fionaistravelling

This should carry on neatly from my first blog, posted a few days ago....  I arrived in Santander after the second night on the ferry and was met by my lovely friend Kate who I’ve known since we were in our 20s and who’s lived in Cantabria for many years.  (there's a very long story about how she ended up there,  which I was reminded the other day was down to a tenuous set of events which all started with me meeting Alfonso Garcia Oliva , a Spanish bagpipe player and musical instrument maker, at a traditional folk event in Geneva in 1986 - he was living with his Swiss then girlfriend Sylvie at the time . Kate met her Spanish former partner Marcos through this connection with Alfonso, and ended up living in Spain and having a long musical career there...)    On the way back to Kate's we  went for a walk on the most gorgeous beach at Liencres,  before arriving at her house. She’s actually sold her lovely house  where she's lived for years, and is...

I'll start by saying that I have just, at the age of 69 or whatever I am (and don't get me started on 'how did THAT happen')  started to understand time zones!  For your info .... the time in Tenerife in the Canaries, 300 km west of Morocco, where I am till this Saturday, is the same as the UK, ie an hour earlier than in Spain and the rest of Central Europe. (ie when it's 6 pm in Spain  it's 5 pm in the UK and Tenerife). I've always just known as facts that the west coast of the USA is 8 hours behind us, the east coast is 5 hours behind us, Brazil is 3 or 4 hours behind us... I can't quite ever remember which way Europe goes.... but I've never had a clear illustration in my mind of how this works before last Saturday.  Look away now if you don't even know what I'm talking about because this concept is so clear to you and you've never had a problem with it ... but for me I'm VERY happy!  I love understanding things rather than learning...

21/11/2023 21.08 I’m at the ferry port in Portsmouth waiting to get on the ferry and leave the country for 'A Year Away Trying Not to Leave the Ground'. (Brazil first stop, via Spain and Tenerife). I’ve just spent my last £3.18 of UK money on 3 memory banks – a crunchie, a cadbury’s dairy milk, and a wispa - for the 3 women I’ll be meeting in Santander all of whom have lived in England and two of whom grew up here. I feel I’m actually getting on my way now. I’ve had a wonderful last three weeks of visiting friends and saying goodbyes, which culminated in a completely fabulous fundraising dinner and cabaret, with musician friends performing (a baroque trio, a Klezmer trio, my neighbour’s daughters doing a duet, the Lancaster city community Klezmer band playing Klezmer dances that I called, and my friend’s band singing songs about historic revolutionary Lancastrians). And the food was spectacular – my niece has been running Sanctuary Cookalongs, a cookery project in Preston for a...