Yacht Mollymawk

Whether through the fault of man or because of natural changes in the climate, the Spanish region of Murcia has for hundreds of years been an arid one. Some say that anciently this was a lush, forested place but that Bronze Age man felled the trees to make way for his own choice of vegetation. This led to a decrease in rainfall.

Regardless of whether he was to blame, having entered upon the scene and set up camp, man had to find a way to eke out a living in what had become a severely desiccated landscape. In order to survive he employed some of the most ingenious machines which have yet been devised by Homo sapiens; and all of them were clean, green, and positively beneficial to the environment. For at least one millennium – from the time of the Arab Moors, and possibly from long before – the people used these primitive but wonderfully effective technologies to transform a few precious corners of the drought stricken land and make them into fertile places, capable of supporting human life.

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What do you picture when you think of Spain?
Sunshine sparkling on a blue sea. Sandy beaches fringed by a never-ending border of hideous apartment blocks. Red wine; orange groves; bull rings; flamenco dancers… If you have visited the interior you will also picture villages nestling on rocky outcrops, and mountain ranges fading into the blue. If you have come here for the skiing you might picture crisp white slopes – or, then again, you might picture brown ones, on which the snow machines have tried to paint white stripes.
Whatever you associate, in your mind’s eye, with Spain, one thing that you are not likely to picture is a thriving ice-making industry… but two hundred years ago, in the parched, sun-baked southern region, there was just such an industry, and people were getting rich making other people a little bit cooler.

Looking out from the summit of the Sierra Espuna, over a sea of clouds.

Dotted about on the higher slopes of the Sierra Espuña and in various other mountain ranges are a number of curious round constructions. Most are no longer fit to be described as buildings; most consist merely of a stone-built circle some fifty feet across and almost as deep. The local people call these structures “los pozos de las nieves” – and that is exactly what they are; they are snow wells. When the older folk were children the pozos (poe-thoes) still had roofs, and not so very long before that the buildings were still in use.

I first heard about the pozos back in December, and I would dearly have liked to go rushing off at once, into the mountains, to see them surrounded by snow. However, there is not much snow nowadays – and, anyway, there was not much time to spare.
In the event, it was the middle of July before we finally managed to fit in a visit to the pozos. With the sun glaring down at us from an intensely blue sky we toiled up towards the summit, first in our old banger and then on hoof. The temperature in the valley was 43° C (110°F) but up here, at 1300m (4,000 ft) the heat was a little less oppressive. Continue Reading…

Caesar and Xoë learnt to dive with Deep Impact.

The year before last, Caesar and Xoë learnt to dive. And ever since then I have wanted to learn too.

At the time when my brother and sister learnt to dive, I was only eight. Xoë and Caesar were 14 and 16. They each did several training dives and then they did an exam. They both passed with 100%. Then they were both proper, qualified Open Water Divers and had to be brought all sorts of expensive kit such as wetsuits, flippers, and things called BCDs. Later, Caesar did some more training and another exam, and became an Advanced Open Water Diver.

Mummy has always wanted to learn to dive. Even before Caesar was born she wanted to learn, but she was pregnant. After that she was always too busy. When Caesar and Xoë learnt she was very envious, but she said that she couldn’t have lessons at the same time because it was too expensive. Besides, she said, she was too old now!

After my eleventh birthday I was old enough to learn to dive, and I wanted to very much. I love to study the animals that live in the sea, but it is difficult to do this when you have to keep coming up for air. You have hardly got to the bottom when you have to go back up again. When Caesar and Xoë learnt to dive they came back telling stories about moray eels and octopuses, and I wanted very much to see these things too. For my eleventh birthday Grand-pa gave me £100, and I decided to put it towards a diving course. Mummy and Daddy said that they would pay for the rest - and this time Mummy decided that she would take the chance before it really was too late, and she would learn to dive as well. Continue Reading…