The World Wide Webbs

On Saturday morning we made a cheeky quick visit to a beach Julia had recommended before Anouk and Robbert were up and before David's school friend Francis arrived. It was wonderful, a bit of a walk from the car park but it was relatively less busy (not secluded by anything close to New Zealand standards). The water was crystal clear and the boys tried out their new snorkels. The boys loved finding the fish but still prefer goggles as the breathing with a snorkel is a bit tricky.

Then we headed home to see Francis, his wife Marta and his 9 month old son who had visited from Menorca for one night. The older kids were fascinated with a baby that is a lot more interactive than Rupert. We spent the afternoon eating, drinking and swimming, then headed into town for the evening. We wandered through the town and had a lovely dinner.

The next morning we headed for another quick beach visit - this time to nearby sa riera. Then we said goodbye to all 5 of our visitors.

The next week I decided that on the days David was working having 4 kids at a beach was better than at home so we went out most days. The week largely followed a pattern of beaches in the mornings, study/Spanish with Julia in the heat of the day, then a swim. It's been cooling off a little, and the kids were shivering getting out of the pool so we've started putting a cover on the pool at night.

On Monday we went to Sa Tuna, beautiful nearby fishing village which we had started a walk from but not spent much time. There was a lovely cafe which overlooked the sand so I set myself up there. The older kids played on the sand and Rupert and I had a coffee and watched. After an hour the sun had made it to table and it was getting seriously hot so we packed up and headed back.

That night we went back to the local playground. We didnt realise that the bar is closed on Mondays and this meant there were very few kids there either. This worked in our favour as Felix and Ethan joined in the game and had an absolute ball. They ran and ran for an hour, and represented New Zealand well against the world cup winners.

The next day was another beach - this time Agua Blava, the beach that a couple of weeks earlier we had tried to visit but had to come home because the car park was full. This was a bit later in summer and we arrived earlier. The beach was also wonderful, this was the closest to a sandy beach we had come across. It filled up quickly while we were there, but we had another successful little morning beach trip. The kids were good about playing in shallow water only.

That day Warwick and James (David's cousin) arrived from their road trip through southern Spain. It was great to have some extra hands, especially during our afternoon swims.

On Wednesday we went back to Sa Tuna as a much bigger group. This time the kids could swim and look at fish, and played beach tennis.

The next day we went to Pals yet again - Tori wanted to go up the bell tower when the bells were ringing. This meant quite a wait at the top of the tower for the bells, followed by a 10:57 decision to go down the tower as she thought the loud bells would be too scary.

That was James's last night with us so we went out for dinner at Sa Riera.

On Friday we stayed home during the day, a decision I regretted as 4 kids at home all day is a lot! Temperatures are climbing again - 30 or 31 degrees highs which make walking excursions tricky.

The kids are improving noticeably at spanish, being much more keen to give it a go but most of what we overhear is catalan rather than spanish. We're still struggling with the mosquitos which are everywhere, I always seem to miss a few spots with repellant so we've all got a lot of bites. The boys have made a game out of killing them and they both have a live kill count.

On possibly our only weekend by ourselves we dragged the kids to something I was interested in, some ruins of a Greek settlement from 600 BC and a Roman settlement from 200 BC directly behind it at Empuria. The ruins didn't open until 10 and by then it was another scorching day. We enjoyed the ruins but skipped a good portion of the Roman section as by then everyone was very hot and tired. The kids were suitably impressed by the age of the ruins.

We found a gorgeous cafe en route.

That evening we walked to a local playground which we have visited a few times. It feels very genuine, with mostly catalan spoken and a ton of kids turning up to play football or play on the playground. It's got a lovely little bar for the parents as well.

The next week our first ever au pair, Anouk and her boyfriend Robbert came to visit. It was really cool having them stay with us, they were great with the kids even though only Felix really remembered her.
We went up the castle again (the kids wanted to go up a second time anyways because last time they wanted to try out the telescope but I didn't have a €1 coin with me) which wasn't any quicker but the view was just as good.

Our biggest excursion was a walk between a couple of nearby beaches. The walk was another brilliant one with stunning views. The kids were especially interested in the nudist beach they could look down on in the middle. When we got to the other end we had a swim and the kids climbed the rocks. The boys loved finding some fish so much that I decided to get them snorkels for future beach trips.

After the beach trip we had a lovely lunch out.

We visited the beautiful historic town of Pals again (first time for David) and this time we went up the belltower. The views were great and we'd managed to choose a milder day where temperatures were closer to 27 than 30 which genuinely makes a massive difference.

We had an al fresco dinner at one of the tapas bars in central Begur which is open all afternoon (dinner here isn't until 7:30 at the earliest at many places)

And we're still sitting at 100% daily use of the pool

By our second week we were well and truly in the groove, and had worked out important things like what time in the afternoon the pool gets some shade, how the rubbish works, where to park and which supermarket to shop at.

We swam every single day, with highs of 32-34 degrees it's certainly been hot. In 2 weeks Ethan has gone from refusing to be in the pool without being held to being confident with floaties to swimming like a fish (or a fish that enjoys jumping in and out of the water and spinning around). I'm trying to use the hottest part of the day for some school work and spanish lessons but it's tough on Felix as the younger ones are playing/distracting him while he's supposed to be getting some work done. I've had some great help on that front from Julia, a local who has been coming in 3 x a week on the days David is working to teach the kids spanish and generally help out with the 4 kids. She's been amazing, and really quickly built a good rapport with the kids.

David's parents and Ricardo went to Cadaques for a night. It looks beautiful - we might need to add that as a trip for one day. Unfortunately the day they got back Linda slipped and broke her wrist. At A&E they put it in bandages and told her that it was a really bad break and will need an operation in New Zealand!

We visited the nearby town of Palafrugel and saw the cork museum. It was surprisingly kid-friendly, with lots of interactive exhibits. This area used to be a major producer of corks, and presumably continues today as most of the local wines are in bottles with corks.

After more than a week I finally decided we needed to walk up to the castle which overlooks the town. Ambitiously I set off with the three big kids during one of Rupert's naps (it is very convenient having David working from home). It wasn't a fast trip and we had a lot of snack and water stops, especially considering Google suggested the whole walk would be around 20 minutes each way. The views were spectacular and we even managed to wave to David down at our place.

The next day I was feeling very motivated by how well the castle walk went and David had the day off work so we walked a small portion of a Costa Brava walking trail. David dropped the big kids and I at one end then parked at the other and walked the 15 minutes back to us. The walk was spectacular, with great views and lots of people snorkeling, boating, kayaking, swimming etc. This was a few degrees hotter, it hit 34 °C in the middle of the day and didn't feel much below that! Despite being a short walk it took a long time and we were glad we'd stayed with a very manageable length.

Friday was Felix's birthday. David, Warwick and Ricardo took Felix and Ethan to a water park nearby where he had a great time on the slides. The biggest slide had an hour-long wait but we were there in peak season. Ethan wasn't as confident but had a go at a few of the slides. Tori and I had a girls day and went to a café and the local library as I was getting VERY sick of the books we had. Then we had a lovely dinner out at a pizzeria in Begur.

The next morning we said goodbye to Linda and Ricardo. Linda was flying back to New Zealand for surgery on her wrist, and Ricardo and Warwick have a week-long road trip through southern Spain with Ricardo's cousin/Warwick's nephew before Ricardo then flies home.

We had decided to book a taxi transfer from Maidenhead to Gatwick airport which saved about 2.5 hours and three different trains with all our bags. The flight to Barcelona went well (just over 2 hours felt much easier than our previous double digit ones) and we picked up our rental car then drove 1.5 hours to Begur.

My parents had checked in earlier that day and it was incredible to arrive and see the lovely villa that would be our home for the next 8 weeks. On our first full day we picked up a large online supermarket order (turns out I can continue to avoid taking 4 kids into a supermarket), and everyone had two swims in the lovely pool. My in-laws arrived a few days later from their holiday through France. The days after that blurred together a bit, swimming during the day, dinner and evenings outside on the gorgeous patio. Highs were around 30-32 degrees which was perfect at the pool but too hot everywhere else as overnight lows were still 25 degrees or so.

We've had a couple of excursions so far. On the first Monday we decided to go to a beach. We left around 10am and found the road to the beach closed because the car park was full! We tried the next couple of beaches which were similarly full before giving up and driving home! The next day David dropped me, my mum and the kids off at a beach near our accommodation (Sa Riera). That worked a bit better but was still quite chaotic for drop off and pick-up as many roads were closed during the mid-summer busy season and I'm pretty sure we ended up down a residents only road. But at least we actually got there this time! This beach was quite steep, the sand was relatively large granules and the waves were very dumpy but the kids had a great time.

Wednesday was market day in Begur so we headed in to check it out. It was nice and small, not too chaotic even with 4 kids in tow. The town itself is beautiful, and the narrow streets provided some much needed shade.

It happened to be my birthday, so we went out for dinner at a lovely restaurant right on the beach. The proximity to the sand kept the kids entertained and we had a largely uninterrupted meal as they played in the sand, joined us to eat, then left again.

Mum and I also took the kids to Pals, a postcard pretty little town only 10 minutes drive. We kept the kids motivated to climb to the top with promises of icecream which was much needed by everyone.

David's work set-up:

We made it to our Airbnb in Maidenhead with only the usual number of difficulties (extra taxi as the bus to our rental car didn't leave from Heathrow terminal 4, and a rental car booking miscommunication). Everyone was tired and we were hoping for a repeat of the excellent adjustment in Malaysia but had no such luck. This was a 7 hour time difference so was always going to be a bit tougher. Rupert was up at midnight, Ethan was up at 1:30, then Tori was up at 2 just after I'd got Ethan back to sleep. I tried to get her back to sleep until 3:45 then gave up and we headed downstairs for some breakfast.

On our first day some of my friends from university were kind enough to drive all the way from Cambridge to visit us. It was awesome to see them again, but we probably weren't very good company in our jet-lagged state. The kids loved having other kids to play with and it got us outside at a playground which was exactly what we all needed. That evening my parents who have been in Europe for a couple of months arrived and we took the much needed opportunity to veg out and left them to deal with the kids' bedtime.

We took a bit longer to adjust to this time zone change, it took 5 days before everyone made it to a time starting with a 6 so we were pretty tired for a while. I did manage some beautiful early morning walks along the Thames, and luckily it was light by 5am. We both got very excited on our first supermarket visit, buying lots of our favorites from when we lived there - Gu zillionaires, clotted cream ice cream, Punk IPA, Pipers crisps/chips, cider)......


On the Sunday we had organised a catch up with friends from our old hockey club. Tori was really tired so we left her napping at our accommodation with my parents. We'd picked a pub which had a playground but it turned out that was just a metal slide which was scalding and a ping pong table with bats but no balls. Nonetheless we introduced the kids to another facet of British culture - the Sunday session. It was awesome to see everyone again but the kids ran out of patience eventually (and jet lag was catching up with us) so we headed back for an early night.

David was working remotely that week but took a break to go to Bekonscot Miniature Village and Railway, somewhere he'd visited with his family when he was 4. His parents joined us which was great, as they stayed longer with the boys when Tori needed a nap then took the boys back to their accommodation. This was our hottest day in England, with a high of 32 degrees and our airbnb was turning into a sauna by the afternoon. We joined the boys at their grandparent's hotel and had a lovely (if rather cheeky as we weren't staying there) swim.

The next day was almost as hot. My parents took the oldest three to a national trust property, Cliveden House. It sounded like it went pretty well, aside from some struggles in a life sized maze and I took the chance to go shopping in Maidenhead, picking up a few bits and pieces.

Wednesday was our big trip into London. We put Bluetooth trackers on the kids and dressed them in matching outfits to reduce the chance of them getting lost which fortunately didnt happen! We had to remind them about 100 times not to walk in front of people and got a lot of looks from people who thought we were either crazy or amazing. We did a hop on hop off bus tour past most of the big attractions, which we cut slightly short when the kids were all hungry / needed the bathroom / a nap. We got the boat back which went well, and Tori managed a nap on the boat. We then dropped the kids with David's parents again, this time for a matinee lion king show which they really enjoyed. Overall the day wasn't particularly enjoyable for anyone - we technically ticked a lot off but it was stressfull and I don't know how much the kids will remember.

The next day we got a bus to Windsor which was a much more enjoyable day. By a happy coincidence Thursday was the marching of the guard so we watched that, had a picnic on the waterfront, then hired a little motorboat. The boys had loads of fun driving it, but needed a bit of course correction a few times as they preferred driving in circles and took the "stay right" rule as more of a guideline.

Then our last day was really quiet, a walk along the Thames to a little island and a lock and seeing one more friend from hockey.

Next stop Spain!!!