Well, my 6 days of absence turned into 7 after I was pole-axed yesterday by a bad clam. Ironically, I’d ingested this in Lugo, which promotes itself with the theme And to eat – Lugo!.

That aside, this blog will be nothing but positive. Almost.

Our Castles, Mountains and Churches trip in Castilla y León, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia was a huge success, reminding me just what a joy it is to travel in Spain. Or at least in those parts where international tourism hasn’t laid waste to everything in its path. Superb roads, low traffic density, marvellous weather, friendly people, spectacular scenery, great food [except in Lugo, of course], delicious wines and – thank God - stunning castles and churches. Plus a few other things I can’t momentarily recall. As the Dutch writer – Cees Nooteboom - has said, if you took certain chunks of Spain and plonked them down in France, millions would visit them. But, happily, they don’t. Unless inspired by this blog, long may they stay away and leave Spain’s secret treasures to us blessed few.

Back home, a DVD from the library was logging up late days but, if you’ve read my blog of 21 July on this subject, you’ll appreciate that I wasn’t too concerned about this. So imagine my surprise yesterday morning when some officious young man commented on the DVD’s lateness and suggested I come back today when at least one of the two computers might be working, presumably for the purpose of being fined. Fat chance.

In my absence, things continued pretty much as usual in Galicia. A driver who was possibly returning from a wine festival along the coast decided to knock down 18 km of road cones set up to form 3 lanes out of two on a vía rápida so the holiday traffic could move more freely. The inevitable result was chaos. Dozens of other drivers reported his car registration number via their mobiles but, after 2 days, the police still haven’t managed to track him down. Which is odd, as they do it very quickly if you park your car wrongly. Perhaps he’s related to someone. He certainly appears to have felt himself inviolate.

I see I’ve referred to Manual Fraga as Miguel Fraga. How quickly one is forgotten when one loses power.

Oh yes, I read that my favourite company, Telefonica, still has almost 80% of the phone market after 2 or 3 years of competition. Or 100% in those areas, such as mine, where there is no cable company with whom to compete. Hence the relentless price increases.