Ramblings from a Banana Plant, Nerja, Spain

Hi folks, greetings from besides a rather wind-beaten banana plant down here on the Costa del Sol. It’s Jay blogging again as Ju’s up to her neck in proof-reading our next book, ‘The 200’. I spent a fair bit of last year writing it alongside our other new book, which has been published, The Non-Trepreneurs, so there’s a ton of boring checking to do, weeks of it in fact, and the sun’s been shining so we’ve often chosen to be out and about instead. So far, Madrid is refusing to allow stay-at-home orders to be issued here in Spain, despite several of the autonomous communities asking for it, so we’re still able to go out running and hiking, albeit limited now to the two municipalities around us.

Wind in a Motorhome!

We’ve had several days of wind here in Nerja (stop sniggering at the back), the blustery conditions have died down, but as the palm trees and rickety fences wafted about I nipped out and did a quick video of some hints and tips for handling the wind in a motorhome. After recording many videos on the past which were unusable due to wind noise, I have just bought an external microphone to try to overcome the problem. I used my new shiny RØDE Microphones VideoMic Me plugged into to Ju’s Motorola One Zoom, with the ‘dead cat’ windshield attached, and was really pleased to discover it actually works and cut out all wind noise! I accidentally filmed it in 4K so it took an age to upload! I’d been a bit upset as the microphone had seemed useless on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 phone, and it wasn’t cheap, but I later found out that the Redmi’s video app simply doesn’t detect the mic and keeps using the built-in one (it’s a great phone for the price otherwise, solidly build).

Hiking, Running and Playing with a Gimbal

Ju’s still on track to complete her first ever 20 mile run in March, the Virtual Ashby 20, alongside (virtually) 1199 other athletes. She’s gradually building the distance of her long runs week-on-week, needing to run in loops around Nerja now as the coastal road to Torrox is closed to us (see below), and routes inland are all (seriously) uphill. She’s had a bit of a blow this week, tripping and bruising both knees. It brought back memories of tearing her knee open in Spain when running here a couple of years ago, which resulted in several trips to the medical centre, iodine injections and a lot of time recuperating, but thankfully this time she seems to be on the mend.

I’m doing the long runs with Ju to keep her company, but otherwise I’m struggling to find motivation for running. Practically every race has been cancelled for the past year, of course, alongside millions of other events. Also, like so many things in life, what used to be seen as a great thing to do (hug your dad, go out for a meal with friends, go running with 300 people at ParkRun etc etc) has flipped into something which feels bad and selfish to want to do. I completely understand the need for all the restrictions and I’ve done my best to comply with them all, but that doesn’t mean they’re not slowly eating away at my motivation. It feels to me that we humans aren’t meant to hibernate, we’re rubbish at it. While ‘doing nothing’ we don’t simply maintain a level, we start to crumble. At least I do.

Thankfully the mountains here have kept me active, as they’re pretty incredible to hike through. The trails into the Sierra de Almijara start just a few miles from the campsite, and there are tons of them. The wikiloc app is good for finding the best ones, or I just pull up maps.me on my phone and looking for new paths I’ve not yet taken. This week I headed up the ‘Ridge of Sighs’, not actually named that officially but someone wittier than I had used the name on wikiloc as a play on Venice’s famous Bridge of Sighs.

I took my other new toy, the DJI Osmo Mobile smartphone gimbal up there with me and had a play with it, trying out various shots and learned a bunch more about what does and doesn’t work. The gimbal is a type of handle that attaches to my smartphone and moves around to take the ‘wobble’ out of my videos. Lots of blokes who’ve retired and hit the road seem to enjoy a bit of videography with all our newfound time, and I’m one of ’em, although I’ve worked out I’ve a serious amount to learn! Anyone who has watched some of the almost 500 videos on our YouTube channel, will no doubt be pleased to hear that the quality should start improving soon. Thanks to the Learn Online Video Youtube channel I’m slowly working out how quickly to move, what gimbal settings to use, the different kinds of shots available, how to set the exposure levels on the phone and so on. I’ve a lot to learn, and perhaps doing so on a solo hike in the mountains isn’t the best way to do it, but this is my latest effort:

This Week’s Books: The Salt Path and Yes to Life

I’ve spent my life searching for wisdom. On and off, that is, I’ve not been on a kind of make-me-Yoda mission. But I’ve always been curious about the purpose of life, a question which ramped up in intensity once I’d removed 45 hours-a-week of commuting and working. I can’t claim to have worked out the answer. I’m fairly sure it’s not to be found on the news channels, social media or discussion forums, although I do find some great viewpoints on the Quora website and app, and the TED channel has a ton of fascinating free videos which again offer insights I’d never find otherwise.

Personally I find the very best source of wisdom remains the good-old-fashioned book, albeit often on a Kindle these days, and I’ve had my nose in a couple of great books this week. The Salt Path was recommended to us ages ago by Bob, our friend’s father, but I forgot all about it until Stuart, also staying on the site in his Hymer, offered to loan us his copy. The book relays how a mid-life couple lose everything they own, and have to cope with a terminal illness diagnosis at the same time. It reaches down and touches the innermost fear most of us have, of being hopelessly vulnerable, of suddenly losing our status, of hitting rock bottom through no fault of our own. And then it gradually, slowly builds us back up as we see how they cope with these new, terrible conditions, giving us hope that should this fate befall us, we too would find a way to overcome even this kind of personal disaster (another famous book we have on our bookshelf says the same thing: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway).

Taking it to another level, the Austrian philosopher and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived the horror of Austhwitz, and a number of other concentration camps, afterwards writing his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning. In it he describes the conditions he and his fellow prisoners experienced, and the mindset he adopted which helped him stay sane and eventually endure. I read the book a few years ago, and have started reading another of his books, Yes to Life, on recommendation from our friend and constant inspiration Chris. It’s heavy going, requiring more thought than my old noggin is usually engaged in, so I’m still working my way through it. One point Viktor makes in this book though (which he also made in Search for Meaning) is that we can’t ask the universe what the purpose of our life is, instead the universe is asking that question of us. In other words, there is no ‘meaning of life’ out there which we can find, but instead we need to work out for ourselves what we can contribute, what each of us can and should do to be ultimately fulfilled. Quite a challenge.

News Diet Update

I’ve been off social media and the news channels for about a week now. Several times each day I find myself, by habit, just about to type ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’ or ‘BBC News’ into a search engine, and each time have realised and stopped myself. Before I called a halt on the news I’d read I-don’t-know-how-many articles implying we’d run out of food, the stock market would be destroyed, half the population would refuse a vaccine etc. It’s all turned out to complete b*llocks, and a serious waste of my limited emotional reserves, so I’m more than happy to see the back of it.

Each time I catch myself about to engage in scrolling, I find myself having to find something else to do. This is pretty cool, as it turns out, I’m having to rekindle my imagination. Reading books, getting out hiking, blogging, learning about videography, washing the van (badly), cooking and stone-skimming at the beach all fill my days. After poking my head under the back of the van to film to ‘wind’ video I saw the surface rust and thought to myself ‘I could get that Waxoyled while we’re here’. We nipped into an English-speaking Ferreteria (a hardware shop) in town, but they’d never heard of the stuff, so the job’ll probably wait until we’re back home (it is available on Amazon, so if I really get bored…).

I’ve not completely shoved my head in the sand though. Ju’s relaying updates of anything actually helpful, filtering out a million speculative, repetitive, deliberately doom-mongering or trolling articles and comments. I know over 10 million first vaccines have been given now in the UK, that daily new case numbers are falling quickly, that we need negative tests to come home, and that hotel quarantine is being introduced for some countries. I also know my dad, sister and her family are all well, Ju’s family are all healthy, and that my dad’s friend who’s in hospital with COVID seems to be recovering. There’s no suggestion yet of easing up on social distancing, use of masks and so on.

Here in Andalusia the municipality to the west of us, Torrox, briefly hit the ‘500 per 100,000 in 14 days’ case limit a few days ago which closed its municipality borders for two weeks. Conversely, Frigiliana, the municipality north of us, has had zero cases in the past two weeks. Nerj’s up to about 450, but that seems to have stabilised, touch wood. All of this means the world around us remains very, very quiet, but accessible. We’ve miles and miles of town, beach and mountain to explore. A few restaurants remain open (Albi has closed though – Ju’s source of gelato ice cream – disaster!).

Work continues in Nerja, with a new restaurant being built on Playa de Calahonda. Cranes and concrete pumps are used to shift material up and down the steep cliff, keeping us entertained each time we walk down to the Balcon de Europa. Health and safety rules seem to exist here in Spain, but just eyeballing the number of heads without safety helmets, and a bloke blasting great billows of dust about with a maskless face (not even a covid one!), we’re not entirely sure how enforced they are. We watched one of the construction workers help a fisherman hand-wind a metal wire winch, dragging a wooden fishing boat back up the beach on wooden blocks. The scene’s age-old. Down in the small cove, below the relatively new jungle of white concrete and glass above, the fishermen stand together pulling and untangling nets, like a scene from a film. Walking through Nerja afterwards, the jarring sight hit us of maskless punters smoking outside an Irish pub, getting a few pints in and making the most of the pubs being open until 6pm. Bizarre.

In summary, basic statistics in the UK and our local area in Spain, the health of our loved ones and the latest legal situation around avoiding catching the virus and travel are all I Feel I need to know about COVID-19 right now, the rest can wait until the book comes out.

Motorhome Folks We Follow

We keep an eye out on what fellow travellers are up to from time to time, their situations often offering us inspiration for what we might try next and try to avoid next. The most shocking situation during the pandemic was nothing to do with the virus, when one half of a long-term full-timing motorhome couple went missing on a hike in the Pyrenees. We’ve never met Esther and Dan, only having read about them in awe of their high-altitude hiking photos and sheer number of dogs on their blog. Esther disappeared in November 2020 and despite detailed searches quickly taking place before the winter snows set in, there’s been no sign of her. That’s fueled a ton of speculative rubbish posted about her and Dan of course, a grim reflection of humanity’s darker side, and an almighty load on Dan’s already burdened shoulders. Ju read out to me his recently posted, incredibly eloquent, reply to some of the speculation, written with a bravery and style I can never hope to match. Here’s part if it, very well said Dan, good for you:

“Regarding suggestions that Esther’s disappearance was in some way voluntary, my response remains that she had neither the motive or means to do so. She hasn’t accessed any funds or been seen anywhere, despite widespread press coverage. I am of course aware of the speculation in the media regarding our relationship, stoked by quotations from both police sources and people that met Esther during her time away. So far I have been loath to even engage with such salacious nonsense, believing that it was nobody else’s business. All I will say here is that the police officers actually investigating her disappearance have full access to our communications which reflect the truth that our relationship is solid. Any comments to the contrary reflect a misunderstanding of that reality.”

On a far more positive and uplifting note, I read Kevin and Ruth’s blog from time to time, a couple based in Canada in their late 50s who travel widely across the world by motorhome and other means. They’re careful with money, which matches my philosophy, and most recently have sold their motorhome at home with the aim to tour Europe in one bought over here. COVID’s nailed that idea for now, but instead they’ve been travelling by car/airBnB across Turkey and most recently have flown to Tanzania. As I write they’re prepping to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, wow, good for you guys, go, go go.

The Chouters, who we were with in Cadiz just before the pandemic struck, are a well travelled American-Irish couple with a professional eye for photography. They have managed to keep moving to a degree during 2020 once the spring lockdown was lifted. They’ve spent the past few months in Croatia and have just crossed Italy to return to France – it’s fascinating to see how the world looks through their eyes.

David and Karen from The Grey- Gappers, who popped by to see us earlier this year, are still in Andalusia in the municipality of Barbate on the Costa de la Luz. Unfortunately their municipality tipped over the ‘500 in 100,000’ so the border is now closed for a fortnight. This has meant they have had to obtain a certificate of justification to travel to enable Karen to go to the dentist in their nearest town – which happens to be in another municipality.

Most of the rest of our virtual motorhome friends and acquaintances are holding station somewhere. Some are back in bricks and mortar full-time or on a rented basis. Some have sold their motorhome while others are mothballed for the winter. Some are holed up in a campsite some where like Ju and I, not exactly travelling as we’ve hardly turned a wheel for months, but still out of the UK. Some of us are in a holding pattern, waiting for some kind of normality to resume. Others like our mates Phil and Jules & Richard and Jen are very busy, engaged in huge renovation projects on their homes in the UK, good for them.

What’s Next for Us?

Well, for me it looks like I’ve got a bunch of editing to do! As I have been typing this, Ju’s just finished proof reading The 200, and passed it back to me. Fortunately the weather’s gone a little cloudy so I’m more inclined to get on with it. We’ve no plans to move from the site here until our ferry from Santander in late March, so I’ve also plenty of time to do it. We’ve some ideas about videos to do about motorhome life, what it costs, the practical side of life in a small space and the like. If you’ve any requests, let us know. The book project needs finishing first though, so I’d best get cracking!

Cheers, Jay