Settling in

Monday 15th Feb...........

Moved on to pitch on Friday and more or less got sorted before walking into town for essentials - the Gf had run out of white wine and I was back to drinking Cruz Campo beer which is a mistake unless playing the 'any port in a storm' card. Unfortunately the local supermarket ( Mercadona) seemed to stock only Cruz Campo in bulk ( It is brewed round here ) so I was forced into buying individual cans of various types for tasters, including one at a perky 7.2% which I will report back on. We spent a lot of time on Saturday morning trying to get the van levelled as it had indeed sunk a few inches to the left and needed remedial work as the rain running off the roof for most of Friday was flooding onto the 'eventual' sun lounging area and the waste tank wasn't draining well, being on the right hand side.We also erected the sun-lounge awning with the usual shouting, swearing and skinned knuckles so we now had a nice dry sun-lounge to sit in.. another foray into town found my beer of choice in the other nearby supermarket (Maxi Dia%) which is Estrella Damm and at 5.4% much like Stella Artois, although I have to say that the 7.2% Voll Damm Doble Malt was very tasty but pricey at 0.47€ against 0.30€ for Estrella and about 0.20€ for Cruz. Watched the rugby and very good games Wales-Scot and France-Ire. How Scotland managed to lose is a mystery and one has to feel for Andy Robinson. France continue to entertain and look the team to beat. I gave up watching England on Sunday as I had better things to do with my life like emptying waste tanks and toilet cassettes which was far more entertaining, served a purpose, was appreciated and was full of honest endeavour which is more than can be said for the travesty in Rome.
The weather was fine so we ventured downtown on the scooter and had a nice long walk along the beach in the sunshine. Conil was looking quite spruce and tidy despite the problems of the recession in this part of Spain so I hope they are managing to ride it out without too many setbacks as tourism is the main industry in these parts.
The fairly reasonable weather however took a violent turn for the worse on Sunday night and we had one of the worst-if not the worst-nights ever spent in the van. We've had gales in the Hebrides, Blizzards in France and mistrals & floods in Provence, but Sunday night was something else. How the sun-lounge is still up I do not know as the wind was horrendous and it's not designed for winter weather-( the clue is in the name sun-lounge)-and consequently we no longer have a nice dry area to sit in.
Monday was much of the same and rained most of the day. The forecast is still bad for the next week and the sun lounge may well be dismantled if there is a window of opportunity in the weather as it continues to cause concern and several awnings have been reported last seen heading towards Portugal.