Autumnal

... weather and trees. The landscape around here is really stunning at this time of year -- such beautiful colours everywhere you look. Today we returned to Rañin to collect our order of pork from the pig farm. It was not simply a commercial transaction; when we arrived, Señora Borruel invited us in, and brushing aside the fact that she and her mother were just finishing lunch at 4 p.m., insisted that we sat down with them for a cup of coffee. It was swiftly followed by cake and very powerful home-made hooch -- of which we managed to take only tiny sips. We chatted about pigs, sheep, cheese, stills, the Civil War, farming, country life and how it has changed ... eventually, after about an hour, we got around to the purpose of our visit, which was followed by an exchange of gifts; we gave her a bottle of wine from our village (specifying that they should drink it rather than add it to their collection of dusty bottles) and she promptly ran out to the hen house and gave us a dozen eggs. What lovely people -- country people like them have to work hard for their living, but they always have time to chat and offer hospitality.

So dinner tonight is ... pork on the barbecue. Ten kilos was perhaps a tad ambitious -- we have a freezer full now!

Extra: a rather strange chapel we passed on the way there. Evidently money was short.