We managed to watch most of the Eurocup when Spain was playing. We went to watch the final match in the old market hall in La Unión. We are more used to seeing Flamenco concerts in this venue.
We were probably the only English inside. Everyone, including ourselves, was wearing a red T-shirt at the very least. I felt slightly deaf for a day or two after the culmination when two thousand Spanish rose from their seats and had a simultaneous orgasm. My son went for a bath in a fountain outside. It is rather a small fountain decorated by a black mining cart. On this occasion about fifty people managed to get inside it.
4th July: Other highlights of the week included a free Flamenco concert in Plaza Marina near our house. The singer was Churumbaque Hijo from Cordoba. Excellent voice. No more Flamenco for another three weeks or so, alas.
5th July: We snorkel a lot in the summer. Every year a local diving school, Hesperides, gives a free lesson in a pool outside Decathlon, a sports store. Our son had great fun.
6th July: We had a picnic near Tunel Jose Maestre in Portman. In the middle of the nineteenth century this tunnel was used to bring trains full of minerals out of the quarries to Lavadero Roberto, a mineral washery that used some extremely toxic chemicals. Greenpeace closed it down eventually. The tunnel is now flooded. It is supposed to be about two kilometres long. 
Dozens of trucks lie outside on the rails under the pine trees. 
7th July: We spent an amazing evening watching dervishes from Cairo perform outside the old town hall in Cartagena. The group was from Cairo. My son bought a handmade oriental oboe-style intrument from one of them. It is amazingly loud compared to western instruments.
10th July: I bought tickets for the last concert of the Cante de las Minas festival. For the first time the tickets were being sold from the newly restored Casa del Piñon. It was built by the architect, Pedro Cerdán Martínez, for the mine owner, Joaquín Peñalver Nieto. It was originally intended as a block of apartments which he wouldmake money from by renting. Most of the other mine-owners of the late nineteenth century preferred to commission palaces for themselves instead. These palaces are mostly owned by the banks now - wonderful buildings scattered around Cartagena. When I first started visiting the area Casa del Piñon was a complete ruin. It is now restored and houses the town hall´s offices.
11th July: The Roman Theatre finally reopened after its restoration. They have done a fantastic job. The Museum is housed in the Palacio de Riquelme. A corridor connects this through the old cathedral with the Roman Theatre outside. It´s free to visit this weekend. Cartagena is hoping it will become one of Spain´s main tourist attracions.
14th July: I filled in a questionnaire for The Sun newspaper a while back. The piece appeared today:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/expats/expats_community/article1420344.ece
16th July: It was the day of the Virgen del Carmen who is the patroness of fishermen. A large fishing boat takes her image round the port in the evening to bless the local fising industry. Locals are allowed on the boat - but it´s first come first served and a bit of a bun fight. We didn´t get on. Next year we will go straight to the port and forget the religious procession bit...
Here´s the boat returning in the darkness before the storm broke.
20th July: I went down a storm drain for about a kilometre with my son and a couple of his friends. The drain runs much further - from the Hondon area to San Pedro. We were amazed to see a lot of live eels swimming in the water. 
Here´s one that David caught with my jungle knife
We ate fresh almonds from a wild tree afterwards.
In the night we went to the local fiesta. The kids´foam disco started at 1 a.m. I went in with him for a foam fight.
26th July: One of the things I like about Spain is the free paellas at various fiestas...Fed the family free and I brought back a catty bag for my ferals.
The paella makers did a wonderful job of cleaning the pan afterwards...
The figs are now in season and a lot of scrumping will be taking place. We found them first at Portmán, Then they ripened in Llano del Beal. We eat them as they are but I may also try to make some jams and chutneys this year.
July ended with very sad news for my husband as one of his brothers died in South Africa at the age of 56. RIP David. The funeral was on the 5th.
The Teatro del Mar season started on 1st August I went with my son every night. He gets in free. Parque Torres was full most nights.
Ennie Marchetto and Sit were my favourites but most of the others were pretty good. Got a little bored with Sexpeare though.
9th August. Flamenco concert with Esther Merino. Glad to see Antonio Muñoz Fernandez back as guitarist on the local concerts.
10th August: The son and I checked out part of the winding escape route between Santa Lucia and Escombreras. We will do the lot when it is a bit less warm. Looks like an excellent bike ride. We found some figs and hope to go back for prickly pears. There are interesting views of the port and town from a different angle.
The early stages of the road pass the back of the ruined naval prison in Lo Campano.
August 12th and 14th: The prickly pears are now ripe in La Unión and we are making sure we get our share. One pair of gloves is not enough as we have found out. Next time I will take Spanish advice and put rubber gloves beneath industrial ones. The fruit is lovely chilled. You top and tail them , split them and peel back the skin before putting them in the fridge for a couple of hours. Food is much more expensive than it used to be so it´s good to get a lot of free desserts.
August 15th: Up to 3 with another foam party with the people of Los Mateos.
August 16th: The finals of the Cante de las Minas. The concert had less winners than usual and was about an hour shorter. Rocio Marquez Limón won several prizes - a good singer and beautiful also.
We got back at 3.15 and went to the meatfest in Los Mateos. This is what my son had as a bedtime snack.
21st August: we visited Casa Cegarra in Portman for caldero. Marvellous restaurant. We have had problems getting there before because it is almost always booked out. Now we understand why. They serve the fish that was the basis of the caldero afterwards - scorpionfish etc. - very tasty. We had lovely garlicy clams and a salad first and our son managed a dessert as ever. Wish I had his metabolism.
23rd: We biked a little further along the escape route to Escombreras. Stunning views.
The Port of Escombreras
We came down via the old fortifications (Trincabotijas)
Further down there are some moderner fortifications which even had a well-built doghouse
We washed off our sweat in Cala Cortina on the way down. In the evening we heard a concert by Coloraito.
24th August. We took the FEVE to Sierra Minera then biked to the Corta Sultana quarry in Llano del Beal. W saw the old Ruston Bucyrus excavator but could not find a well-preserved mine that is supposed to be there.
25th August - we tried snorkelling a cove we had seen from the top of the hill. It´s close to Cala Cortina but almost noone uses it as there is a lack of parking and it´s hard to get down to the sea and even harder to get out again.
In the evening we found a beautiful feral kitten by the bins. My husband wants to call him David after his brother.
26th: The Audi Medcup is on. We saw a free magic show and heard a Belgian comic called Elliot. Later in the week the son tried a bike that turns upside down. I left him to it.
28th: We met up with Maxwell Ketels, an Australian I had corresponded with over my book about Pan. He gave my son some flute lessons in between seeing the sights of Cartagena. On the 30th: We took him to the last Flamenco concert of the season - Rocio Segura.
6th: A free Sardinada - we ate nine or so apiece. We met Gerardo who is playing the high priest of Jupiter in the forthcoming fiestas. He invited us to meet him for a drink in his legion tent in the coming Romans and Carthaginians festival.
16th; Back to school in theory but further paperwork was needed so will not be in class until Monday.
18th: Alex´s grandmother, Sheila, arrived for a few days. Quite lucky that he has a further bit of time off school. He took her round the Roman theatre, the House of Fortune, the Punic Wall and the Augusteum.
19th: The opening of the Romans and Carthaginian Festival.
We took Sheila to the lighting of the Sacred Fire and the opening speeches with comics Los Morancos. Funny - but very crowded.20th: Son showed Sheila round the Portman museum with its splendid Roman mosaics, I picked more figs nearby.
Some friends of my son found a starving tabby kitten. It refused to take food in the garage which is visited by several hungry ferals so I brought it in the house for feeding. next thing we knew it had adopted us and is now best friends with David. We have called it El Gran Wyoming after a favourite comic.
21st: Went to the fake Senate meeting show - it was as funny as ever.
22nd: I saw the Molinete excavations twice - once with Sheila and once with son.They are only open for a few days.
26th: A public holiday and all the museums were open free. We went to the House of Fortune and the Decumano.
3rd October - the toadstool season is starting. No boletus as yet but I got some puffballs which are known as "pedos de lobo" - wolf farts,
5th October: We went to the Los Serranos quarries in Albatera with our group. We got some good samples of pistacite with quartz plus some tourmaline.
Ginés, Eliécer, Fuensanta, Juan and myself in the quarry
Strange and impressive mountains in this area
13th: We picked boletus and puff balls in Llano del Beal and got eaten by mosquitoes etc. We shall probably not risk that area for another week until the insect quota has gone down.
19th: We started fishing again. We are very rusty and need practice.
24th: A small tabby was brought round in need of a home. Here it is sitting on Jet Li´s back.
Here it is with the previous two kitties:
My son is calling the poor kitten pedo de lobo until he can think of something better.
25th October: Excellent Flamenco concert with Antonio Muñoz Fernandez and his mother Encarnacion Fernandez in the old ayuntamiento.
1st November: We did karate in La Mata park. Very pretty down there. Saw some new kinds of toadstool - a non-edible relative of the puffball.
9th: November: Went to Portman and gathered a lot of wood for winter fires. My son found a truffle buried beneath some pine debris he was bagging for the fire. Unfortunately it turned out to be slightly maggoty. We ate some bits from the non-maggoty end.
10th November: Evgeny, the father of Boris in my karate group took the following photo of us all with my camera. Federico had just come 3rd in the Open Championship of Spain.
November 29th: We went to a concert by L´Incontro Fortunato in the university buildings. The highlight of the performance was a Mozart concerto with a clarinettte d ´amor played by Lorenzo Coppola. Beautiful and unusual sound. Saw this stylish graffiti painting on the way back.
November 30th: We spent hours in the Mediaeval Market that happens once a year in Cartagena. I love the birds of prey. My son was photographed with an eagle and I was pictured with a large owl. The owl didn´t like me and whacked me on the head with his wing afterwards.
The Underwater Archaeology Museum opened at the end of November. It has a superb layout with lots of interactive games for kids and screens showing videos of restoration, etc.
Sabine cult bronze of hand and figures found at Escombreras.There are several routes offered by the tourist office - Archaeology, Baroque, Modernist buildings, Christmas lights and Belens. Some joker has put the following sign up in the city as the residents are fed up with constantly having their homes under scaffolding...
2nd December: I heard Blindman - a Belgian group consisting of four saxophones and a counter tenor - perforing old and modern music at the Cultural Centre. Fascinating concert but too short.
12th December: When we were in Zaragoza earlier in the year, the father of a member of our mineral group told us that a particular mine had a solar alignment on 12th December. My son has christened this the "chicken mine" as I was too chicken to go to the bottom of it the last time we visited. While Alexander was at school I checked on this. The alignment was supposed to happen at 12 on the 12th of the 12th month. There was a definite increase of light at that hour in the entrance. The following photos show before and after
There is a shaft just inside this entrance (top left of next picture) which was pierced by the sunlight lighting up the side wall of the ramped down into the mine.
14th: We showed a guy called John Williams from Baza one or two sites in the area - Mina Teresita, Mina Precaucion and areas of Llano del Beal that are good for quartz points. We were pleased to see that Mina Precaucion has become much safer than previously as it has dried out a lot. We got a good haul of hemimorphite.
We returned to the "chicken mine" on the 21st just in case the date had been quoted wrong - most solar alignments are at the solstice rather than the 12th. There was no light effect outside. We went into the cavernous interior via the ramp and a tunnel. The ramp inside this had broken up a lot since our last visit making entry to the bottom part impossible. There was a shaft of light inside. We wondered if this had been much clearer at 12 and will try next year at that time to see if visibility within the cavern improves. Another member of our mineral group has told us that there are several solar alignments to be observed in mines in the area.
The Belens went up rather late this year - about a week before Christmas. There is even a scene of someone climbing a greased pole for a Serrano ham in one!
There is also a snow ramp for kids.
The cats are cuddling up as it gets colder.
