We spent the weekend here, in Miramar with Cookie and Johnnie (who are Douglas' (aka Flaco, aka Heather's Husband) parents.

They're a really nice couple, they built the house in the picture. Inside it's all polished wood. The garden is a mixture of wild plants, trees, forest and little oases of grass where Cookie serves cream teas in the summer. Out the back there is a Quincho, a bar/grill where Johnnie does catering (all word of mouth). They lease out part of the ground for beehives (for which they are paid in fantastic honey) and they have lemon, orange, grapefruit and quince trees which provide the raw materials for (among other things) Lemon marmelade and quince jam.

They made us very welcome and we spent a couple of relaxing days learning a little more about the country, the history and the British who came over here in the 1880s and after (both Cookie and Johnnie's grandparents arrived here to work on the railways, which were entirely British). They have fairly posh accents, and are completely bilingual, slipping the odd Spanish word in now and again... They stop everything for afternoon tea (which, my students are always disappointed to find, is not something that we do in Leeds).

So it was a weekend of walks on the beach and cycling through Miramar, which is kind of like Carnforth, or would be, if Carnforth had dirt roads and a better climate (and if you had to drive five hours through identical flat fields of cows to get there). In summer apparently it's a completely different story.
  ¶ 1:06 AM