At Easter we'd driven to La Roda.......

Yes down to Andalusia via the Weymouth St.Malo
Condor fast cat.
1200 miles each way, stopping at La Rochelle in France
and La Carolina, east of Cordoba, on the way.

Did I not say we'd had the builders in.....

Yes, we'd noticed a problem with the main hall ceiling when we bought the place. So that's been sorted out, which
has given us a new floor to the landing up stairs, and allowed the electrician a free hand with new ducting for the
power lines. Also all the junk was removed from what's going to be the kitchen, just a few bags of plaster left in there.

We needed to sort the garden out......

This stared with a "What am I going to do now" moment.
Followed by a much better "Relax of the roof terrace" moment.
But I think you can see what we achieved from the 'before'
and 'after' shots of the palm tree.
Even if I couldn't get them in the right order, that's blogging for you!

Then the parades started in the early evening....

So it was Easter, or I should say "Samana Santa", and there were parades through the town every day from Wednesday
to Saturday.
The little kids banged their toy drums, Los Nazarenos were
there in their pointy hats, big and small, and of course all the bands were out!

And the party went on into the night...

They closed the roads from 6 till midnight and the whole town came out and partied.
All the Madonas were brought out, along with images of Christ, on the cross and in a glass coffin. A lot of candle burning went on, and the "official mourners" wore their
Mantillas.

Fuente de Piedra again.... but this time...

.... there were flamingo there.
Laguna de la Fuente de Piedra is a nesting site for flamingo
on their migration route to and from Africa. April was just the right time for them to be there, and we could get really close.

Then homeward bound........

Well we had to get back some time. Points of interest on the way were, a medieval town in Spain called Lerma (that's Ruth setting the alarm off), Biarritz, Dinard and St.Malo.

And finally......

.... when we were back on the Fast Cat to Weymouth, there was the Queen Mary 2, anchored just off St. Peter Port, Guernsey.