Thursday 30 June 2011

Bridges, Newts and Stork nests.








Now that we have a lot of spare time on our hands we are taking advantage and are able to visit both friends and places of interest, we visited Paza De Tor near Monforte de Lemos with friends on Tuesday. This is a lovely, very old manor house dating back some five hundred years, it has some interesting pieces of furniture, and I sure it also has wonderful paintings, these however are so dirty it is impossible to see them clearly. There is no charge to visit the house and is maintained by the government, I'm sure that if a voluntary donation box was provided for the restoration of these paintings the funds would soon be available. Unfortunately there are no photo's to show as it is prohibited, but any one in the area and interested in old buildings it is well worth a visit.
Wednesday was another day out with friends and we got to see the old bridge and old road over the Mino between O Savinao and Taboada, the lack of water in the river is due to work on the hydro electric dam near Chantada. It was then back to our friends house to view the crested newts which have taken up residence in their swimming pool, this has given them a problem as these newts are a protected species, not helpful when you want to clean out and use your swimming pool.
We then found a storks nest which gives new meaning to high rise living, by the size of the nest however it has clearly been in use for a number of years.

Monday 27 June 2011

30 degrees and rising





Yet another very close forest fire today, despite having had a big thunder storm last night and some heavy rain it hasn't stopped fire. This one is very close and the helicopters have recharged their water bombs from the water deposit tank in what was our field. The geese and goats are quite alarmed by these big noisy birds, the hens are terrified, it is quite likely to stop them laying for a while.
Many of the fires in Galicia are stared quite deliberately, we had an email from a friend on the coast yesterday, she lives in Pontevedra, they had seventy fires in just one day, most started deliberately, and for reasons best known to the government they have reduced the distance of trees from property.
We just hope that with the fire fighters taking the water from the water tank that some of the amphibious life living there remains.