could've amused me for hours. Ate some amazing food, tapas, paellas, fish, roast suckling pig. The best value "menu del dia" ever, where every course was the size of a main!! Met new people, made some friends. Kissed a plumber. Ended up in some funny situations with my furby Jamie-lee (she's a furby because when her and Becky sit down to talk it's like they're furbies, talking at each other in fast, incomprehensible gobbledygook, and sometimes I have to threaten to take their batteries out), situations that I should probably not broadcast on the internet! Took the other furby to a festival in Pollensa where she thought for a brief moment that she might get killed, Moros i Cristianos festival gets a bit rowdy, it involves all day drinking, swords and guns (health and safety - what's that?! And AMEN to that!!). Chivas, late night dancing, late night drinking. Buckets of whisky. Karaoke, karaoke and more karaoke, sometimes god and sometimes really bad. Pool time, beach time, work time. Interesting work requests - using plastic chicken wire and cable ties to baby proof a stair case. Satellites that interfere with remote control gates effectively keeping your guests hostage in their villa. Dogsitting for a small ewok called Tim. Horse riding with the furbies as a staff day out. Packing one furby off to France, we're down to just two team members now a nanny (who drives cars like she stole them and likes to drive too close to ditches) and me, supposedly a jack of all trades.

Yeah, I think that about sums it up. Let's see what the next few weeks hold in store.