Category: Animals

A Brief House Hunt

We got hold of the estate agents and they managed to book three viewings for us mid-week.  

As we had a day before the viewings we drove to the nearby village of Arboleas and had a coffee.

There are lots of brits here but the village was lovely none-the-less (hahaha – just kidding – I love brits).

There seemed to be an extra large number of cats in the village, some of which were quite cheeky – sitting on parked cars, and sauntering by slowly taunting the dogs.

After our coffee we walked around a bit, then got driving again and just kept going.  It’s less than an hour to the sea, so we drove past Vera and north a bit along the coast to Villaricos.

We found a large space next to a beautiful sandy beach and had our lunch, then took the doggies for a walk into the town.

The next day we viewed three properties, all of which are ‘country houses’ as we requested but as we drove to the first one we wondered if we’d chosen the wrong category.

Part of the drive to the first house was on a ‘ramblas’, which is a dry river bed – well, dry most of the time other than a few times a year when it’s briefly flooded.  The road is maintained and not too terribly bad, but the house was quite remote.

The house had a lovely pool area and lots of rooms but was rather dark inside and other than the terrace around the pool there was no outdoor space.

The second house was even more remote, and badly needed a lot of work before being habitable.  The owner was a brit who gave up during covid and basically abandoned the house to the lizards and the elements.  While we could see great potential if fixed up, there was just too much to do.

The last house of the day was on a better road, but the house itself as well as the pool, while nice, was quite small – the koi pond wasn’t enough to make up for it.

As we discussed it later and the next morning we decided to look for ‘villas’ rather than ‘country houses’ but had to eliminate quite a few as they were right in a town.  We visited the office and had a good chat with George, who is british but speaks fluent spanish.

He helped us narrow down what we should actually be looking for, and mentioned a large country house that had recently lowered the asking price.  We hadn’t noticed it before as it had been above our budget at the time, but now wasn’t.  Someone was viewing the house that afternoon, and we indicated that we were eager to see it also, as soon as possible.

The next morning we got a call from George – the homeowners were open to seeing us in less than an hour!  They had received one offer on the house, and it was insultingly low – they are desperate to sell so wanted to see us asap.

We met Andy, the very nice fellow that had taken us around the other day, and he led us to the house which was about 20 km out of town.

The only hitch was the side road up to the driveway – it wasn’t paved and with the amount of rain recently the dirt road was a bit soft and the campervan couldn’t make it up.  As we tried repeatedly to back up and get more speed a tractor came behind us.  He realized we weren’t going to make it so pulled back and over a bit so we could back down past him to the paved road and pull over on a conveniently placed wide spot.

We walked the short way up to the house and one of the owners was waiting for us.  As we’d watched a video about the house on the website earlier we kind of knew what to expect – and we weren’t disappointed.

After a tour of the grounds, pool area, and the house we had a quick private discussion and made an offer on the spot.  It took about two minutes for the agent to get a positive response from the owners and we shook hands on it!  And for less than the asking price, which was already discounted quite a bit from the original.

We were in the office later that same day signing the papers and are already waiting for a response from a solicitor to take care of the legal paperwork, etc.  We own a house in Spain!!

From Papiano to San Martino Canavese – via Cavour

The next day was a day of rest, laundry and watching the final day of Tirreno-Adriatic as well as Paris-Nice on tv.  Winners of each were as expected – the two Slovenians, Pogacar and Roglic.

Pogacar won TA in rather convincing fashion, but Roglic needed a good effort from Van Aert to rein in one of the Yatesies on the final climb of PN.

Packing up again on Monday morning didn’t take long as we hadn’t completely emptied the campervan the other night.  Saying goodbye to Papiano once again we left under beautiful sunshine and a clear blue sky.

Without being in any super-great hurry we ended up continuing on all the way to Cavour.  As we got further and further north the sunshine disappeared behind the clouds and the rain started, but we made it to the fruit farm ok.

As usual the dogs were in the courtyard to great us – mama Maya and her little one Spreet (he’s at least five now but still smaller than his mama, and she’s tiny) as well as the young lab that they got a few years ago when the old lab died.

It rained most of the night but by the time we got up it had stopped.  After a nice shower and some breakfast we saw the older fellow (father, we think) approaching.  His english is much worse than my Italian, and I managed to convey that we were just finishing eating, then would get some water and be ready to leave in about an hour.  That seemed ok as he said he’d be in the courtyard and we could find him when ready so he could open the gates for us.

The farm must be doing ok as there’s a shiny new tractor in one of the outbuildings.  In addition to producing the fruit they also make it into jams, etc, have occasional lunches and dinners, and sometimes run a pre-school.  Accepting campers isn’t a huge part of their business, but we’ve enjoyed staying there several times now.

The first time for me was five years ago when I spent six or seven days there upon my return from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Colin came and picked me up and we went to Mt. Ventoux for the dedication of the Tom Simpson memorial.  Colin had know Tommy years ago in his riding days so it was quite special.

The drive to our next destination didn’t take too long as it’s only a bit north of Torino.  Very shortly after leaving the motorway we saw a pink arrow and it was easy going following the route from there to the small town of San Martino Canavese that we’d chosen to watch the race from the next afternoon.

We had a nice chicken and rice lunch and spent the rest of the day reading.  Relocating just a bit for the night we found a large flat area across from the cemetery – far enough off the main road that the traffic noise was much less.

I took a walk around the cemetery the next morning, and was just pondering the fact that many of the folks residing there had lived to nice old ages…

…other than the ones named at the two war memorials…

…when I saw a teddy-bear.  The baby only lived a couple of months, and the plaque was very touching, being from ‘Mamma and Papa’.

The Alps loom in the distance, still of course, covered in snow.

Mid-morning we went for a walk through the town looking for a cafe – there’s another war memorial next to the steps going up.

We didn’t find a cafe, but did come across barking dogs behind every second fence.

Having some time before the race arrives we took a short drive to the next decent sized town on the route, managing this time to find a nice cafe that served delicious Segafredo coffee – totally worth the search.

Back at San Martino we parked in an area right on the race route, and settled in to wait.  A police car pulled up to warn us that the road was going to be closed soon but we assured him it was ok – that’s what we’re parked here for.