Visiting the Prado had been Dad’s primary reason for wanting to visit Spain in the first place. Imagine the dismay when after arriving in Madrid we read that queues to buy tickets would stretch round the building and that you really needed to book a couple of weeks in advance. We decided to go and have a look anyway with a contingency plan to visit another gallery if access would take too long. In the event, the queue was really
Spain 2025 – Day 5
Our first day in Madrid and we chose to visit the Sabatini Gardens next to the Royal Palace which was only a few minutes walk from our apartment. Unfortunately, the main formal gardens were closed for renovation! We were able to visit the larger and less formal gardens to the west of the palace and these were still pleasant. Unfortunately – again – we were not allowed to eat our sandwiches there so we had to nip over the road
Spain 2025 – Day 4
Today it was time to leave the apartment and move to Madrid, but we had the morning free so we decided to visit the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes which we had passed yesterday. Fortunately, the apartment block had a handy luggage room! The monastery was excellent and again inexpensive with the highlight being its cloister. Unlike the rather boring area of grass in the cloister at Salisbury cathedral, with which we are familiar, this one had a
Spain 2025 – Day 3
Today we divided our forces. In the morning, Dad went to the Spanish army museum which was only about 100m from our flat whilst Mum and Sophia did some shopping. The museum was again inexpensive and had very many well displayed exhibits. Unfortunately, half of the top floor was closed for unexplained reasons. This area covered the 19th and 20th Centuries. The building housing the museum was also interesting and had an open roof area with excellent views over the
Spain 2025 – Day 2
Our second day in Toledo started with a visit to the Cathedral. This is huge and took some time to see. As we had got up rather late this meant a very late lunch. As with most Catholic churches, the decoration seemed rather over elaborate in places, but there were still many fine things to see and of course so shortage of El Grecos. The highlight of the cathedral had to be the misericords. I have never seen such a
Spain 2025 – Day 1
The first full day of our first ever trip to Spain. After a somewhat fraught trip from the UK we got up late and started to explore Toledo. Our apartment is near to the river on the east side of the old town so we started there. Only a couple of minutes from the front door we found the historic Puente de Alcantara bridge with some spectacular views along the river. The only slight fly in the ointment was a
Repairing an LED ceiling light
A few years ago we purchased two new lights for the landing. These are square relatively low profile lights which use an array of LEDs. Normally, the LEDs in units such as these are not replaceable and if they fail the entire fitting has to be replaced. Well, a few weeks ago one of the lights failed and I decided to try to repair it because (a) it would be cheaper, (b) they are a matched pair and finding a
Staffordshire 2024 – Day 5
Today we decided to go for a walk. The cottage was provided with a number of handy Peak District walk books. Several of these volunteered that the walks were “Strenuous” so we gave these a miss and chose “Dales & Valleys” (ISBN 978-1-908632-05-0) which sounded more like us! Walk 6 was not too far away and looked easy so we gave it a go. Soon after starting and walking beside the river Dane we came across an elderly gentleman walking
Staffordshire 2024 – Day 4
A day in Congleton. Our first problem was the the local council has introduced those Pay-and-Display machines which demand your vehicle registration number. Dad has a strong moral objection to such things on the basis that they only exist to stop people passing on partly used tickets and that this is extremely mean! We therefore had to find somewhere free to park and ended up on a street near to Congleton Park. We were most impressed by the formal municipal
Staffordshire 2024 – Day 3
Today we went to visit the National Trust garden at Biddulph Grange which is very close to where we are staying. Actually it was rather further than we expected due to road works! Actually we visited the garden once before a few years ago although that was in February when there wasn’t quite so much to see. The gardens were quite as spectacular as we remembered although it was quite crowded. We saw a sign at the entrance saying that