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The Surprising Lizard
Walking in the Black Mountains I find a dead lizard, belly-up on the gorse. What is it doing here? It is a surprising lizard. I am walking along a long ridge of moorland, with the Ewyas Valley to my...
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Bareback Riders
Sorting through photos on my laptop, intending to send some off for printing, I come across two pictures from February this year, on a trip to Mombacho, in Nicaragua. They are of a very poor...
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Elephants in the Alberas
Rabós and convent of Sant Quirc Other than an early family holiday and a single trip to Barcelona in my early twenties, my first real taste of Catalunya was in 1984. Penniless and without purpose, I...
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Wildfire
We leave Rabós for a day and the place nearly burns down. Within hours of our departure I receive a text from a friend saying there is a bush fire encircling the village and everyone has been...
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The Discovery of Slowness
Tortoise of the Alberas, sunning himself Met up with this tortoise on a walk in the Albera range yesterday morning. The Alberas are home to the last natural population of the Mediterranean tortoise...
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Fire damage near Rabós
The land is unholy. It starts to the south east of the village, a kilometre or so along the road where the earth smells of burning metal, an acrid carbon overlay not carried on any breeze but dense...
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A brief illustrated history of the praying mantis
This praying mantis appeared on the table in our back yard yesterday. The praying mantis or mantid (sometimes misspelled as ‘preying mantis’, as it is a hunter as well as seeming to adopt a position...
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Miscellaneous sightings
This car was parked on the road near a pool in the river Muga where I like to swim. Who said the Germans have no sense of humour? It certainly wasn’t me. I might however begin an occasional series on...
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Swan in an Ikea bag
On my way back from The Promised Land yesterday evening – that’s right, there is a way back – we passed under the railway bridge between Tudor Street and Taff’s Mead Embankment and there was this swan...
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Forgetting Chatwin
Day five of the Wales Writers Chain tour of Argentina and Chile. We began in Buenos Aires on Monday, at the Spanish Cultural Centre, where Mererid Hopwood and I gave lectures on, respectively, the...
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Jaguars, snakes, rabbits
Jaguar duality If you travel, Blanco thinks, if you just travel, go from place to place, walk around, you should never get bored and you should never lack for things to do or write about, if this...
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Caca de Duende
On Sunday we visit Los Colmillos de Chaihuín, which contain, among other trees, canelo, alerce (larch) and eucalyptus. The first two are indigenous, the last a moisture-hogging outsider, the villain...
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A murmuration of starlings
Why do starling swarm in the sky? What are they communicating, if anything? Is it play? There doesn’t seem to be a clear response on any website I have searched. But I have discovered that it is called...
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Notes from a Catalan village: Caterpillar processions and the blind men of Bram
A couple of months ago, walking the dog on a hill track beyond the cemetery at Rabós, I nearly walked into a quite hideous nest-like construction, hanging from a pine tree at head level, looking like...
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Notes from a Catalan village: full circle
We were told some months ago about the boulder in the tree, by Lluís Serrano of Cantallops. So we made an excursion of it, trekked up past the castle of Requessens (of which more in a future blog) and...
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