Merry Christmas! And the winner is . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen - it is with great pleasure that I can now reveal that the location for the next instalments of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook will be (drum roll please ) . . . Stockholm! Yes, dearly beloved, it is another all time bucket list destination for me in February! Watch this space.

Amsterdam - 29th October - 1st November Part Two

Hello, and welcome to the second episode of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. I’m sorry to say that after the misadventures getting to the hotel, this has been a largely foolishness free trip, and I’m afraid that this episode continues in very much the same vein. So if you want to leave this episode and go and do something else, then feel free.

Right, now they’ve gone, let me tell you what really happened. No, only joking, nothing that exciting, honestly. Yesterday I was only able to book one of the earliest times for the Van Gogh Museum today, so I decided to have breakfast at the hotel. Mistake? Not necessarily. However, notices like “You may only take what you are going to eat NOW! Do not take when you will not eat!” frankly set the wrong mood. Yes, alright, I would have taken a free lunch from the cold buffet as well as breakfast if not for those notices, but I’d like to have been given the benefit of the doubt. Frankly, too, what was on offer was rather, well, spartan. I didn’t expect a full English, but it might have been nice to have something approaching a full Dutch. I felt like complaining after having my third helping of everything that was on offer, but discretion proved to be the better part of valour.
So to the Van Gogh Museum. Now, I’d like to say something very witty and clever and original here. But I can’t. Literally, amazing. Van G. is an artist whom I’ve come to appreciate more and more over the years, and this collection was just out of this world. I was a bit sceptical about shelling out another 5 Euros for the audio guide, but I’m so glad I did. I entered, worked my way through the audio tour, and looked at my watch. Two hours had gone! Honestly, and I hadn’t even noticed. An absolute highlight of the trip.

Mindful of the fact that I didn’t do a great amount of sketching, I decided to head back towards Dam. Dam is the heart of the tourist area of the sity. So called because that’s where the locals first built a dam in the River Amstel – Amster – dam, see? They’re a wonderfully literal people, in my experience. The nearest Metro station to Dam is called Rokin. Now, I’m very sorry, but I cannot read that name without mentally adding the words – Don’t come knockin’. Here I made the first sketch of the day, of an agglomeration of buildings that I liked. This also revealed the great problem with sketching today. It was a bright and very crisp October day in Amsterdam today. If you were moving around, then it was great. But. . . if you were sitting down for between 30 and 45 minutes working on a sketch, the cold began to creep into your bones. All of which, I suppose, is by way of being an excuse for the fact that I only made another four sketches today.

A short walk from Rokin, then, back to Dam, and I sat and made the second sketch, this time of the Nieuw Kirk – or New Church. It’s still pretty old, actually, and now more of an exhibition space than a church. It’s currently holding an exhibition about the Life of Buddha. Arguing against themselves there, I would have thought. The Oude Kirk, or Old Church, which is in the Red Light district, is actually the oldest surviving building in Amsterdam. Before they built the New Church, it was simply called the Church. They built the New Church, so this became the Old Church. Told you that the Dutch are pleasingly literal people.

A Dutch gent came up and had a look at the sketch, and I was a bit worried, because Amsterdammers are reputed to be very forthright and blunt in their views. But he liked it, so I refrained from drawing an ink moustache on his face, which might have been my reaction had he not.

I sat for about 45 minutes, but by then I literally couldn’t hold the pen straight, I was so cold, and so I moved off in search of coffee (and a chance to use a toilet for free). Once I’d had a coffee from a Dunkin Donuts I headed to a bridge over one of the smaller canals which I’d noticed on the walking tour yesterday. It had a handy bench by it, and this is where I produced the third and last sketch of the day. While I was in the process of making it, two American ladies came up, gushed a little, and asked if they could take a photo of the sketch. Seriously. So, if you’re thinking that this made my day, then you know me too well. Once again, about an hour into the sketch the sun had gone in, and I just froze, and had to stop where I was.

As for the rest of the day, well, after eating I spent an interesting couple of hours in the Amsterdam Museum. Another audio tour, although this one was included in the price, which is all well and good. I did enjoy it, although I did find something a bit strange. You’re led through the story, from he founding of Amsterdam to the ‘golden age’ of the mid 17th century. Then suddenly the story jumps forward, and you’re hearing about Napoleon Bonaparte making his brother Louis – and I have to say that he really looks a shifty sort – the first King of the Netherlands. What happened to the intervening century? Maybe not a great deal, but it would have been nice to have been told something.
Time was getting on by the time I’d finished in the Amsterdam Museum, and I was, as the Dutch might say, knakkkerrred. So I headed back for the hotel. I might head out this evening and see what’s what, but my legs and calves are giving me gyp, so it’s unlikely. 9:30 flight tomorrow morning, so I’d say this pretty much wraps up An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook for 2018.

Amsterdam - 29th Oct - 1st November. Part One

Hello, good evening, and welcome to the first episode of the Autumn 2018 series of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. I’m sorry I didn’t post yesterday, the first day of the trip, but for reasons I will explain I was just too tired and it was too late by the time that I got to the hotel.
Now, departure lounges are not my favourite places at the best of times. They’re currently giving Cardiff’s departure lounge a bit of a makeover. Judging by what they’ve finished, if they’re going for ‘early 21st century tacky’, I’d say they’re succeeding.

Still, I did find a corner of the quaintly named ‘Beer House’ where I could actually see out onto the apron for a bit, and that’s when I produced the sketch of the Flybe plane. Not mine – I was with KLM.

Funnily enough, I have actually flown with KLM once before. . . sort of. I say sort of. I was on an Air Kenya flight to Nairobi via Rome – where I was getting off, and Air Kenya were borrowing a plane from KLM. A DC10 as it happens, and if you’re a similar vintage to myself, then you’ll know that DC10’s did not have the best reputation for safety. Still, this was 1983 and I lived to tell the tale. As for yesterday, I could say that the flight itself was pretty uneventful. I could say it, but it would be a pit of a porky. This was a small plane – only two seats on either side of the aisle. So when we hit turbulence, it really started throwing the plane around. We were all ordered back to our seats and told to buckle up, which was a bit awkward because I’d just got up to go to the toilet. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever sat through a 30 minute bout of severe air turbulence with a full bladder, but if you haven’t you can take my word for it that it’s overrated.
Before I left home, I’d done a bit of research on the route from the airport to the hotel. The average taxi fare would work out at about 50 euros. Google told me that I could do it for about 6 Euros if I took a bus to the Olympic Stadium, got off, walked around the corner, and took another bus to Surinameplein. Fair enough.
Not as easy as it sounded, frankly. For a start, I was on the wrong bus stop. I got on the right bus, but it was going the wrong way. So I got off again. Then I got on the right bus going the right way and got off at the right place – Olympic Stadium. All I had to do was walk around the corner. Well and good – but which corner? Thankfully, one of the useful things about Amsterdam is that every local person I’ve met speaks English. Very good English at that. So I broke the habit of a lifetime and asked a stranger for help, and eventually found the right turning. It was getting on for about half nine, and I should have been at the hotel within a few minutes. Half an hour later I jerked awake when the bus I was on came to the end of the line. I’d fallen asleep as it sailed way past my stop, and to add insult to injury, I had to get out of the bus, and wait 20 minutes in the freezing cold before getting back on the same one to go back the way I’d come.
Well, soldier on. Things began looking up today. For one thing, the best and quickest way into town was by tram. I love trams. I spent an hour and a half riding from Birmingham to Wolverhampton and back on a tram last Sunday, and considered that paying 4 quid for the privilege was cheap at the price. So I made my first Amsterdam sketch at the stop while waiting for my tram – a 17 – to come along.

Unfortunately a lot of today the weather has been what I believe the locals call pisshingdown, so opportunities for sketching have been fairly few and far between. As the rain eased off a little, though, as I was passing the old town hall which is also called a Royal Palace, I chanced upon a Sandeman walking tour about to start. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sandeman tours. Basically they present themselves as ‘Free tours’ – which they can be. But at the end you’re offered the chance to pay your guide whatever the tour was worth to you. Which means you have the opportunity to pay nothing if you have the brazen cheek. I paid. Our guide was called Kendra, an American whose lived for 14 years in Amsterdam and has just passed her Dutch citizenship exam.
Now, in the last couple of weeks, when I’ve told people that I’m going to Amsterdam, a certain number – men mostly although not exclusively – have smiled and asked if I’m going to be eating ‘funny’ cakes or smoking ‘funny’ cigarettes, and if I’m going to be ‘visiting’ the Red Light district. To which my answer was of course, no, no and no, this is a cultural trip where I will be broadening my mind and employing my meagre artistic talents in immortalising the uniqueness and beauty of the city yuttah yuttah. So of course, Kendra first of all took us through the Red Light District and past a lot of cafes offering various ways of intaking cannabis. Which is still actually illegal in Amsterdam, but let that one go for now.
To be fair, I did enjoy the walking tour, which only passed through the red light district briefly, and learned quite a bit about the history of the city .

From a walking tour, then, to a canal tour. If you’ve followed my misadventures in the past you’ll know that there’s a number of things I want to do when I visit a city I’ve never been to before. One is ride the trams if they have any. Done that. Another is use the Metro if they have any. Did that a bit later. Another thing I do like, though, is a river cruise. Well, if you substitute river for canals, I guess a canal cruise in Amsterdam must have a pretty good claim to being the daddy of them all. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
The biggest disappointment of the day was finding out that since last year, if you want to visit Anne Frank’s house, you have to book online. I tried booking at 6am this morning, only to find that all of the times for the whole of this week are sold out. Thankfully, I did manage to book a ticket for the Van Gogh Museum for 9 am tomorrow. Speaking of museums, after backtracking to a place I’d seen during the walking tour to make the street corner sketch you can hopefully see as part of this post, I did take a gamble that I’d be able to get into the Rijksmuseum just by turning up. This was at about 3 pm, and it worked. In fact the queue for the cloakroom to put my backpack away safely was far, far longer than the queue for tickets.
They have a Van Gogh self portrait which simply blew me away. I’ll maybe say more about this tomorrow after I’ve visited the Van Gogh Museum. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch was breath taking too – I think it’s bigger than my house. On the whole though, I have to say that for my money the Prado was slightly more impressive. And that, my friends is pretty much all of the exciting stuff for today. I did walk to a Metro station and rode to the next station down the line, but I have to say that I wasn’t blown away by what is obviously a very modern system. I felt the platforms were bleak, and the whole thing was just a tiny bit soulless.

August 21st - Elche

The last episode of An English Fool Abroad With his Sketchbook, Summer 2018. Thus ends the expedition, not exactly with a bang, but then not a whimper either.

We left for the hospital relatively early today, and were there before 10 am. We were quite hopeful that John would be allowed home today. He’d not been put on the nebuliser last night at all, which we took to be a good sign. So we took the big car, put the wheelchair in the back, and generally acted as we would if he was definitely coming home.

So we went up to John’s room, and we waited. And about 12:15 the Doctor put in an appearance. He told John that he could come home, and we gave a little cheer. However, we couldn’t go until they’d given us some forms and some medicine. Fine. So we waited again. It was between 90 minutes and two hours, but finally we were good to go.

By way of celebration we parked up by the nearest restaurant we could find, which was almost in the actual shadow of the hospital. This was the Restaurant El Mixto – El Mixto literally meaning ‘the Mixed’. Well, maybe not the most exciting name for a restaurant, but an appropriate one, since when you sat down you were confronted with three separate menus – the Spanish Menu, the Chinese Menu, and the Japanese one. The food was great, but they have a rather idiosyncratic way of serving a party of three. Jen was served with her starter and main at the same time. John and I weren’t served anything. Jen almost finished eating before my starter and main arrived together. John wasn’t served anything. Finally John’s starter arrived. Not his main, mind. That didn’t arrive until long after Jen and I had finished eating, and John had long since finished his starter. Oh well, as I said, it was extremely close to the hospital, which was all to the good. Normally I find that the hot weather is an appetite suppressant, but I was so hungry by the time we left the hospital that I could have eaten a scabby dog. In fact . . . no, let’s be fair, the food in the restaurant was fine.

I could have maybe gone on a another sketch hunt around the village after we got back, but then enough is as good as a feast. As it is I have just one double page left in my sketching journal, and that will do for the airport and for the journey home tomorrow. If you’ve been with me for the whole trip, then thanks very much. Watch this space for An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook again later on in the year.

August 20th - Elche Hospital

I promise you that I won’t detain you for long this evening. So, we were hoping that John might well be coming out of hospital today. Jen set off quite early in the Smart car, while I stayed in the Casa Me Duck. Well, be fair, had I gone as well, then I’d have been clinging to the roof rack on the way home if John had come out, which would have been doubly difficult since the Smart doesn’t actually have a roof rack.

While Jen was on her way, John rang. Right, John had an appointment arranged for a procedure on his back, and this was arranged months ago. They arrived in John’s room early doors today to take him down for it. He was all prepared, even though he was sure it had been cancelled. When they were about to do the procedure, they had a look at the medicine they had been giving him. One of the things John takes is Sintron, an anticoagulant. Jen had made sure that they were fully aware that if John was having the treatment on Monday, then they could not give him Sintron on Sunday. If they were cancelling the procedure, no problem. So what did they do? They gave him Sintron last night. So when they realised they’d given him Sintron last night, they cancelled the procedure and wheeled him back up to his room. Lord Sugar might well have said, John was ‘not an ‘appy bahny’.

As for me, well I accompanied Jen to the hospital on the later visit, when we took the big car just in case. No such luck though. We can only hope that he’ll be out tomorrow. As for me, well, no real sketching opportunities apart from this Ambulance in the car park.

August 19th San Isidro

Not long to go now. In fact, not long is an accurate description of this particular episode of an English Fool With His Sketchbook. There just isn’t a great amount to say about a pretty uneventful day.

We visited John in hospital this morning. In all honesty I think he’s getting a bit stir crazy. He was sitting in his chair though, and while we were there he was walking by himself, so at least that shows that he’s quite a bit better than he was when we brought him in on Wednesday. Hopefully they might well say that he can come home tomorrow.

We stayed until lunchtime, but John was getting a bit sleepy then, and so it made sense to take our leave. If you were with me last Sunday you might remember that I told you of the family tradition to have Sunday lunch in a restaurant in Crevillente called Las Palmeras – presumably so called because the outside of the place is festooned with palm trees. It was somewhat quieter today than it was last week, as far as I could tell we weren’t contending with a hen party as we were last week. Then it was back to the Casa Me Duck.

After a bit of a siesta, Jen packed the car to go back to the hospital, and I made the watercolour and ink sketch of the main street in San Isidro looking out of town that’s on this page. As for the Japanese characters, well, it’s like this. I also post in a Facebook group called Sketching Every Day. Each day there is a prompt to sketch, although one can always choose to go off prompt. Today’s was to wok in the style of artist Mateusz Urbanowicz. He’s a Polish born artist and illustrator living and working in Tokyo, and his style really lends itself to Urban sketching. So I did try to use as close to his palette as I could get. To pay respect to the man himself, though, I used Google, and if I’ve got it right, it says San Isidro, and my name. If I haven’t, well, I just hope that the translation isn’t too offensive.

August 18th San Isidro - Catral

An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook has been out and about a bit again today, although you couldn’t really call it as much of an excursion as the trips to Elche, Murcia and Alicante. We were off early to see John in the hospital this morning. He seems pretty much the same as yesterday, but certainly no worse, and that’s all to the good. While I was there I went two floors down to get John and Jen a coffee each from the cafeteria. Despite distinctly asking for café con leche fria – coffees with cold milk – the cups were so hot that even though the lady behind the counter gave me two extra plastic cups into which I could place the takeaway cups with the coffee in, they were still so boiling hot that I couldn’t hold them for long. In fact, he only way I could do it was putting the two plastic cups together, carrying one cup inside it, and balancing the other on top. Up two floors. You can guess what happened, can’t you? Well. . . you’re wrong. I managed it.

After leaving the hospital we nipped quickly back to the Casa Me Duck to change cars- the Smart car needed filling up, and the trip to Catral provided the best opportunity to do it. On the way Jen took a slight detour behind the station in San Isidro. The reason? To show me the Memorial – which is both behind the station, and also the middle sketch on the page below. I didn’t previously know it, but Alicante was the last city to hold out against Franco in the Civil War. The community of San Isidro wasn’t built until the 1950s, but prior to this part of it had been the site of a concentration camp where Franco put , well, basically anyone he felt like. It’s a very understated memorial – just two huge metal bars, with broken chains connected to them, and a simple stone plaque at the bottom, yet it’s oddly moving.

My ulterior motive in wanting to come to Catral, then, was to take a look at the church, which is the picture on the left hand side of the page below. It’s pretty impressive, but true to form it is in the middle of a square which just doesn’t have enough room for you to make a good sketch of it from the front. I mean, you could do it, but then you wouldn’t get the dome or the tower, which are, to my mind, the church – actually it is a Cathedral, which surprised me – to my mind its best features. We did pop inside. It was very dark, and Jen suggested that we might have entered the Lady Chapel. As our eyes accustomed it became clear that the figures and pictures we had taken to be the Virgin Mary were in fact the Lord Jesus. The unworthy and sacrilegious thought that maybe it was actually the bearded Lady chapel came to mind, and I’m glad that I kept that thought to myself at that time. The sketch below is actually my favourite view of the cathedral, which is approaching it from a side street.

Sooner or later, whenever I stay in San Isidro, I end up in Catral market on a Saturday. I must admit that I’ve never seen it quite as bare and looking quite as sorry for itself as it did this morning. It was gone midday, and some of the traders were clearing up and calling it a day, but it’s also true that a lot of the traders go on their hols in August. So, with little or nothing of interest within it, this left just one more thing. Lunch. Jen suggested Chinese, and who am I to refuse? The fact that I love Chinese food is totally immaterial. Now, you may recall that when I had a Chinese curry in Madrid, I believe it was the medium through which Montezuma extracted his revenge later that night. Well, I have to say that this one, a prawn curry was absolutely delicious. Whether I’ll pay for it later we’ll just have to see.

And that, I dare say, is pretty much it for today. If you’ve been with me this far, you have my thanks and congratulations. We are nearing the end of the marathon – 3 more full days, and then I’m on my way home.

August 17th San Isidro

Well, an English Fool Abroad with his sketchbook hasn’t done a lot of sketching today, if truth be told. To be fair we had quite a lot to do today. Jen and I did the rounds in ALbatera this morning – chemist – papers – coffee – food shopping – bank, although not necessarily in that order. This meant that we could get to the hospital fairly early to see John.

Basically, once an adult has been admitted to the hospital here, then visitors can come and go at pretty much any time. Although I did have a look at the handbook they give you yesterday, and if my Spanish served me right – by no means a foregone conclusion – they do ask that you limit the amount of time that you bring children, and you bear in mind the times when the lifts are most in demand. Fair enough.

John certainly didn’t seem in worse than he was yesterday evening, and possibly a wee bit better. We knew that the doctor wanted to have a word with Jen, so we stayed. Quite a long time actually. That wasn’t a problem, but I was a little bit concerned about Jen as time went on. She’s a type 1 diabetic – I’m a type 2 – and while it’s not advisable for me to go missing out on meals, it’s not going to do me serious harm. However if Jen’s blood sugar gets too low, it can be serious. So when someone turned up to take John for tests, Jen decided it might be an opportunity to tell the people on the desk that we’d had to go, so that the doctor could ring if he wanted.

A short way from the hospital is a bar restaurant called the Ca Tona. Now, anything which brings to mind those awful Iceland adverts of a few years ago is, to my mind, to be given a very wide birth, but fair play, we went in and had one of the biggest and best steaks I’ve had in a very long time.

None of which is very entertaining to read about, I’m sure, but there we are, that’s my day. Jen went back to the hospital a few hours later – honestly I did offer and would happily have gone as well, but she preferred to go by herself. So I used the opportunity to make a sketch of one of the locations I scouted out last weekend, when I went for a walk around to see if there were any places nearby I hadn’t sketched before and would like to sketch. This is a house in the same road as the chemist’s. Now, last week John did tell me that the occupants of one of the houses in the street won a huge prize on El Gordo a while ago. El Gordo – literally ‘the Fat One’ – is the Spanish National Lottery. Apparently the winners haven’t moved, but have just had a ton of work done in doing up their house. I can’t say whether it’s this one, but the place is by any means to my mind a little bit grander than the other places in the same street.

August 16th Elche

John is better than he was yesterday, I’m very glad to say. I went with Jen to see him this evening, and he’d got his colour back, and was talking a lot more easily. He’s still being kept in the hospital for observation, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him home tomorrow, or possibly Saturday.

I offered to go to the hospital with Jen this morning, but she didn’t want me to, so I thought that under the circumstances the best thing I could do was to carry on just as I would have done in other circumstances. I didn’t fancy a long excursion today though, so set my modest sights on Elx/Elche. That dual name business is easily explained – Elx is the name in Valencian. I’m not going to upset any of the my friends in the area by getting involved in the discussion of whether Valencian is a dialect of Catalan or not.

The first time I ever heard of Elx/Elche was actually 11 years ago, which was when Jen and John bought their first home in the Alicante area. When you drive away from airport on the motorway past Elx/Elche you pass a large brown (cultural, same as in the UK) sign with a face wearing a curious headdress and the words – Elche – Patrimonio De La Humanidad. Which intrigued me, and which I’ve since learned means that Elx/Elche is a World Heritage City. This has as much to do with the huge palm groves, of which the city is very proud, as anything else. However it does have quite a lot else going for it.

Once again I took the Smart Car to the station, and then the Cercania train towards Alicante. It was only three stops, and the price of 2 Euros 80 was an absolute steal in my opinion. Mind you, there was a certain amount of frustration as I was waiting to buy my ticket at the machine. The couple in front of me just couldn’t work it. What made it somewhat worse was the fact that as their frustration level was rising, they began to curse the machine in the native tones of my own home town. I helped sort them out, anyway, and we all of us made it onto the platform in time.

So, Elx/Elche, then. Getting from the train station to the centre of the older part of the town involved crossing the Rio Vinalopo. In August, crossing a river in a large town or city in Spain is an interesting experience. Usually there’s a vertiginous drop from the bridge to the surface of a tiny little stream or trickle which runs underneath. I would imagine that it’s a different story in the winter. The tourist office was just a couple of hundred yards from the bridge. Normally I like tourist offices. They give you helpful maps, and all they ask is that you tell them your nationality for their statistics. Not this one. I asked for a map, and the lady put it on the counter, and then insisted on making her own personal recommendations, circling them on the map for me, recommending hotel accommodation, launching on 5 minute monologue about the delights of the land train sightseeing tour, and finally giving me a blow by blow account of the Misterio de Elche, or the Elche Mystery Play. Now, don’t get me wrong, UNESCO has declared this a Masterpiece of the oral heritage of Humanity. But it is performed on the 14th and 15th August. Today is the 16th. The words stable, door, horse and bolted did come irresistibly to mind.

Finally she momentarily let go of the map, and I grabbed it, said bye, and got while the going was possible. Across the road and round the corner was the magnificent Basilica de Santa Maria. Perhaps not quite as impressive as the Cathedral in Murcia, it was beset by pretty much the same problem , namely that it’s hemmed in by other buildings making it extremely difficult to find an angle where you could comfortably attempt to make a sketch of it. I did manage to sketch part of the back of it, but didn’t find any suitable angle to sketch the main dome and the tower until later in the day.

Funnily enough, it was in my next port of call that I actually found that angle. When you cross the bridge, at the old town end you’re struck by quite a striking castle tower, and on the remains of the castle the MAHE – Elx/Elche Museum of Archaeology and History has been built. When it comes to History, Elx/lche certainly has a lot of it. Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines and Moors have all left their mark. However that wasn’t the most interesting thing for me. No, the most interesting thing was that it answered the 11 year old question of who or what the strange head on that brown motorway sign was. The lady in question, for a lady it is, is La Dama De Elche – the Lady of Elche. It’s a very well preserved bust of a woman – maybe a goddess – wearing ceremonial headdress and robes, probably dating from the 4th century BC. It’s a striking piece of work, albeit that the strange headdress has probably made other people than just me nickname it Princess Leia’s granny. The museum hosts a couple of replicas. The original, incidentally is housed in the National Arhcaeological Museum in Madrid, which I visited last week. I cannot, in all honesty, say that I noticed the Dama in there thought.

I could in all honesty have stayed a bit longer. However, you remember that I mentioned there was rain yesterday? Well, after I came out of MAHE a huge, filthy, angry looking grey cloud covered the whole town. All I had with me in the way of wet weather gear was my sun cap. Jen did mention yesterday that on the rare occasions that they get summer rain like yesterday, it does tend to happen across three days. When it clouds over like it did, it means one of two things. A) It is going to rumble and make all the noise of a thunderstorm, but not do much else. B) You are going to get drenched very, very quickly and very, very thoroughly. So, to cut a long story short, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and headed back to the station.

Well, that’s today’s sketching expedition. The rain followed me back to San Isidro, and I’m not unhappy that I came back when I did. We nipped over to the hospital to see John, and as I said, he seemed a lot better. And if that’s not a positive note on which to end for now, then I don’t know what is.

August 15th - Elche Hospital

I’m sorry if there’s not a bundle of laughs, chortles, or even titters in tonight’s shorter episode of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. There were no plans for an excursion today since it’s the Feast of the Assumption and a public holiday as I mentioned yesterday. However the day turned out to be a little more eventful than I expected. John wasn’t well at all a couple of days ago. He seemed better yesterday, but was worse again today. I knew that he was feeling even worse today when he said that he thought he should go to the hospital.

We all went to Accident and Emergency – Urgencio – together, in the Hospital Del Vinalopo in Elche. John was assessed fairly quickly – his blood oxygen level was very low, and then taken off with Jen for treatment. I spent quite a long time in the waiting room, which was no hardship really since I had my kindle and sketchbook as well. I quickly sketched the entrance to the hospital, then rather surreptitiously made one sketch of the waiting room, but there’s always the danger that the people you’re sketching will cotton on, and get shirty, so I dashed off the one sketch and left it there. So it was a choice between reading my kindle, and watching ‘Got Talent Espana’ (I’m not making this title up) – Spain’s version of, well, work it out for yourself. Blimey, but it goes on for a long time, that show! Or maybe it just seems to. Most interesting act I saw? Two guys running up and downstairs carrying huge trays of glasses. One of them fell. That’s entertainment, folks.

Jen and I had some lunch in the hospital while John was being x-rayed. He’s been diagnosed with pneumonia. That’s not nice, not nice at all, but he’s been treated for it before. Eventually the doctors made the decision to keep him in overnight. So basically, that was today folks. Being in the hospital, we missed the main event of the day. Rain. Lots of it. Now, if you’ve never spent a large amount of time in this part of Spain at this time of year you maybe won’t appreciate what makes it a main event, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Evening visiting came and went. Jen went by herself, but came back saying that John said that he was feeling better.

Alicante 14th August

es, the English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook has been out and about in Alicante today. After yesterday I made sure that all the water I was carrying was still. So was the train I was on for some reason, but what the hell, I wasn’t exactly in a rush, and so arrived in Alicante dry, and in pretty good spirits. Spirits, I should add which rose even higher when I saw signs in the station pointing out that the tram station wasn’t at al far away. This came as news to me. I didn’t even know that Alicante had trams. Well, be fair, I’ve only been coming here for about 10 years now.

Right, just in case you didn’t see any of my posts from Prague, Berlin or Budapest I think I’d probably better explain that I have a bit of a thing about trams. I like trams very much, and always try to take a ride on one whenever I’m close enough to do so. I only found out after I left Murcia yesterday that there is also a tram system impinging on the north of that city too. So there was no way that I was going to miss out today. The trams go quite some way out of the city. One of the lines even goes as far as Benidorm. Well, that wasn’t on the schedule for today, so I contented myself with a very short hop. How short? Well, when I walked between the stations on the way back later it took about 5 minutes. My two stations, Lucero and Mercado, were both underground, and it did actually make the whole thing feel as much of a light railway as it did a tram system, but hey, who am I to point the finger. I was too busy making the sketch you should be able to see with this post to indulge in any gratuitous finger pointing anyway.

Mercado station was chosen because it is at the foot of the hill on which my main tourist objective for the day stood, the Castillo de Santa Barbara – or Barbara Castle as I can’t help but call it. (We will all wait here for a few minutes while younger readers go to ask their elders to explain the Barbara Castle reference). Okay – all back? The Castle is a really impressive building complex, but it has the drawback, for the pedestrian, of being right at the top of the hill, rather than the bottom. Even taking the quicker route by climbing seemingly endless flights of steps, it still took a good 20 minutes or so in the increasingly hot sun to get to the part where the castle actually started. My mood was not improved at all when a tourist bus arrived in the car park about 30 seconds after I did.

Mind you, even if you took the bus to the castle car park, you’d still quite a lot of climbing to do if you wanted to see most of the castle. It’s a shame that they never had escalators in the 18th century when a lot of the buildings were built. Well, at least , when I found a convenient set of steps in the shade on which to sit and make a sketch, I had several people stop to have a look and a chat, which, all joking aside, is something I really enjoy. Which surprises me somewhat since I’m not a very sociable person.

When I came back down the hill, which took about half the time going up it had taken, I went to see the market from which the Mercado station takes its name. It’s a pretty impressive building – late 19th century I would guess. Murcia’s yesterday was pretty impressive, but I’d have to say that this one took the prize. I had about an hour before the whole place would start shutting up shop for siesta time, and so used it to sketch part of the market and some figures. They weren’t all there at exactly the same time, but they did all pass during the time that I was sketching, and so I used them to make the composite scene that you see in the sketch.

I walked down to the Marina, where I had a bit of lunch, and had a look to see if any of the boats grabbed my interest in a sketching context. This was a very frustrating experience. I walked past a shopping centre, and could clearly see what I guess was a replica of an old sailing ship. Actually clearly is not correct. I could clearly see the masts and some of the rigging, and the impressively ornate stern of the ship. But that was all. The view was blocked by some buildings which I guessed were the customs house, and there was no way for me to get a view of the rest of the ship. Frustrating.

It got to about 3pm, and the legs were hurting. I think I should report that after several days in the sun, in a certain light they do appear to be taking on a very slight tinge of pink, although that could just be wishful thinking on my part. I haven’t planned any excursions for tomorrow. It is literally a red-letter day, being the Feast of the Assumption, and a Bank Holiday in Spain. But fear not, there will still be another episode tomorrow , although it will probably be a short one.

Murcia (13th August)

Hello, good evening, and welcome to another episode of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. Now, I’m sure that you’ll have been paying attention so you’ll know that today was scheduled for a trip to Murcia. I was surprised to learn that Murcia is actually Spain’s 7th largest city. It was actually founded in the 9th century by the Emir of Cordoba, and I saw a couple of traces of the city’s Islamic heritage.

So, I promised you some foolishness, I think. I made sure that I was by the station with some time to spare, so I nipped into the nearby Hiperber supermercado to buy a large bottle of water, and a smaller one. The idea was to drink the smaller one, then refill it and use it if I was going to make a painting. Clever huh? Well, actually not really. You see, I opened it on the platform a minute or two before the train was due. Now, bearing in mind it was called something like Gaseosa I did expect it to be fizzy. Not that fizzy, though. It practically exploded on opening, and the top third of the bottle showered me, just as the train was pulling into the station.

To be fair the little Cercania train to Murcia passed through some quite interesting scenery. Now, I’m a city boy, myself, and I often find scenery to be a bit like wallpaper – I don’t really notice it’s there a lot of the time. The hills, which we passed quite near to, were impressive. In fact, colour and shape wise they were kind of like I’d imagine the surface of Mars to be like.

It took about 40 minutes to get to Murcia. Now, a little bit of research beforehand had told me that I really wanted to see the old town, and that the railway station was a bit of a walk. When I had researched which bus to take me to the Royal Casino – more about that later - - it gave me two options. Well, when I asked the drivers of both,- Casino Real – they both gave me the kind of reaction they might have done if I’d asked them for a cheap day super saver return to Ulaan Baatar. So stuff it, I thought, and started to walk. I had seen the tower of the Cathedral as we’d puled into the station, so I knew the right general direction. I hoped.

No, I’m not going to try to keep you in suspense. I did get there. And the centre of Murcia is really rather impressive. First port of call was the aforementioned Casino Real. It was built in the 19th century, and is still the HQ of a private club, but in 1983 it was declared a national monument. Oh, and if the word ‘casino’ is conjuring up mental images of slot machines and roulette tables, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Open to the public are some rather grand public rooms – ballroom, a hall of mirrors, and an Italianate patio meant to conjure up images of Pompeii. After I’d taken the audio tour I was pretty much ready for a sketching break, so I walked to the Plaza San Domingo at the end of the street where the casino was located, and made the ink sketch you can see of the corner of said street.

The Casino is the most visited building in Murcia. However, probably the most impressive is the Cathedral. Again, I had the same problem with it that I’d had in Madrid – when you’re in the Plaza where you can see it’s detailed and ornate façade, you just can’t get a good sketch of it. You can’t because a) you’d hurt your neck, and b) the whole plaza is bathed in sunshine and you’d go doolally in the heat before finishing your sketch. On the same plaza is the tourist information office, and all I had to do was ask and they gave me a lovely detailed map of the centre of the city. Incidentally this revealed that I had actually gone in a fairly impressive circular detour on my way from the station to the Cathedral. Such is life.

Using the map then I visited a nineteenth century market, just as it was closing up for siesta time, and crossed the Rio Segura on a different bridge from the old bridge I’d used earlier. Walking back along the side of the river towards the old bridge I came upon a good angle showing the bridge, and the tower of the cathedral, with, more importantly, a bench in the shade to sketch it from. This is the second sketch I made today.

I had two things left by this time. The first was to sort out some sustenance. I’d bought a couple of queso y jamon boccadillas (aka cheese and ham baguettes (aka cheese and ham long crusty rolls) ) earlier before catching the train. Having polished these off I was looking for a little more. I passed a pasteleria and saw what I took to be a tray of cheese pastries in the window. I bought one, bit into it, and found that what I had taken to be light yellow cheese was actually custard. Gotta be honest, it was delicious, for all that. Then it was a gentle walk to the station, incidentally passing by tpday’s winner of the Most Unusual Name For A Museum Award – Museo de la Ciencia y Agua de Murcia (The Museum of Science and Water of Murcia). I’ll be honest, I was tempted to have a look inside, but time was getting on, and so I headed back to the station.

Nothing particularly interesting to report occurred on the way back to the Casa Me Duck, but something interesting happened when I got there. I was sitting in the living room, minding my own business, reading my kindle, when the sofa started to shake from side to side. Honestly, it was an earth tremor, and it went on for it must have been about half of minute. Apparently it’s not uncommon here, and the houses have been built so that they can withstand any amount of tremors of this strength – which I believe from reports locally to have been about 4. Well, I can promise you all that it is the only time that the Earth has moved or will move for me on this trip. (Oh, be fair, you can’t say that you didn’t expect that one, surely.)

So that was the trip to Murcia – nice place and I enjoyed. Tomorrow it’s Alicante. More foolishness? Can’t promise anything. Watch this space. Adios.

Alicante Day Three (written 12th August)

Well, my friends, I’m sorry to report that today’s An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook is another pretty much foolishness free zone. Well, it’s Sunday, isn’t it?

If you read yesterday’s episode, you may be wondering about the Spanish evening at the Cerveceria which I mentioned yesterday. Well, apparently the wearing white is just a convention, nobody seemed to know any great significance to it. If you go the whole hog you wear it with a red neckerchief as well, but I didn’t notice anyone doing it last night. In fact it seemed as if quite a few hadn’t got the dress code memo, but then who am I to point the finger?

So, what was involved in the Spanish evening? Well, if I’m honest, it seemed pretty indistinguishable from an English evening. The only huge difference was that in Spain things do tend to get going much later. Although scheduled for a 9 pm start, people really didn’t start filling the place until about 10. Now, unfortunately Jen was taken quite ill during the evening – and all she had all the time we were there was a bottle of fizzy water. Trouper that she is she really didn’t want to come away, but by half ten she looked absolutely grey. So I went back to the Casa Me Duck, and fetched the car. I could have gone back after that, but to be honest, that sort of thing really isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t know whether it’s my Scottish ancestry or my profession as a teacher, but I don’t really want to see large groups of people enjoying themselves. Joking aside, I wouldn’t have felt right.

So to the sketches. Only two of them today. The first is an old Renault Four which is/was parked up a few streets away from the Casa Me Duck. Now, there were tons of these around when I was a kid, and I wouldn’t have looked at one twice then. But that’s kind of the point. I haven’t been a kid for a very long time now, and this car must have been between 40 and 50 years old. So that’s why I sketched it, enjoying a tranquil (and hot) retirement on the Costa Blanca, as indeed are a significant number of the locals. Having said that, John informs me that due to – and excuse me for using the B word – Brexit, a significant number of the ex-pat community on the Costa Blanca have sold up and moved back, and others have taken Spanish nationality. I’ll be honest, I can’t blame them. If it comes to trusting your future status to the British Government . . . Alright. No more political comments if I can help it.

One final sketch today then. This is the Las Palmeras restaurant in Crevillent. It’s a bit of a family tradition that we eat Sunday lunch at Las Palmeras when any family or friends are visiting with Jen and John. It’s a really nice place – inside, that is – though not much to look at outside. One of the huge attractions is that it has its own pool, and if it takes your fancy then you can spend the day in the pool, and have Sunday lunch – although it is frowned upon if you actually eat it in the pool. I accidentally on purpose left my swimming gear in Port Talbot, so that wasn’t an option. I think of it as a valuable public service. The sight of my near naked body has been enough to drive grown adults to vegetarianism in the past, but I digress. In the pool at lunchtime, though, were a very, umm, exuberant, shall we say, Spanish hen party. At one stage they were so loud that the Head waiter went and had a few words with them. I didn’t understand exactly what he said, but I’d lay odds that he wasn’t congratulating them on the attractiveness of their swimwear.

Well, that’s pretty much it for today. Thanks for staying with me over this relatively quiet few days. I’m taking the 10 am train into Murcia tomorrow morning, so there’s every chance of more entertaining news tomorrow. Watch this space.

Alicante Day Two (Written on August 11th)

Yes, An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook is still sketching. This is going to be a bit of a short post though, because although there’s been a bit of sketching there’s been precious little foolishness to write about. Basically I’ve been chilling out yesterday and today, and in all probability tomorrow as well. Don’t panic though. I’m planning on taking a ride on the choo choo to Murcia on Monday, and then into Alicante on Tuesday, and there should be plenty of opportunity for foolhardy Englishness there.

This morning, then, it got to about 11:00, and I did think that if I couldn’t shift myself, I’d have to leave it until the later part of the afternoon, since previous experience told me that it would just be too damn hot. So I just mooched around, taking note of buildings and places which I might like to sketch later on in the week. Last year I did make a watercolour and ink sketch of Jen and John’s house – although mostly it was of Jen’s Smart Car – but this year I couldn’t resist doing an ordinary ink sketch. However, I digress. Gradually I wended my not very weary way to my favourite public space in San Isidro. Incidentally, when I typed San Isidro on my kindle, the predicitve text decided to render it as San Weirdo. Hmm. You may recall that I got the local train from Alicante to San Isidro on Thursday. Well, the station here is very new, and was only built within the last few years. Now, when they demolished the older station which stood there, they re-erected the platform canopy, and the wall of the station building which faced onto the platform, in a street in the town. I’ve never been there for a performance but I understand that they do have music there sometimes. There are a couple of benches though, and it was pleasant to sit in the shade of the canopy and sketch a couple of the houses opposite. It would have been very pleasant if not for the flies. Oh well.

Later this evening we’re going to a ‘Spanish Evening’ in a place I sketched last year. Back then it was called La Cerveceria, but it’s changed hands since. A ‘Spanish Evening’ in Spain does tend to bring to mind a phrase containing the words ‘coal’ and ‘Newcastle’, but be fair, I’m not entirely clear of what the evening’s going to involve, but since we’ve all been asked to wear white, I’m guessing it won’t be that messy.

Madrid - Alicante

Day Five. It started badly since Montezuma decided to well and truly take his revenge. My guess is that it might have been something to do with the fried rice I had from a Chinese takeaway just outside Anton Martin Metro station earlier in the day. Who knows? Anyway, I doubt I got much more than a couple of hours sleep, and those came in short instalments.

Still, for all that things started looking up when I started packing. I didn’t mention this in my last post, but I was quite upset on Wednesday because I lost my wedding ring. I told you about my visit to the Puenta de Toledo. Well, while I was there it suddenly occurred to me that my right finger felt a bit funny. I looked at it and I saw why. My wedding ring had gone. Now, I did cling to the hope that maybe it had come off in the shower earlier, but when I got back to my room for a siesta I checked and couldn’t find it there or in the wash basin. Then, yesterday morning, as I was making the bed for the las time I picked up the pillow, and there it was, just as f the tooth fairy had put it there. Honestly – that was my first thought, that I was being rewarded for my obvious virtue. More prosaically I guess that during Tuesday night I must have put my had under my pillow and it came off then, but even so, it made my day yesterday.

I don’t think of myself as a luddite technophobe, but I was very anxious about the fact that I hadn’t printed off my train ticket. So much so that the night before I’d downloaded it to a) my wee laptop that comes with me on all my trips – b) my phone, and finally c) my Kindle. Even so I made sure that I was at the station 2 and a half hours early AND went to customer services to check that my ticket on my kindle would be okay.

With a long time to kill I went for a walk along the Paseo del Prado and then came back to the station. I know that this sounds silly, but my train was at 12:15, and I didn’t want to go back into the station until the previous Alicante train – the 10:45 – had gone. To be honest, the Atocha station in Madrid seems to be going through a bit of an identity crisis, as I’m sure it thinks that it’s an airport. Before you could go into the Departure (Lounge) Area, you had to go through an airport style luggage check. Then when you got into the Departure area you couldn’t go onto the platform until your train was called, in the same way that you get called to the Departure gate in an airport. For all of that, though, the system seemed to work. I sat in one of the more comfy chairs which faced the glass doors onto the platforms and sketched one of the choo-choos which was waiting there.

When they allowed us onto the platform at about 5 to 12 I had time to quickly sketch the outlines of some of the people waiting, and when we got on the train – 5 minutes late so no bonus points to Renfe there – I completed the shading. The blokey sitting next to me seemed very interested in what I was doing. Finally he started talking to me, and even after my standard apologetic – ‘soy Ingles, no hablo Espanol mucho’ he kept talking. I kept picking up the odd word here and there, and after he pointed to my sketch, then the colourful logo on his T shirt I gathered that he was saying that my sketch would be a lot better with colour. Everyone’s a critic. I tried to show him the watercolour sketches in the book, but he wasn’t interested in a retrospective of my Madrid period, and said nothing. So, in an act of revenge, I noisily ate my crisps and drank my drink at him. That’ll teach him. I’d like to think that when he got off at Cuenca he had seen the error of his ways.

Fair play to the driver of the train. We left Madrid late, but we arrived at Alicante early. The last stage of the journey was to use the Cercania train out to San Isidro-Catral. Unbeknownst to me, the ticket machines are actually on the little bit that leads to their platforms. In all honesty I just didn’t see them. So I went to the ticket office. Now, in Madrid, on the very rare occasions that I did attempt to speak Spanish, the person to whom I was speaking invariably replied in English. So rather than messing about I asked the chap behind the desk if he spoke English. He looked at me as if I’d just asked him if he’d like a sniff of the dirty laundry in my pack, and replied, “No!” I’ve always wondered why they use two exclamation marks in Spanish – one like we do, and the other upside down at the start of the word. Now I know – I could actually hear the other exclamation mark. So I asked him in Spanish for a ticket to San Isidro – Catral – Albatera. He seemed most disgruntled – in fact I would dare to say that there wasn’t a single inch of him that was still gruntled – but he gave me the ticket anyway.