Hickses, Leggs and The Lobsterman. Sánchez passes the Duchy pon the left hand side.

Mrs. Sánchez and I have just returned from a week on the Isles of Scilly entirely  funded  by the 'Real Pasty Hermandad of Álora'. Hard to believe, I know, but following the runaway success of my previous publication, 'Home is where the pies are', a small but well endowed 'sociedad de empanadas' (pie club) invited us to look into the possibility of opening a  pie and pasty shop down in sunny Andalucía.

                                                      The red dot is where Scilly lies.

Although Scilly is 28 miles (48km.) off Land's End it is still part of Cornwall , 'the home of the Cornish Pasty'. It's remote location makes it the ideal place, far from the corrupting influence of mass production and microwaving, to look for 'el pasty auténtico'  (there is no word in Spanish yet for 'pasty').

So off we headed to Land's End Airport which has a nice new sign and a  brand new concrete runway. Until last year  last year it was made of grass. The flight takes about 15 minutes or 10 with a following wind and costs £160 each, return.

You don't need a passport to fly to Scilly; a driving licence or bus pass will do, but uniquely St. Agnes and Tresco do operate an immigration policy. Tresco only admits people with loads of money. (There used to be a turnstile on the quay) and St. Agnes refuses entry to badgers, foxes, moles, hedghogs, snakes, squirrels, magpies, jackdaws, rooks, lapwings, wasps and rats. You won't find any of them here. Many of them were eaten into extinction by the islanders during hard times in the early 19th. century. The wily rabbits survived the other genocides and are still plentiful. Some lucky nature lovers have even spotted the 'Scilly Shrew'- a rarity.

 
                     The Scilly Shrew (Aaaah!)

We had to wait 2 hours on the quay at St. Mary's island for a boat to take us to St. Agnes island (the most south westerly inhabited place in Great Britain), so off we went to find our first pasty. The unmistakeable aroma of hot Cornish pasties wafted along the quayside from a newish looking shop/cafe but we were headed for the positively reviewed (on Trip Advisor) Kavorna Cafe and Restaurant on Hugh Street.

"Had lunch here on our first day in St Mary's. My steak pasty was really lovely".
Vicky, West Midlands.

The artist Terry Durham , who lived for many years and died in Álora used this cafe a lot when he lived on Scilly with his wife and baby son, Nick, whilst working at the Atlantic Hotel just opposite Kavorna.

                                    Kavorna, as it was when Terry Durham went there.

'The next lot will be ready in 20 minutes'. said the friendly girl at the carry out counter. How fresh is that! and hot too.
After a quick look around we collected our steaming pasties from Kavorna, found a bench on the old quay and tucked into the tasty 'taddy oggies'. Mmmm.

                                                           The Turk's Head St. Agnes

The Spirit of St. Agnes soon spirited us away to this most beautiful of isles (20 minutes, £4.30 each one way). We passed The Turk's Head pub on the way up to our digs (possibly the only time we passed it without going in) where a chalkboard announced:

so I popped in and told them I would be in later to order a pasty.

                                                           St. Agnes and Gugh


How's this for a paradise island, and you get 25% extra at low tide when you can walk across the sand bar to 'The Gugh'. What a bargain!

The residents of St. Agnes (84 at the last count) are very excited because Prince Charles is visiting the island this week. Preparations are well in hand and the new Island Hall, which he doesn't like much, has been gaily decorated to make sure he gets a good welcome. Some people say that the lane that goes past The Island Hall is haunted by 'The Lobster Man' who prowls the lane at night. A close relative of mine was actually pursued by the Lobster Man one dark and misty night and has been scarred for life by the terrifying experience.

'The Lobster Man' and his dog, 'The  Giant Lobster Dog' (alias Blake Moran).

Scary, aren't they?

                                                          
                                        St. Agnes Island Hall. (gaily decked).

Prince Charles, Duke of Cornwall, owns all the land and every building on St. Agnes. Everyone pays rent to him via 'The Duchy'. He also owns St. Martins, St Mary's and Bryher islands, the rest of Cornwall and large tracts of Devon, Somerset, Herefordshire and Wales. He owns Tresco too but leases it to Robert Dorrien-Smith who has covered the island with attractive timeshare chalets.

                                                                          Tresco

Cornwall was given, as a birthday present, to Edward 'The Black Prince' by his father King  Edward III, . Young Eddie wanted a cricket bat. His dad gave him Wales a few years later.  Nobody knows why he was called 'The Black Prince'. He certainly wasn't black and nobody ever called him that in his lifetime. Somebody told me that Shakespeare made the name up. Anyway all this stuff is passed on to the eldest son of the reigning monarch. It rakes  in  £156,000,000 a year for him. Not bad eh?   Even so, a report in the Independent newspaper describes Scilly as 'where Britain's poorest people live'.

Prince Charles will be having a party at The Island Hall when he arrives on this most beautiful of his possessions. He has requested his favourite egg rolls (not pasties?) and will be drinking Earl Grey tea with honey. Many of the islanders have been invited to the bash but some have found that they are unable to attend, citing a subsequent engagement on the mainland. There is no truth in the rumour that they are a bit behind with the rent.

St. Agnes is known as 'The island of Hickses and Leggs' reflecting the predominant family names here. At the last count there were 21 Hickses and 10 Leggs living on St. Agnes. I know what you're thinking - remote island, small population.
In 1820 there were 280 people on the island living entirely on boiled limpets and pasties.Remember that this was before the B&Bs,Self Catering lets and the campsite existed.  Smuggling had been banned and the only industry was kelping (burning seaweed to produce soda ash which was then sold to the glass industry in Bristol). The smoke was so smelly that passing ships gave the islands a wide berth, thus avoiding the treacherous Western Rocks and saving the lives of many sailors. It also made the pasties taste funny. The lack of 'good wrecks' further depressed the economy. Many Hickses and Leggs were reduced to burning their furniture to keep warm and staying in bed all day to keep warm. A bit like the campers do  these days.

                                                            Augustus Smith

Along came Augustus Smith who took over the tenancy of  all the Isles of Scilly in 1834 and removed hundreds of people by sending the boys off to sea and the girls to the mainland to be servants, thus solving the over population problem..In 1940 there were only 74 people on St. Agnes.
Then along came Mrs Wayne-Smith to teach at the local school. She brought her five children and a pasty recipe with her and married the kids off to local folk giving a considerable boost to the gene pool. Today out of the population of 84 people, 23 are descended from Mrs. Wayne-Smith.

After preordering our pasties at the Turk's Head we took advantage of the low tide and walked round Gugh which is part of St. Agnes half the time. Gugh is a wild and mysterious place full ancient graves ley lines and standing stones. 

                                                         The Old Man of Gugh 

                                                   The Giant's Bellend

A circuit of Gugh was enough to work up an appetite so we headed for the Turk's and ordered our preordered pasties. They were delicious and better than the one's from Kavorna. They are a little more peppery and generous on the steak but a little pricey at £4.95 (eat in). 
The St. Agnes Post Office and Store sells pasties too.They only had one and it  didn't look very appetizing.
The next  day we tried the pasties at The Seven Stones pub on St. Martin's, a delightful island. The pasties were OK but not a patch on the Turk's Head  ones.

                                                       Mrs. Sánchez on St. Martin's

We stuck to the Turk's Head Tastebud Ticklers for the rest of the week and will be recommending them to The Hermandad when we get back to Álora. 
If Prince Charles is reading this organ I would suggest that he tries a Turk's Head Pasty on his visit today. He can certainly afford a couple.

Juanito Sánchez
July 21st. 2015

Home is where the pies are.

Home is where the pies are.

I've only been back two weeks and I'm missing Álora already. I can't wait to go back. It's been a bit hot down there, I hear, so I'm hoping that Ana is watering our plants regularly. I was very tempted to bring back a paella pan and a big gas ring to make paellas on the patio but some treats are best enjoyed in their homeland and Spain is unquestionably 'The Home of the Paella'.

Similarly, Cornwall is 'The Home of the Cornish Pasty' and Mrs. Sánchez and I will be heading down to The Isles of Scilly (in Cornwall) next week for some sun, sand and sea and as many Cornish Pasties as we can eat. Cornwall is rightly proud of its pasties but some good ones can be found in Devon too . Ivor Dewdney's (Plymouth and Exeter) are very good but are called 'Cornish Style Pasties' because the Cornish Pasty has been awarded 'Protected Geographical Indication.'(PGI) by The European Commission. True Cornish Pasties must be 'D' shaped and crimped round the curved edge and never at the top. Curiously, you can bake a Cornish Pasty anywhere but it must have been 'prepared' in Cornwall. So all you Cornish pasty fans had better think carefully before you vote in the forthcoming EU In/Out referendum. Do you really want to see bogus 'Cornish Pasties' flooding into Great Britain from goodness knows where?

                                                             A Cornish Pasty

                                                          Not Cornish Pasties

Ginster's, who sell 30 million 'Original Cornish Pasties' a year are still based in Cornwall and are one of the biggest employers in the South West. Nobody can  suggest, then, that their pasties are not  Cornish and they do fall within the accepted definition of  pasty but would you eat one?

                                                                       He did

The pasty is a close relative of the pie which, like it's tasty cousin has suffered at the hands of the mass producers of fodder for fat people and has become the butt of many cruel jokes. The pie continues to to be associated (wrongly in my view) with that popular western style choice, obesity.

As with paella the best pies are to be found in or near their 'homeland' which is Wigan in Lancashire,  known internationally as  'The Home of the Pie.' Wigan pies do not enjoy PGI status and my favourite pie, the Holland's meat pie is made 31 miles away in Baxenden

You may be wondering what all this pie and pasty talk has to do with Álora. Well, if you've ever been to Álora and, indeed to any part of Spain, you may have been immediately struck by the total absence of pies. In a country which  subsists almost exclusively on pork products there is not a pork pie to be had, even for ready money, (you could  try 'Iceland' and other Brit shops), let alone steak and kidney, cheese and onion, meat and potato, gala (with  egg in it,( how do they do that?)) or chicken and mushroom. They don't even have apple pies or lemon meringue pies or any sweet pies at all. It's unbelieveable that Columbus could sail all the way from Spain to America and come back with a potato but no one thought of exploring the rich pie seams of Lancashire.

I once said in this organ that the Spanish don't even have a word for pie. I lied. The word is empanada. If you look it up on Google Images you'll see that they are all pasties! Try looking up 'pasty,' too, and you'll have a shock. I did.

                                                    a Spanish empanada (pie?)


I'm convinced that the Spanish palate is ready for pies. Sales would go through the roof. There's a fortune to be made. I am looking for someone with a keen interest in pies, fluency in Spanish and bags of money to finance a pie business in Spain. Offers, as usual, on a postcard with the customary 23€ administration fee.

Last Saturday Mrs. Sánchez and I heard that the sculptor Sir Anthony Gormley, famous for 'The Angel of the North' and many other 'public' sculptures, had erected a figurine by the South Stratford Canal at Lowsonford, a few miles away from our English residence. Off we went to look for it. It is one of five commissioned by The Landmark Trust to celebrate the Trust's 50th. anniversary. After asking a few local dog walkers for directions we strolled down the towpath and found the figure opposite a 'Lengthman's cottage' by 'Ned's Lock.  Here's a few pictures.

Did you spot Mrs. Sánchez?.

What a beautiful setting. The sculpture reminded me of the lines;
'A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare'. W.H. Davies


As we walked back along the towpath, the Fleur de Lys pub appeared on the opposite bank. Just the place for a pie and a pint.

Wait a minute. Does that notice say 'Home of the Pies' ?

Indeed, Fleur de Lys pies were very popular in  Midlands chip shops (puff pastry and soggy bottoms- not a proper pie at all in my opinion) and they really were invented in this Warwickshire pub. The building was used as a mortuary until the 1920s. They sold so well that the business moved to Warwick and was then bought by Pukka Pies who had to pay a colossal amout of cash for the original secret recipe. Try one of their steak and kidney pies and ask yourself if it was money well spent (for the pie or the recipe).

This is my last word on pies, popular though the topic is. This  mobile pie vendor was doing a brisk trade outside Sarehole Mill last week. Just imagine a fleet of these pie vans in every town in Spain! Get those investment offers in  NOW!

Quiz news!............So far I have not received a single attempt at last week's quiz question so the prize money go into a 'rollover' next time.


Juanito Sánchez July 4th. 2015

Time to head north for the summer. Man in Álora accentuates the positive.

                                     The fountain in La Plaza Baja (rus in urbe).

It's that time again. The days and nights are getting hotter, people are taking to the streets and squares and our neighbours greet us with a slow shake of the head and the words ¡Qué calor! (Oh the heat!). That means it's time for Mrs. Sánchez and I to pack up the car and head back to England for a bit. 'You're going back because of the heat' the locals say, 'I don't blame you.Uf! Qué calor!'  We've given up trying to explain that's not the reason. We go back because as 'extranjeros' we can't stay in Spain for more than 6 months in a year, and not for more than three monthly periods. More than 6 months would make us de facto 'residents' and would mean a lot of shenanegins with taxes, problems with the car etc. and it is  very very hot in July and August.

                                                   The El Chorro Fiesta

We couldn't leave without going to the Fiesta del Chorro. El Chorro has been catapulted to stardom recently with the opening of El Caminito del Rey which starts there. The population of 242 are a bit put out about all the coaches and cars which bring the foolhardy or brave to walk the caminito  and park willy nilly, blocking front doors and pumping out exhaust fumes as they keep their air conditioning running. Also the road up to the lakes has been blocked for a month as someone failed to to notice that the roads are not wide enough for buses to pass as they shuttle the brave walkers back to their starting point and transport home . It's a bit of a cock up, really.

The Fiesta of El Chorro appears to be organised entirely by Pepe Rojas and his wife Maite (María Teresa). That's Pepe at the the far end of the bar Maite is on the far right,  dishing out paella. (Mmmm). Pepe has been handing out programmes and sticking up posters all round town for the last two weeks so it's only fair to go. The paella had a big 18 on it to celebrate Pepe's birthday.

They don't call it 'paella' here, though, it's 'arroz' (rice) and very nice. One of the highlights of the El Chorro Fiesta is the 'Tiro con Honda' competition in which local shepherds and goatherds fire stones out of David and Goliath slingshots at a big metal target. Antonio,one of the main contenders explained to me how it worked.

                                 A pastor (shepherd) showing me his weapon.



 Apparently you're not supposed to hit the goat/sheep but make the stone land to the side in order to steer the flock - that's unless they are up a tree, he said,  in which case they get one where it hurts. I must stress that goats and sheep are not used in the competition and are only used for practice.

                                        Pepe Rojas about to pour me a beer.

We went to look at our olives before we left and I'm pleased to say that the harvest looks promising this year. Last year was very poor but a couple of weeks of rain in February has done the trick.

 Olives are incredibly hardy. We don't water them at all. They can stand extremely high temperatures and the biggest olive producing region in the world, Jaen Province (42 degrees Celsius predicted for tomorrow) can have temperatures as low as -10 degrees celsius in the winter. The trees can live for over a thousand years and even then be regenerated if there is any sign of life. There is a 600 year old tree in the centre of Álora.

                                                  Three elderly ladies of Álora.

Antonio, from the olive mill in Casarabonela where we get our olives pressed, is predicting a bg rise in olive oil prices next year because of the bacterial infection which has already destroyed thousands of trees near Lecce in the Puglia region of Italy. Xyella fastidiosa has been tagged 'olive leprosy' and is spread by insects like this one, the sap sucking meadow spittle bug. Antonio predicts that the disease will spread up through France and into Spain.

Around 45% of Italian olive oil is imported from Spain and then re- exported as Italian oil so Spanish oil is likely to increase in price. This would be good news for 'oil barons' like us if we were selling any.

This week's quiz question. (Answers on a postcard to me, please with 10€ entrance fee to cover administration expenses)

What do these two have in common?

If anyone reading this, indeed, if anyone reads it at all and is learning Spanish they may be pleased to know that it is the easiest language to pronounce in the world.  All you have to do is learn a couple of rules. If you're not interested in learning Spanish and you are reading this in Spain you should be ashamed of yourself and you'd better skip this next bit.

1. Spanish letters are nearly all like English ones.
2. 'e' is always pronounced 'ay' and never silent.
3. 'i' is pronounced 'ee'
4. 'h' is always silent
 there are probably lots more like this, but my favourite is

THE RULE OF 'LLANO'

All Spanish words are stressed on the last syllable unless they end in a vowel  or ´n' or ´s' when the stress is on the penultimate syllable.

Any exceptions  have a 'tilde' (´)  over the letter to be stressed.

 I only just found out that my surname, Sánchez has that tilde over the 'a'. and that's why Álora doesn't rhyme with 'flora'. The Policía usually refuse to use theirs and the Farmacia doesn't need one. (except, bizarrely, one in Comillas).

You can have  hours of fun with this rule . C...., who has been staying with us, has shown a particularly unhealthy interest in tildes (and also in the señorita who works in Tour River, incidentally). Although he knows hardly a word of Spanish he can pronounce it beautifully. So far, she of the the travel agency is unimpressed. It's not much of a basis for a relationship.

The voyage back to Plymouth from Santander was  pretty uneventful except for us coming joint second in the Music Quiz. (we was robbed). We stopped at Sotopalacios for Burgos black puddings and breakfast as usual. They do a great tostada con aceite y tomate at the hotel bar but they still look down their noses at you when you ask for garlic. (Garlic and bread for breakfast?. No thank you). It's a southern thing.

We had a few hours to spare in Santander so we went to explore the town of Comillas up the coast to the west.

                                                            Comillas

 It's a great little place with good food, beaches, interesting old buildings and somewhere to park. Tommy had a good run on the freshly mown meadows and another up by the lighthouse in Santander where we spotted the good ship Pont Aven steaming into port.

                               El Capricho in Comillas, designed by Antoni Gaudí.  (of Sagrada         Familia fame- note the tilde on his name).

We left England on the day of the General Election. What happened? Who got in?

Juanito Sánchez June28th.2015

Y Viva España. Dancing, walking the walk but no singing.

                        The Great Lisbon Earthquake 


On 1st. of November 1755 a  powerful earthquake hit Lisbon. It would have measured 8.5 to 9.0 on the Richter Scale if it had been invented and it destroyed most of the city, causing fires, a tsunami and the deaths of between 10,000 and 100,000 people. 
The shock wave was felt as far away as Finland and North Africa. A ten ft. tall tidal wave hit Cornwall. The  shock wave reached Álora 471 km. (293 miles) away and many people believe that the Lisbon Earthquake was responsible for the collapse of the central section of the old parish church which is up by the castillo.
María José who runs the Álora Museum (well worth a visit) assures me that the church had already been destroyed by the 1680 Málaga Earthquake and the relatively new Iglesia de la Encarnación in La Plaza Baja  was not affected by the 1755 one.

                                  Charles III of Spain

Around this time, Charles III of Spain sent a young aristocratic soldier , Juan Martín Alvarez de Sotomayor to Prussia to learn about Prussian military tactics from King Frederick II who was a good pal of Charles III, very fond of music  and good at fighting battles. Frederick took such a liking to Juan Martín that he wrote a tune for him. It was a march called 'La Marcha de los Granaderos'.(The March of the Pomegranates). Young Juan liked it so much he gave it to King Charles who made it the National Anthem of Spain. It still is, but nobody thought of writing any words to it so it remains one of the only four national anthems that you can't forget the words to. The others are from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo and San Marino which aren't real countries anyway. That story is widely believed by as many people who think that Y Viva España is the Spanish National Anthem. Both are  not true, although Y Viva España was a big Belgian hit for Sylvie in 1974 and has unforgettable words in English, like 'If you want to chat a matador' and 'Snog señoritas by the score'. It's very popular in Spain too. The Perotes (Áloraneans) love it and sing it at every opportunity and, as it's a Pasadoble,  they can dance to it too. In Spanish it's called  España la Mejor and was a hit for Manolo Escobar, also in 1974. Apparently one of Franco's ministers suggested using the  'España la Mejor' lyrics with the national tune. Many modern Spaniards thought that was a great idea. Franco died the following year.
The real Spanish national anthem is now called La Marcha Real (The Royal March) and the point of all this is that at the Copa del Rey (King's Cup) final the other week, which was won by Barcelona and played at the Camp Nou in Barcelona, there was loud booing and jeering from the Catalán crowd when the Marcha Real was played over the loudspeakers. The Cataláns take every opportunity to assert their nationality but this was very rude indeed, especially as Real Madrid, Spain's second national team lost the match, are out of the Champions League Cup and Barca ended up top of the Spanish Liga.  Perhaps if there had been some words to sing nobody would have noticed the Catalan Cat Calls but everyone, including King Philipe III, did and he's very angry. New laws have been proposed to stop people booing and jeering. If you clicked on the link you would have heard  La Marcha Real played with lyrics. This is part of a competition currently running to find suitable words for the anthem. If you want to enter, all you have to do is send your suggestions to me with a 20€ handling fee and I will forward it to the king.

                                Dancing a Sevilliana

On the subject of dancing,  I went with Mrs. Sánchez for a Sevilliana lesson last week. This is the dance that people do at the ferias, verbenas, romerías and all the other public festivities. It looks easy, especially the male part which just consists of twirling your arms and body and looking Spanish.Take a look at this Sevilliana.
See what I mean. Any fool can do that.  There were six of us including me and a 10 year old girl and the lady in charge said we were all beginners and I would soon pick it up. I won't be going back. 'Beginners' has a different meaning in the flamenco context. All the Spanish people  here have flamenco in their blood. They know all the complex rhythms, when to stamp, when to twirl and when to say Olé. They learn it in the womb.
She taught us how to play the castañuelas (castanets) too. That's not too hard but you have to do it while twirling your arms around and nobody tells you when to stop. Mrs. Sánchez had a great old time. I've noticed that she is watching sevilliana lessons on YouTube so it looks as though she will be going back for more. (alone).

 

Mrs. Sánchez (on the right) dancing an 'alegría'.

As a punishment for my lack of commitment to flamenco I had to agree to walk the Caminito del Rey which regular readers of this organ will have heard so much about. Sally and Mike had two spare (free) tickets so off we went. I don't want to put you off, especially as it´s still free, but I found it a bit scary to begin with. They've stopped the buses that take you back to where you started 2 hours before so we had to do it twice, there and back.

                    Mrs. Sánchez on the wobbly bridge.

It's a fantastic piece of work and was completed in only a year. The views are absolutely stunning and there's a bit where you can stand on a glass plate and look down into the deep chasm below. I managed to do this on the way back but next time I'll take some Windolene as the glass gets a bit dirty with 400 people a day standing on it.

 The Malaga to Córdoba train line goes through the mountains and you catch glimpses of it speeding through gaps in the tunnel.

                           A gap in the railway tunnel (you can see a bit of the caminito halfway down on the right).


The security guard at the southern entrance said that El Caminito de Rey is currently the second most visited  tourist attraction in the world. Hmmm. They'd better get some proper toilets if they want to get to Number One.

Beer enthusiasts in Álora may have noticed a 'new kid on the block´ Many of the bars are now selling  Victoria beer with its very distinctive and much loved logo.

It's an old Málaga brand which was first produced in1928 and appeared for sale on September 8th. which is the day of La Virgen de la Victoria in that beautiful and atmospheric city. Coincidentally September 8th. is the day of Álora's patron virgin La Virgen de las Flores too, but she doesn't have a beer named after her.
Victoria beer (5.4%) was very popular in the 60s and 70s at the height of el boom turistico. In the 1990s the brewery and brand was bought by Cruzcampo who sold out to Heineken who flogged it to the Catalán company Grupo Damm  which now brews it  in Murcia.
I wonder if all the Real Madrid fans happily downing ice cold Victoria beer in Los Caballos Dos know that they are drinking a  Catalán product. Should we tell them? !Qué va!

Juanito Sánchez

June 5th. 2015