Last weekend I appeared in the Sunday supplement of El País, a leading Spanish national newspaper. It’s an article about people who decided to swap their urban lives for a rural one and the difficulties and challenges that presents. I am very proud to have been asked to be a […]
CULTURE
Yesterday I was in Fernan Caballero, a small village in the Montes Norte region, to help organise an ornithological walking tour. The town council, as part of a program of showing the local people the richness of the flora and fauna right on their doorstep, want to do an excursion […]
As mentioned in my previous post about Calatrava la Vieja, the Knights of Calatrava moved from near Carrión de Calatrava to their new castle near Calzada de Calatrava in 1217. It is a most impressive structure high on a rocky hill overlooking a pass through the mountains from the Sierra […]
Castilla la Mancha in central Spain is a great place for birding, of that there is no doubt. However there is more to the region than just birds. Here in the first of a series of entries about the regions cultural richness I will start with the first part of […]
Here at Oretani Wildlife it’s not all about birds, or more recently about the construction of our guest accommodation, or the rain which hasn’t stopped either. We also offer a cultural view of our region, Castilla la Mancha, to our guests. And what could be more of a colourful and […]
Oretani Wildlife is based in a village called Picón in an area called Montes, which is a comarca, or region of Ciudad Real made up of a few small towns and pueblos or villages. Known formally as Montes, the area has set up an association between the towns and villages […]
Time for the second part of this story dealing with the voyage and a bit of history. We sailed from Knightstown, Valentia to Derrynane Harbour on my cousins yacht Janus. It is thus named due to having two heads (toilets in maritime speak) and Janus was a Roman god of […]
Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. There are few places in the world that make me marvel over the abundance of wildlife more than the Skelligs off the coast of Kerry, Ireland. A trip to the rocks is both a trip back in time […]