Phil Hawley Photography

Visiting the Folks

So after Moscow and a bit more work on the house I went off to Spain for a few days to see my parents last week. It wasn’t exciting, nor full of incident, but I enjoyed it all the same, just seeing them. Most people reading this won’t know that my Dad was pretty ill during the run up to the Christmas just gone. He fell whilst doing some building work at my Parents’ house and banged his chest on the edge of the concrete base for a covered terrace he was building. Anyway, a few days later he had to have an emergency doctor out to him and ended up in Hospital with fluid on the lungs. A day or two later they discovered a broken rib was the culprit which was good news as at first they thought that it was pneumonia. Anyway, it made him quit smoking after maybe 50-odd years as a smoker which was a good thing and when I saw him over Christmas he was better than I had seen him in a long time but he was on Oxygen for 2/3 of the day. Anyway it was good to see him (and my mum and the dogs obviously) after 3 months and he looked loads better, back to his usual moaning self and busy doing work around their house and on the land around it. I got there and he had finished the terrace and it looked great. The dogs were mental as usual, with the older one shadowing me most of the time and pouncing on the other one everytime it tried to jump up at me.

After the recent run of bad weather in Oxfordshire and having visited Moscow it was good to see some warm sun the morning after however it was misty and cool and we were due to go up to Vince and Gill’s cave house in Caprés in the Mountains overlooking my Parents’ place. Anyway it cleared up just before we went, and was very warm with brilliant blue skies whilst we were there.

Anyway, such is the way with BBQs with my parents and their friends it was a beer, wine, and sangria filled occasion with lots of great food courtesy of Marcel (a visitor from Belgium) and his wife. I did fire off a few shots before the drink was flowing, but later efforts proved to be slightly out of focus and discarded.

The cave house itself is a great piece of architecture, this shot was added on as a terrace above and to the side of the main house, but below shows the main chimney that just rises out of the ground:-

Their dogs however had been having a rough time, looks like they were both abducted/escaped but one returned on her own and so she was being spoilt for the afternoon, the other one was a similar looking dog but all black, such a shame that these things happen, and hopefully he will turn up at some point.

Of the other shots I took, this is about the best I think, the winding road running up the mountainside from the Cave house:-

The next few days were spent helping my parents by digging a log trench at the end of their garden for them to plant fir trees, this was great, blisteringly hot (30 degrees Celsius) and digging rock solid ground; I managed about 40 or 50 feet with it being a foot deep and a foot wide.

The rest of the time I sunbathed and read and my thoughts again turned to the move to Moscow, the latest is that the likelihood is that we could go for three months then have to leave the country for either a day, 3 months, or 6 months depending on who we are speaking to, or which way the wind is blowing it seems. I would love to go, even if it is just for 3 months, then if we have to return we can decide on what we want to do longterm at that point. But, it is frustrating not getting straight answers from the company, but I guess whatever will be, will be. Meanwhile in the airport on the way back I had a call about a job for me going in Barcelona, so we will see what happens.

My last day in Spain I got up early to see the sunrise and to snap off a few shots of it, some were better than others and the HDR ones seem to have come out the best:-

Anyway, this post was a little self-indulgent, mainly about my trip to Spain, but it was important for me to go there, and it did give me a lot of time to think.

Tweet This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Facebook MySpace Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post

Related posts:

1. Where have I been? – Part 2 – UK and Spain When I left Moscow I was only in the UK...
2. Two weeks in Spain Normally I would welcome a couple of weeks away from...
3. Where have I been? – Part 1 – Last Few days in Moscow Well it has been a while mainly because I have...
4. The Finca Project – Part 1 My brother and his wife already have one great house...
5. Moved to Moscow……..Finally Well I had to delay posting this for a week...

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 5:43 pm and is filed under All, Featured, Life, Travel and tagged with Fortuna, Murcia, Parents, Spain, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.