We celebrated our anniversary by going to look at the area we are considering moving to. I normally have classes Saturday evening, so we were going to go tomorrow, however cancelled class and little kitten meant we decided to go today. It gave kitten a day of peace to settle in and a nice way for us to celebrate 11 years. We took Pixie and Alfie, who both marked the day by vomiting in the car. Alfie started to get a bit hot, so Ian took revenge by drenching him in cold water in intervals to cool him down. It is difficult to know with Alfie what is best for him – do we leave him at home where he may get stressed on his own (if we shut him away, else we worry about him getting trodden on by one of the big dogs) or take him where he may be unsettled int he car. However it wasn’t unduly hot today, so his sickness is probably an indicator that he is just not a good traveller.
We went to a lake called Orellana, this is part of the series of lakes in Extremadura which are also called ‘Franco’s Waters’ as they were part of a resevoir building program which he encouraged. This is a big lake, with three smallish towns on one side. The towns were nice and the lake was superb. We ended up a bit lost and traveled down a track only to end up at a roman bridge that crossed the lake. Obviously for the first nearly 2000 years of its life it was only crossing a river, however today it crosses a lake. The picture Ian took is of a tunnel that leads onto the bridge. We didn’t cross the bridge – there was nothing to say that we couldn’t, however we had nasty visions of getting stuck.
We were going to have a picnic, however hadn’t allowed for supermarkets closing at 2, so we had to hang on until we got home.
We were looking for the sort of thing that we like and could afford. We want to buy as cheap as possible, as the aim of this next move is to get some money in the bank so we don’t have to worry about unplanned expenses or the months when we don’t have a lot of income. However, we want it to at least be habitable – with enough room for us all. We are considering a plot of land to build on or a house which is habitable with some land. The trouble with a plot of land and building is that we could soon find we blew the budget – which is why we’ve been looking at prefabs. We are considering buying a prefabricated house and having this installed, so we would know all the costs up front. When we first thought ‘prefab’ the old war time prefabs came to mind, however modern day prefabs are available in a wide range of styles and could offer a good relatively low cost option.
Hopefully we ought to be able to find something quite nice which we’d be happy in -and still afford a pedalo to navigate the lake!!
