Monty Don in Valencia

I woke up early switched the radio and listened to 'Thought for the Day'. After this I went back to sleep for another hour. After breakfast, work on my Sunday sermon, then a trip to the GP surgery for another blood pressure test. It's coming down satisfactorily, a month after the gall bladder op. Then I returned home and continued working on the sermon until it was time to cook a pasta dish for lunch. 

After lunch I worked on a reflection for the week after next, before walking in the the park for an hour and a half. Service and reflection are now ready to record when I next have free time. After supper we watched a programme about gardens in Spain by Monty Don, who traveled around central Spain visiting gardens both traditional and contemporary, considering how architects and gardeners are responding to climate change making conditions more extreme. 

Among the places he visits are Madrid, Toledo, Avila and Valencia, the only place I have visited. The aerial views of the parque del Turia running the length of the old river bed through the city were amazing. There were a few brief views of the Cuitat de les Artes i les Ciencias, but I was surprised to hear Calatrava's clamshell shaped L'Àgora building called the opera house when the building housing Valencia's opera is a kilometre up the river bed and shaped like a giant fish. L'Àgora is a massive event space, used for concerts, exhibitions and indoor sports. When my sister June and I visited the city in 2009, construction of L'Àgora was almost complete, the one public building in this massive modern complex not yet finished. 

It's great modern architecture, but the imagination of citizens demanding the river bed become a park not a motorway, produced a green innovation impacting the entire life of the city which cities throughout have imitated in different ways since. This was well before climate change became an urgent issue. Valencia is committed to becoming a the world's first carbon neutral city by 2025. How this is to be achieved, I shall be most interested to discover.