Life After Retirement
This monolithic rock stands tall above the Tejeda Valley.
First visit by us and First video of 2023. We visited on the 1st of January 2023, climbing as far as the museum and sending the drone up the rest of the way. Stunning, spectacular views from up there. We shall indeed climb it soon!
A Trip through a few little known villages on the Western Side of Gran Canaria. See the sights that hardly any tourists see. Off the beaten track and down the back roads of heaven.
We can see this rock from our terrace. It appears to have a hole through which we think we can see the mountain behind. But we’re not sure….. Shall we see? It’s a quarter mile away and 350 feet above us… Send the drone!
A Beautiful Spot on our Southern Coastline just before Arguineguin.
We stopped here because it seemed like a good idea. We were hungry and thirsty and just wanted to sit and listen to the waves…
Sunday Feb 6th 2022. A Beautiful day here on Gran Canaria. We were late rising this morning and so, instead of our usual Sunday beach trip, we decided a picnic by the lake was more the thing…..
It’s 5th January 2022. Our “Christmas Eve” here. So it was a good day for a swim, sunbathe and walk.
Join us, and remember… This is Gran Canaria. Clothes are not an issue here.
We love this walk. The wind in our hair, the Ocean and the Sun on our skin. The beauty of nature exceeds all the mundane worries of the world of man.
If you love this type of activity, let us know in the comments section and we’ll get a few more going!
2021 draws to a close and a New Year begins. What have we done with our year? Quite a bit it turns out.
Well, we needed a few items from the Store in Agualatente. Cement, Mortar, Cauliflower, Silicon, Carrots and Onions…. Sounds like a dinner to die for. Or from!
It was nearing time for a tea or a coffee so a side trip to Tunte to our favourite little square and two Coffes and some Tarta Almendras made a lovely break in the sunshine. Quite warm today, about 25c here in the mountains.
Potato Harvest? Rooftop gardening for fun?? Hmmm. Well, not a great success but neither was it a complete disaster! It’s December, it’s still reasonably warm here and the potatoes, the carrots and the tomatoes are all still thriving. However, it’s three months since the spuds were planted and, according to the ‘experts’ here, that’s the key time to take them out. So……. We did!
We got what we deserved I guess. Our way has always been to leave the things in the ground until well after the foliage has drooped and browned. Not surprisingly, we got some decent but smallish units. They tasted good, they cooked well and they filled our bellies for the night.
What more can we ask? Rooftop Gardening For Fun! That’s what we asked for! It’s great fun up there in the sun. Have to remember the hat or I burn being a bald old coot. Sheila just basks in it. We can see the whole valley from up there and it’s pretty fine.
We have carrots and Onions and Beans and tomatoes all planted, some coming up and, with luck, we’ll get most of a Christmas Dinner out of it! Probably not the spuds though! We’ve already eaten them.
The car was ‘In’ for service, so we were ‘Out’ for Lunch!
It was a beautiful day. The car needed a few things doing to her, a seal, and idler wheel and a change of fluids in brakes and rad. Sheila and I hate hanging around doing nothing and so we grabbed a bus down to Puerto Mogan for a spot of breakfast.
The idea was, we would have breakfast and a quick wander the get the bus somewhere else to see how the word was doing there too. The weather was too good for that though. In the end we stayed all day. Walking, talking, looking and loving. Eventually, it seemed a good idea to return before my mechanic gave up and sold the car!
Lovely day, lovely company and good food and drink. What more can a poor boy want!
Today, a little trip out. Just as far as the warehouse down the road. A sort of Aladdins Cave of treasures. We needed Charcoal for the Barbie, Firewood for the cooler evenings and some rocks for the rockery I’m building.
In February 2019, a while before we retired, we spent a happy and interesting day wandering around the grounds of Welford House near Newbury, England.
Welford has, quite possibly THE best display of Snowdrops in the UK. They claim it anyway.
It’s also a really beautiful location in Mid-Southern England. Streams abound, the grounds are huge of course and a Tea-Shop/Cafe provides some delicious hot or cold snacks to put back some of the heat lost on the frosty walks.
It’s not that far from our old home so we got there quite early, (for us), and were able to enjoy it for longer than many.
Bread making on a Sunday.
November 7th 2021. I thought I might be able to make a small video to show people just how easy it is to make bread at home.
Apart from a few issues with the video recorded on the iMac… it all went quite well….
This recipe is simple, quick and a great ‘Starter’ for Amateur Bakers. You don’t need to be afraid of this one!
“What do I need?” You ask… Well, of course, an oven is a great start! Metric Scales. A Bread Tin capable of taking an 800g loafAnd a stand Mixer for preference, but your hands will do!
A room at or about 20/24c, although this is not by any means desperately important… Anything above about 17c will work, either faster or slower depending on the temp.
Ingredients next….
P200 or “Strong Bread Flour”. 450g
Instant Yeast. 8g
Salt… of any kind. 3g
Sugar… again, any kind. 3g
Olive Oil. 30g
Apple Cider Vinegar 3g
Warm water. 282g
And that’s it! Combine them in the right order and Bread will happen.
Let’s assume, for a moment, you HAVE a Food Mixer. To the Mixer Bowl Add the Dry Goods
Flour, Yeast, Salt, Sugar.
Give it a stir with whatever you have to hand, Spoon, etc.
Now… To a Jug, bowl, big cup or bucket Add The Wet stuff.
Oil, Vinegar and Water
Find the Microwave…
Heat the Wet Ingredients until they’re WARM…. NOT Hot! If you can’t stick your finger in there without the nail falling off or melting, IT’S TOO HOT!
When you have got it nice and warm, add it to the Dry stuff. Again, using anything, give it a mix BEFORE you let the Mixer get involved. This stops the whole “Getting it off the ceiling” thing when you start the mixer.
Once you are happy it won’t fly everywhere, turn the mixer on. About ½ speed is usually fine.
Check it’s mixing and that it looks ok. Go make some tea, coffee, …. (Wine is ok but only AFTER you have got the stuff together in the bowl.)
You’ve got about 15/20 minutes before you need to take an interest UNLESS your Food Mixer is, like mine, a wanderer. If so, probably best to stay with it!
After the 15/20 minutes, you should be able to ‘Poke it quite meaningfully” with your index finger and it should bounce back.
Put a sprinkling of flour on your worktop/table/floor and tip the contents of the bowl out onto it.
At this point, it will resemble a lump of white clay. Treat it as such. You want it to be smooth, roughly the same shape as the baking tin and, if possible, INSIDE the tin.
Give the top a very light spray of cooking oil, Virgin Olive, for preference but Sunflower, Rapeseed or Crisco is fine.
DO NOT USE WD40 or 10w/30. It affects the taste.
Cover the whole thing with a tea-towel, kitchen paper or anything soft-ish. Don’t use cling film like the ‘Experts’ tell you. It sticks!
Leave it alone for between 35mins and 75mins, depending on the ambient temperature.
Go away. Remember the wine you left? That’s it… finish that. and some more.
About 15 minutes before the end of the time you have set to go and find it again, turn on the oven. 225c or 435f. Place a small, heatproof dish in the bottom of the oven.
When the mixture starts to get a bit too high in the tin, put it in the oven. Give it another spray, this time if water, just lightly enough to damp the top.
Into the little dish tip some water to create steam. This step isn’t strictly necessary, but the mark of a good baker is steamed up glasses and a red face.
Ok. Remember the wine again? You’ve got about 40mins this time.
40 minutes later… A loaf will now be nestling in the tin in your oven….. Well? Get the damn thing out! Put it on a wire rack, the windowsill or just leave it on the floor if you forgot to use oven gloves… Leave it to cool for a while.
After about an hour, eat the thing!
Now you’ve mastered the basic cooking needed, you can start to experiment with Tiger Bread, Giraffe Bread, Rolls, Cottages, French Bread, etc…. Good fun!
If you enjoyed this recipe, comment. If you have blinded yourself or removed the skin from your hands or even been arrested for DUI because of too much Wine…. Still comment. I shall deny liability for everything.
Tuesday 2nd November passed like many others as another happy, relaxed and warm day in our retirement.
Up at about 8.30am to make a Cup of Tea for my Lady. Then back to bed to drink it, read the papers, absorb the news and see what the day might have to offer.
The regular weekly call from our son came at the end of breakfast allowing us to digest our Boiled Eggs nicely. He calls from his lorry, usually to tell us he’s ‘on his way somewhere’ with yet another odd or unusual cargo. These calls can last fifteen minutes to around forty five if life has been interesting for one or both of us. Today, an hour discussing films, film people and the other things you would normally discuss over dinner were we all in the same house. As we are not, and not even on the same continent, we being on the African shelf out here, it all gets said in the weekly con-flab.
We have ‘Cool’ nights here… around 16 and down to about 12c at this time of year, so we have a BBQ which doubles as a Firepit in the evenings. Charcoal is all very well for heat but the charm of sitting by a flickering fire is a strong draw. Accordingly, we go out looking for ‘Firewood’ on the mountain… Fallen sticks, branches and fir-cones make a beautiful but rapid burning fire and they are plentiful, thus combining exercise for us, with a decent supply of burnables, the ash from which goes into the garden and makes great fertiliser.
Of course, this wonderful Island is so warm during the day…..
And so, we wandered for an hour or so. Found enough of various sizes to fill our wood box and keep us warm.
To our great surprise, someone is building a brand new Camping and Picnic Area here, right on our doorstep. A huge one at that. Its well progressed so I guess it’s been building a long while.
And so, with wood, sun warmed skin and relaxed, happy Sheila, we made our way back down the road to home, just in time to ready ourselves for our Tuesday evening dinner and Cinema evening.
Tonights film was, The Last Duel. A true story of a Knight and his Lady in 1386 defying the traditional view that Rape never happened at the hand, (Or other parts), of a nobleman. Grin and bear it was what you had to do at that time because, if you were found to have claimed rape and there was any way you could be proved a liar, and there were oh so many, many ways of proving that, you took around three days to die!
Very good film. Very thought provoking for a lot of reasons. Go see it.
Smashing day with my Lover at the newly constructed, 2017, aquarium in Parque Santa Catalina, Las Palmas.
Cool here today at 21c. The pool’s nice though… 34c
What a gorgeous day!
It was the intention today to go get some ‘Supplies’. We need timber for a project to turn the covered terrace into a warm-when-we-want-it-to-be place where we can be ‘Inside whilst Outside’, so I’m putting a huge roller blind over the open end and glazing the open side which joins the middle terrace which contains the ‘Roof Garden’.
It didn’t go as expected. We have two ways to get to the big DIY stores… “Up ‘n Over” or “Down and Round”. We choose which to do at the moment we reach the top of our road and look at the sky around us.
Today, there was cloud on the Down and Round side so we headed Up ‘n Over only to discover the road closed for resurfacing! Damn. Oh well. Time is not an issue for us sooooo, Picnic and a walk instead. “Yes Please!”
Pico de Las Nieves was our choice since there is a coffee-and-sticky-things van up there. Highest point on the island too and well above what cloud there was. In bright, warm sunlight we ate our bananas and weird sticky cake thing and drank our coffee.
Naturally, one must wander whilst we are there and so, we did. We looked out over Roque Nublo toward Tenerife and beyond, Teide clear above the cloud too.