Rain glorious rain – all is green – all is green

This year we had a long and very dry summer. Even here in Mer the water level is very low.

I had to dig out an abandoned well just to make sure our main well retains enough water for all our guests.

Believe me it’s not easy to market a holiday house with a dust bath, although saying that on the Eco front this should come second to the compost loo.

I wasted an hour or so to try to find a decent rainfall statistic but could only find some general yearly bulletins and, by the way its called “precipitación” in gallego.

According to this for 2008/9 we’re only 25% short and 2007/8 was nearly on target. Well, our wells here tell a different story. So at present we’re quite happy with some prolonged rainfall, but its also with a pinch of salt. If it rains here it pours. I should have paid more attention to my wise neighbours as Pepe dug out a new channel yesterday late.

Well this night we had 10cm (3″ for the non metrics) of rain in a couple of hours! Typical. “Precipitación” sounds so innocent, whereas in reality its more or less like a slightly tamed waterfall without a cliff face.

Checking this morning I was delighted to find that all our roofs are OK and no water dribbled on unsuspecting guests.

It’s absolutely fascinating to see the conversion from desert brown to light green within a day or so. This is a beautiful contrast for the changing colours of autumn.

Now I need to write a complete new page about the (non)existence of public transport here in and around Monforte.

Having had friends over from Mexico made us realise that in terms of public transport Monforte and thus Sober is still at the end of the known world.

So long and greetings from a wet but nice Galicia

Expat