Snow day three - the melt begins

By the time we got up this morning, the outdoor temperature had risen to minus one, and during the day rose to three degrees. It remained overcast with little wind, and there was light rain. As snow on the street started to melt, it became a bit more slippery than yesterday. It's not forecasted to freeze fortunately. By Monday normality should return and the days of quietness resembling Christmas be replaced by the usual relentless drudgery of winter in the city.

Cardiff Airport website displays a departure board for the coming days, with some cancellations but the Vueling flights are all happening, albeit with some delay. There are fewer flights to Spain at this time of year, thus any backlog from the past couple of days of airport closure won't be quite so long. The airport is sometimes vulnerable to high winds, fog or extreme rain, exposed as it is to the Bristol Channel. It's rarer for it to be cut off by snow. Hopefully, things will be back to normal by Tuesday when I leave, unlike northern and eastern Britain, still crippled by snow.

We walked before lunch out to Llandaff Fields, then down to the shops in Pontcanna. The Co-op has re-opened, though it's not yet been restocked, and some of the shelves are unusually empty. The supply chain still isn't working as it usually does with so many roads still out of operation. I expect it's the same all over the country.

We had a delicious cup of Peruvian coffee in Kemi's at Pontcanna nearby before returning for lunch. It was busy with people returning from walks in the snow slightly damp from the drizzle. Yesterday's powdery snow is fast packing down and melting, as much from beneath as above since the ground doesn't have a chance to chill deeply enough to preserve snow after only a week of zero degree weather, as it would with a long spell at minus ten. Thank goodness air temperatures are set to stay above freezing, so we'll have to put up with slush in the streets for the time being.

A difficult home journey

I was up early, running a load of washing, taking out the rubbish, cleaning the kitchen, as soon as I'd had breakfast and prepared a picnic to take with me. At eleven, Peter and Charlotte came around for the handover of house keys, and then take me to the station for the Barcelona train. It's an enjoyable journey as the line runs close to the sea along several sections. There was a delay of fifteen minutes at Salou, but I had plenty of time in hand to get the airport train. I'd quite forgotten, arriving at Terminal Two, that no Vueling flights leave from there. The company have an information booth but it was closed and flight indicator panels displayed no evidence of the airline's existence. 

I began to wonder if they'd gone bust and I'd not picked up on the news. I tried Googling on my Blackberry, but it was on strike, refusing to connect to a network, because the roaming contract extension expired yesterday night, so I sailed close to panicking. I asked a man with an official badge, and realised I'd forgotten about Terminal One being the base for Vueling flights. I quickly took the shuttle bus for the ten minute ride, and found a four hundred metre queue of people checking bags in at a row of twenty Vueling desks. Thankfully I still had time in hand before check-in was meant to start for the Cardiff flight. I showed my ticket to the queue manager and was allowed to join it. With almost all of the check-in desks running, the queue moved quickly. As I moved, it built up behind me again. Going through security was even quicker, and then I had a full two hours to wait for the flight to be called.

Terminal One has a vast roof and glass outer walls giving views of the airport in each direction, and this encloses half a dozen boarding areas, misleadingly called 'gates'. Each 'gate' has a score of actual boarding access points. In the middle of this is huge shopping mall. Straight after security, there's passport control, then you're led down an escalator into the shopping mall. You walk through this to get to 'gates' A B and C, but D and E gate signage is less frequent and more obscure. I had to walk around the entire mall and re-check, before realising access to D and E 'gates' was obtained by going back up the escalator and walking to a separate corridor a kilometre long, containing fifteen boarding access points in a row. The terminal was designed with high passenger capacity in mind, and although it's clearly busy with summer traffic, while I was waiting it seemed quite empty most of the time. 

The flight left on time and arrived five minutes early. Once we crossed the Pyrenees there was cloud all the way, unbroken until the plane was on its landing run. Aberthaw power station as the first thing visible in an hour and half of flying. It had been raining hard for two hours, Ashley reported, when he rang me in  baggage reclaim. My case arrived soaking wet, suggesting that no protective cover had been used on the short journey from plane to conveyor belt. Thankfully, I had rainwear tucked away in my rucksack, where its sole purpose to date has been as a cushion to protect my laptop.

On the airport shuttle was a Spanish family, coming for a short holiday in Cardiff, trying to decipher their computer generated itinerary. I plucked up my courage and spoke to them in Spanish. I too had trouble with their itinerary, which suggested they take a bus from outside the Philharmonic (now closed) to get to the Travelodge at the Friary in Greyfriars Road, fine except that the itinerary didn't say "Take any bus", but mentioned only the fact that this was the T4 bus stop - destination Newtown, and not about the appear on the bus indicator board any time before tomorrow. I took them to the stop once we'd been dropped off in Custom House Street, and the next bus heading for the Kingsway was fifteen minutes away, and the weary kids were beginning to complain, so I proposed a taxi, took them around to the station, explained to a driver what they wanted, and then made my way back to Westgate Street, where I didn't have to wait long for a 64. Needless to say, given the puddle strewn pavements, my case was very wet by the time I reached home, and dampness was penetrating clothes, though fortunately not any of my books. What a welcome back to Wet Wales!

        

Return to Wales

Yesterday morning celebrated the Eucharist for the last time in the Church shop honouring St Mary Magdalen with half a dozen faithful workers. Then it was simply a matter of going back to the house for a day of tidying, cleaning, gathering in and packing my goods and chattels for the journey home. Being so extremely humid, it wasn't an occasion to venture much beyond the rubbish and re-cycling bins. Not since a visit to Jamaica in the 1980's have I experienced such a combination of humidity and high temperature. Some Spanish people are saying it's not been so bad in their lifetime. It's hard to get a good night's sleep, so again I was up an hour before sunrise, dripping with perspiration from hardly any effort at all.

My last duty before leaving Nerja was to meet a couple whose wedding blessing is being performed on Sunday by the incoming locum priest, as he won't arrive in time to brief them before the service. It meant that I had to brief them according to his emailed instructions. Within the confines of liturgical formality priests may indeed vary in the manner they are accustomed to perform the ritual. This is probably the first time I've had to rehearse and explain a service to a couple on behalf of someone else, and I was unusually nervous about it. It worked out fine, as both had been married before and didn't need the kind of explanations that first-timers, often nervous, ask for.

I returned for an early lunch and completed packing, but had trouble figuring how the strap binding together a rather full and heavy soft case was meant to work. I wrestled with it and continued to drip sweat, not yet dressed for the journey when the doorbell rang adding to my panic. It was Judith who'd come to collect me for the airport run. Only when I'd been safely deposited inside Terminal Three at Malaga AGP, half an hour earlier in case of congestion, was I able to sit down and deal with the strap. There was indeed a half an hour queue at check-in, but I passed quickly through security afterwards, with lots of time to spare, and could at last relax.

I sat next to an interesting and sociable man from the Valleys about my age on the 'plane, who'd been a miner and then an underground fire and rescue officer for half his life, until the pits closed. He and his wife often holidayed in Nerja and were very fond of the place, getting to know many of the locals over the years, despite language differences. We talked quite a lot about mining, something I haven't done for years, and was glad to do. His life after pit closures took him eventually to working with students in a hall of residence for Glamorgan University, making friends with people from all over the world. The flight passed very quickly, and soon we were crossing the Severn Estuary, following the Jurassic coastline into cool and cloudy Rhoose Airport

My case was third to arrive on the baggage conveyor, and this meant I was on the next shuttle bus into town without delay. I walked home from the bus station, tugging my case, as that was preferable to a wait of half an hour to catch any one of several buses going Pontcanna or Canton way. I didn't mind at all, as the ambient temperature was bearable, despite the lack of blue skies.

Clare's gardening efforts this year have produced a lovely colourful summer display

Our little apple tree with its two kinds of fruit has an amazing crop of red and green apples, thanks to our local urban bee population.

While I've been away, the small garden birds have rediscovered our modest votive offering of seed. Despite the promise of more cloud and rain, it's good to be home.

Return to Costa del Sol

I got up at half past six, and was out of the house with my luggage heading to the bus station by ten to seven. Half way there a 61 bus conveniently appeared and I took it the rest of the way there, and had plenty of time to get the seven twenty five Cardiff airport bus. Still, I believe, not enough promotion of this excellent half hour shuttle service is being done. There were only three others on board.

The airport seemed very quiet when I arrived to check in. I stopped immediately to drink the coffee I'd missed at breakfast time, and headed for the security bag check at ten past eight, only to find that there were over fifty people queuing, and only one of the three available bag scanners staffed and operational. The boarding call for the Vueling flight to Málaga was made just as I was cleared. That's thirty five minutes compared to ten in Bristol. The number of staff and scanners in Bristol is higher, matching the higher volume of traffic, but Cardiff's security portal is running at one third capacity. Staff are excellent, but being worked too hard for their own good. The new airport management has some catching up to do in order make the place attractive to customers and new airlines.

I sat next to a lady from Llanmaes going to stay in Nerja for a spell. It turned out she was Anglican, and parishioner of Llanmaes into the Llantwit Major Rectorial Benefice, not far from the airport. We talked intensely throughout the flight, as she has a long standing dedication to working internationally  with the Church's mission among Jewish people. Apart from the few occasions when I've fallen asleep on take off and awakened on landing, this is one of the only occasions where I had not a moment to enjoy the ride, staring out of the window. A fascinating conversation however.

Churchwarden Bill met me, as arranged, outside the main Arrival entrance door, and drove me to Fuengirola, where I met Val, the church secretary. We had lunch together, then went down to St Andrews church in the district of Los Boliches to pick up a Citroen C3 for me to drive for the day until the outgoing Chaplain's diesel C4 car is returned after his departure tomorrow. We had a brief look around the church, then Val escorted me to the apartment where I'll be staying, a couple of miles inland. 

I'm in this ground floor one bedroomed apartment. Here's a section of the Residence El Albañil, looking from the road below. My apartment is at garden level behind the hedge third from left.

And here's the view from the study window. More a place to contemplate than to work! Thankfully there is also a well equipped church office in town, about 3 miles away.

 After unpacking, I drove down to the nearest Mercadonna supermarket and stocked up with food. Later, I went back to St Andrew's Church in Los Boliches church, one the communes of Fuengirola, for an All Souls prayer service, led by lay Reader Linda and her husband Peter. I arrived early and went for a wander around the area, found another supermarket and bought a couple of essentials I'd forgotten first time around - onions and lemons.

It was dark by the time the service was over, and I missed my turning inland going back to the apartment, but eventually backtracked until I spotted a familiar portal I couldn't spot in the dark first time around at the street junction I needed. Only at this moment did it dawn on me that I hadn't properly memorised the address, and there was no map in the car, so I was relying entirely on landmarks registered in the two trips I'd made and nothing looks the same at night.

   

Anyway, I returned safely, and cooked a vegetable sauce with white beans to eat with pasta, before hunting down BBC Four wrongly marked on the Astra satellite menu, and watching Inspector Montalbano before heading to bed, tired but happy to be here, just hoping that my sermon prepared yesterday would be relevant in this new context.