Traffic report

On Monday we heard a rumbling coming down from Yegen, so after lunch went for a walk to see what was happening. It sounded like a digger, was in fact a bulldozer that just pushed every rock aside, remade the collapsed track - see photos from our walk with Mat to Yegen on the 27th December - and arrived here late afternoon. When it got to the border with Yator it had to stop, and we were told that the digger from Yator would be up the following day to do its bit.

Tuesday morning when I went out with Monty and Pip for a walk, no digger in sight but we came across a BMW parked - if that's the right word! - just before the land slide. Drivers window open, no-one around, just stopped. It had obviously been closer to the hole and had managed to reverse back a bit but was on a rutted slope and couldn't get any further. Later that day, a guy walked past on his way up from Yator and shortly after that, he came back down with Micha carrying 2 spades. It was the BMW driver, he'd tried to get down the night before - in the dark - luckily had seen the collapse, but then got stuck. Micha helped him out of the ruts, and he went back up to Yegen.

Today another vehicle also tried to get down, John heard a car go down and a while later a 4x4 came back up. As you may have guessed, there are no road closed signs anywhere and we assume that people in Yegen have heard that the bulldozer came down and are expecting it to be open all the way to Yator.

We are expecting to find someone parked in the landslide one of these days! Maybe if there is more traffic, then the digger will be back. But we can now get home via Mecina and Yegen - a bit of a detour but when we need heavy shopping or gas bottles, it's now an option.

A bit more about the road from Cadiar to Torviscon - there is a report in the Ideal newspaper saying that there are now 71 landslides in the 12 km stretch, 66 of them due to this years rain. But the surface of the road is very bad, the edges are washing away and there are cracks in the middle. If anyone wants the link and can read/translate the report it's here

http://www.ideal.es/granada/20100119/provincia/desprendimientos-kilometros-20100119.html

And now for something different, we think Spring is springing as the almond blossom is coming out! The tree opposite the front gate has started to bloom in the last few days.

Talking of springing, Pip has discovered that she can jump up onto the kennel roof from a standing start, not a problem you'd think except the first time she did it was 2 days after her operation, then she slipped off and got wedged down the back of the kennel between it, the fence and the (very spiky) bouganvillea. When I managed to get her out there seemed to be a lot of blood so I thought she'd burst her stitches but luckily she'd only cut a paw on the spikes. We have now moved the kennel to a safer place for her.