03.08.21 – Travelling around Spain
I will get straight into it (I know the suspense is killing you haha!). I’ve done a little whistle stop tour of our travelling around for 6 months, of course we did lots during this time but it was mainly us having fun and exploring with the dogs so I won’t bore you with all the details!
Our first stop on our ‘travelling around Spain looking for somewhere to live’ adventure was in a rental in Castillonroy, which is in the province of Huesca, Aragon.
We turned up in this little village in what felt like the middle of nowhere and could barely fit the car in the drive (we were driving a big 4×4 Mitsubishi!)
The accommodation was, let’s just say interesting, and the number of flies was crazy!
We realised we were in the centre of pig farming land (pork being a staple of Spanish cuisine), it was pretty gross and although we had a month booked there, after 2 weeks we were off!
During our stay there we did manage to find a few beauty spots, below is my husband with our dogs at a lovely area we stumbled upon.
We booked an extra 2 weeks in the next place we were staying and thank goodness we did as we really enjoyed it.
We stayed in a lovely little neighbourhood in a place called Saint Carlos De La Rapita from the middle of September to the end of October.
We fell in love with this place and thought it would be where we would end up buying.
We had a raging storm there one night, everything was flooded, and it was pretty scary. Jon waded out in the storm to open the gate and that cleared some of the water out. Luckily there was no real damage to anything.
When we told the owners and sent them a video of the storm and flood water, they couldn’t believe it! They had lived there over 30 years and never seen anything like it before (was this a bad omen?!?!)
I have such fond memories of those 6 weeks, especially after the first place we stayed, this one seemed like paradise. We did some house hunting while we were there just to see what was about within our budget.
The main problem with this area is that it’s by a delta and lots of rice fields, which is really pretty with visiting flamingos, but it also means mosquitos, lots and lots of mosquitos!
At this point we were still feeling like we were on a long, extended holiday, and we had so much more exploring and adventuring still to do.
At the end of October we packed up our stuff, loaded the car again and set off for our next place which was near Playa Flamenca and Orihuela.
We had booked here for a month, and couldn’t really afford to change our plans again, but this was probably the worst place we stayed!
Think of ‘little boxes on a hillside’ minus the hillside haha and that’s where we were. Packed into a small place in a row of other small places, near a shopping mall, and you get the picture.
It was the most ‘British’ place we had stayed, you couldn’t even walk down the road saying ‘hola, buenos dias’ because everyone just said ‘good morning’.
Eugh why are Brits drawn to all Brit areas, I get there’s comfort in that for some, but please try to make an effort being in someone else’s country with their language and customs!
The weather, being November, wasn’t fab either. It rained a lot and was fairly cold. The house had damp and was never warm.
The only good thing really that happened during that month was I had a friend come and visit for a few days, and Jon had a friend come and visit too (not at the same time though!).
I’m sure many people would love this area, but it definitely wasn’t for us!
We counted down the days until we could leave, and at the end of the month we packed up and headed to the area which is now our home, the Axarquia.
We were staying in a rental up a mountain in a place called La Dehesa de Triana, and we absolutely fell in love with the area.
It’s such a beautiful part of the country, mountainous, lakes, close to the sea. It really is an ideal spot, and we were torn because we had loved Sant Carlos De La Rapita, but we also loved this area.
The rental had enough space for us, a pool (which wasn’t in use at the time) and felt secluded even though there were neighbours around.
It was here during the month of December that we decided we had to get our NIE’s. These are foreigners identification numbers that you need to do basically anything in Spain. I’m sure it’s fairly easy to do yourself, but we used Lawyers in Spain to sort it for us (at a cost of course!).
All we needed to get that was to fill out a form, pay the fee (around 10 euros, that’s for the NIE not the lawyers fee of course) and go to the police station with the form, the fee paid and your passport and then they issue you with an NIE. It’s just an A4 sheet of paper with some info but most importantly your NIE number.
That was the start of getting settled in Spain, and we felt good that we had sorted that out fairly quickly. However there was much more to do, as you will read about in future parts of this blog.
We left this rental at the beginning of January and headed to Chiclana De La Frontera which was near Cadiz and spent a month there. The beaches were amazing, as it was winter they were empty and perfect for the dogs. Long wide sandy beaches, heaven.
The only thing missing for me was the mountains. I hadn’t realised how much I loved seeing them, and it was pretty flat around this area. We also had to be very careful as most of Chiclana was covered with Pine trees, which in itself isn’t a problem.
It does however mean that during Jan time to around April you have to be very careful of the Processionary caterpillar. They are deadly to dogs, and it meant we could only walk them on the beach at that time as the caterpillars were everywhere. We had found some lovely parks but as soon as we realised about the caterpillars it was back to the beach.
I will leave you with a picture of that beach, and in the next instalment tell you about heading to Seville to sort out our residence cards and matriculation of the car!
