Mostly books and snakes and dogs

Oops - I can't BELIEVE that it's over a month since I last blogged. Curses! I was planning to update it weekly. Oh well, perhaps I'm a natural monthly blogger. I will try to speed up one day, but perhaps when I'm not quite as busy as I have been in the last month!

Here's what has been going on since you last dropped by...

I did the book tour, which was absolutely brilliant. Went to all sorts of places all over the UK, met some fantastic children, some lovely book shop folk and some fab teachers. A huge thank you to everyone I met along the way, and I hope you enjoyed the visits as much as I did.

In the middle of the book tour, I went to a place called Longleat - which is amazing. It's got a safari park, a huge hedge maze, a bat house, a boat trip, a train trip, the grandest stately home in the world! And loads more. A brilliant, brilliant day (or weekend) out for anyone. And guess what I did...?

I held a snake!!!!!!

Look!!! Here's actual me actually holding an actual snake!



So what else? Well, I've written a huge load of reviews for a magazine called Junior Education Plus. I was very excited to be asked to do this as I've never done anything like this before. I've written the odd review, but not ten in one go, for a magazine that goes into all the schools in England! I think it might come out in July, so look out for that and read about all the ace books I've been lucky enough to get my hands on!

I decorated my house! That's the house in Manchester which is up for sale. I think the house looks brilliant now, so am hoping it will sell soon. Anyone want to buy a house in Manchester...?

And then I came back to Cornwall. The downer about this is...well, actually there are two minor downers. One is that just before I got here, it was the hottest week of the year. The day I arrived, so did the clouds and the rain! Number two is that the house we were buying has just fallen through - so it's back to the search. Not to worry, there are lots of lovely houses here and I'm sure the perfect one is out there!

Now, lots of people ask about Poppy, so I think it's about time she put in another appearance. Here are a few recent pics...

This is her doing her 'Superdog' impression...

This is how she likes to sleep lately. I think she looks like she must be dreaming about auditioning for a part in Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

And this is her today. She's cuddled up with her teddy, feeling very sorry for herself as she's hurt her foot.

We don't know what she's done to it, but she was limping last night and if it's not any better when she gets up, we'll have to take her to the vet's today. Keep your paws crossed for her!

See you soon...

Oh my, has it really been that long?

The first thing I have to do is apologise for my extended leave of absence. I'm very sorry.

If it's any use, here's my list of reasons for being so tardy:

1: My internet connections have been super-rubbish lately

2: My computer blew up a few weeks ago

3: I've been travelling the length of the UK numerous times

4: I've been obsessing about houses to the point that almost everything else has taken a back seat. Well, if I'm honest, not even a back seat at times. More like a squeezed-in little space in the boot.

OK, so here's a bit of a quick fill-in, to get you up to date.

Firstly, we returned to the UK. Spent a few weeks visiting family and friends in various places, which was absolutely lovely. Then we decided to head off to Cornwall for a bit. Now, Cornwall has always been in the back of my mind throughout this trip. There's always been a sneaking suspicion that that's where the whole trip is leading to. And it turns out the sneaking suspicion was in fact totally correct!

After three weeks of travelling all over Cornwall, we came to St Ives. And I fell in love on the spot. With the town, with the beaches, the harbour, the light, the little cobbled streets, the whole atmosphere...and with a house that now has a 'Sale Agreed' sign on it...

We're staying on a campsite that looks down onto the town. Here's one of the views from where I'm sitting right now:




Heaven.

There's still a lot of travelling around to be done over the next few months. First of all, I'm doing a book tour this month, which will take me to all the following places:

• Cardiff


• Bristol


• Bath


• Southampton


• Isle of Wight


• Brighton


• Manchester


• Nottingham


• Oxford

Phew!

The book tour is in aid of my brand new book which comes out this month, Philippa Fisher and the Dream Maker's Daughter. Here it is...(Thanks Damian!!)

I'm SO excited about this book, and I think the cover is absolutely beautiful - possibly my favourite out of all of them. Thanks so much to the wonderful Sarah Gibb.

So, after the book tour, there are various things like 70th birthday parties, batmitzvahs, 80th birthday parties and weddings - and with any luck the move to St Ives will take place in August.

Then in September, I'm doing a book tour in the states, which is VERY exciting. That's when Philippa Fisher and the Dream Maker's Daughter comes out in America. Then in October, the next book comes out in the UK. This is the fourth Emily Windsnap book, Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret. Here's a sneaky preview of the cover for this book...

In the meantime, I just have to get the third Philippa Fisher book written by the end of September. So not really a busy six months ahead at all!

Right, well that's me up to date. So I hope that the Bookwitch will now forgive me for my leave of absence, and I will do my best never to let it happen again!

Ooh ooh, one last thing I need to tell you before I go.

I was on Blue Peter!!!

They've set up a new game on their website, called the Factbyte Factory. As part of the game, they asked various authors to write a story between them. And I wrote chapter one! You can check it out on their website. Being the not-very-techie type person I am, I can't figure out how to provide you with an easy link, but if you put 'Factbyte Factory' into google, you should be able to track it down!

Anyway, they gave the Factbyte Factory a plug on their programme this week, and mentioned all the authors - including me! With a photo!!

So now when people say 'are you famous?', instead of saying 'Errr, NO!' I can modestly lower my eyes and say bashfully, 'Well, I have appeared on Blue Peter you know.' Ha!

Until next time (and I promise it won't be very long)...

Beauty is a beach called Amado

OK, I have one word to describe Portugal. Absolutely beautiful. Yes, I know that’s two words. I did that on purpose, to make sure you’re concentrating.

I think pictures can say it better than words this time. Here’s one...


Here’s another...


And, oh OK then, just one more...


You get the idea.

The fab thing about it is that as well as the actual campsites (which so often seem to be just on the edge of the towns, rather than actually in them, or just that little bit too far to walk to the beach) in Portugal you can park up right on the beach!! Well, OK, not RIGHT on the beach, because then you’d get stuck in the sand, obviously. But basically, wherever there’s a beach, there are fab places to park and lots of other campervans parked there to make you feel safe.
Our favourite place of the lot (and possibly of the whole trip) was here...


Amado beach. Beautiful beach, brilliant surf, gorgeous sunshine, lovely laid-back atmosphere, and one of the nicest things about it was that Poppy was the most chilled out she’s EVER been. The thing is, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but she’s not always very good with other dogs. However, we decided at Amado beach that she wasn’t going on the lead at all (as none of the other dogs in Portugal ever seem to be on leads) and she spent the whole time pottering around very nicely with the other dogs and didn’t get into a single scrap. What a good girl!


This is Poppy being a chilled out girl. I know she looks dead, but I promise she isn't. I think she was playing musical statues with the black labrador next door.



It’s also the place where both Laura and I both got good enough at surfing that we actually managed to stand up pretty much every time we tried. Here’s me catching a wave!


Fab fab time. And now we've got even more wonderful memories to take back to the UK with us – which we’re about to do!

We’ve got lots of family commitments and a few work ones as well, so we’re heading back to the UK where, in between all the things we have to do, we’re going to travel all over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales too. Really looking forward to discovering parts of my own country that I’ve never been to before!


We’ve taken about five days to get from southern Portugal to northern France and we’re now parked up in St Malo for a couple of days so we can explore the town and then go to see Mont St Michel before going back to England. Mont St Michel is meant to be like a mirror image of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, which was the inspiration for my third Emily Windsnap book, so I’m especially looking forward to seeing it.

And then back to England and family and friends who we haven’t seen for six months. Yay! And Laura’s mum’s famous fridge cake. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm!


See you across the water!

The 'wild' west (of Spain)

Well I'm pleased to say we escaped the caterpillars. The ones on that site, anyway. They'll be pretty much everywhere where there are pine trees around here at the moment. So our number one criteria in picking campsites for now is - no pine trees!

We had a fab week of 'wild camping' in Estepona. Wild camping is where you just park up somewhere, as opposed to staying on an offical campsite. If I'm honest, it wasn't really all that wild as we were a ten minute walk from my mum's house where we had all day (and free) access to:

Showers
Baths
Internet that actually worked
Television
Washing machine
Tumble dryer
Roast chicken dinner
And of course (and best of all)...Mummy!

We've decided that our wild camping stint in Estepona has had the best facilities of the whole trip so far.

Another great thing about Estepona was meeting a lovely family who we instantly became great buddies with. We've travelled on to a couple of new spots with them already and are planning to meet up again this week. This is them... Anna, Andy, Oscar and Lucas...

The worst thing about Estepona was an accident that involved Laura standing on top of a stool on top of another stool, with a saw in her hand (to cut a couple of little branches off a tree that were scratching the van. Yes I know - why didn't we move the van. Well these things are obvious afterwards aren't they!) The stools slipped, Laura fell, I ran over to stop her hurting herself, the saw hit me in the face and cut my cheek with four little jagged teeth marks.

Luckily, Mum was there at the time, and instantly (and remarkably calmly for her, now I think about it) drove me to the local hospital, where they put butterfly stitches on it, gave me a tetanus jab and put a big fat dressing on it that I had to wear for a week. In fact, I've just realised, you'd better add 'use of car and lots of local knowledge and much better Spanish than either of us' to our list of facilities up there.

Here's me with the dressing on. This was taken in Gibraltar, which was our next stop.

Here are some of the folk we met in Gibraltar.

After Gibraltar, we headed for a town called El Rocio. Completely different from anywhere I've ever been, the town is like stepping back 200 years or being on the film set of a Western. Streets of sand, transport by horse and carriage, tying up posts for horses outside all the houses and shops, instead of garages for cars. Amazing and interesting place. This is the main town centre square, with its church which has a massive pilgrimage to it every year.

From there, we went to Seville, where we've spent the last three days. Seville is absolutely fab. A real vibrant, cultural, beautiful Spanish city. We've done the whole place by foot, by bus, by horse and carriage and by boat! We've had real proper Spanish tapas in a real proper Spanish tapas bar. We've had real proper Seville orange juice from real proper Seville oranges. Here's a typical street. Check out all the orange trees!!

We're now heading into Portugal. We've got no idea what to expect here at all, but as far as I'm concerned all we need is for the sun to come out (which it's not done very often lately) the campsites to be nice and the sea to be gently surfable and that'll be me settled for the next couple of weeks.

See you there! :-)

My obsession with caterpillars

First of all, can I just point out I’ve never had an obsession with caterpillars before. In fact, the only time I remember having had anything to do with caterpillars at all was when I was probably between seven and ten years old and we used to find little cute tiger caterpillars in the hedges at the end of our road and take them home and make little houses for them. It was fun.

Well, the caterpillars currently occupying my thoughts are not cute, and not fun. In fact, they are one of the most dangerous living creatures to be found in Spain at this time of the year – and there are at least four nest full of them in the pine tree hanging DIRECTLY OVER OUR PITCH!

They are known as Processionary Caterpillars and some time in the next few weeks, they will start breaking out of their nests, marching down the trees, nose to tail, in lines of anything up to about twenty feet, and stomp around till they find a suitable bit of ground to bury themselves in and wait until it’s time for them to re-emerge as moths.

The only tiny little snag is that as soon as they leave their nests they are highly poisonous. If you touch them, you’ll - at the very least - break out in a horrible, itchy rash, or - at the very worst but admittedly rare - suffer from anaphylactic shock. (No, I’m not sure exactly what this is either, but I know it’s very serious.)

But the worst thing, for us and lots of others, is that these caterpillars are HIGHLY lethal for dogs. If the dog so much as sniffs the ground where they have been, it can kill them within hours. These little hairy guys are not to be messed with.

They haven’t started marching about yet, but the odd stray one has fallen out of the nest – which means I’m now living in fear of one of them dropping on my head while I’m outside. Not nice.

So – unsurprisingly – we’ve decided it’s time to get on the move again. We’ve had a brilliant couple of months here. Here are some of the things we’ve done.

I finished Emily Four – which is going to be called Emily Windsnap and the Siren’s Secret – and sent it to my editor. Fingers crossed she’ll like it!

I finished proof-reading the second Philippa Fisher book, Philippa Fisher and the Dream Maker’s Daughter, which comes out in the UK in May. Here’s a sneak preview of the cover.

Also, the first Philippa Fisher book, Philippa Fisher’s Fairy Godsister, comes out in paperback in March (in the UK) and is going to have a brand new cover. Here’s a sneaky peak at that one too. It's actually a sort of mauvey pink, but for some reason it's come out looking orange here! But at least it gives you an idea of what the cover will be like.

I loved the original cover, by Katie May, but I adore this one too. I think it’s really magical. This and the second Philippa book are by Sarah Gibb, who did the Emily Windsnap covers. Aren’t they gorgeous??!

Also since we’ve been here, we’ve met lots of lovely people and made some fantastic friends; we’ve been out surfing in the bay; we’ve had gorgeous sunset walks on the beach with Poppy; and we threw a brilliant new year’s eve party!

So we’ve had lots of fun in the last couple of months here. But now it’s time to move on. I’d been starting to get itchy feet anyway, but these dratted caterpillars have made my mind up – and thankfully, Laura feels the same way. So the campsite books and the maps and the travel guides are out again, and we’re both getting excited about the idea of moving on.

At the moment, the plan is to head west from here, towards Tarifa, Cadiz, Sevilla and possibly even Portugal. We have to be back in England in early March for Laura’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, so we’re thinking we’ll drive up through Portugal or the West coast of Spain, then back through France and back to the UK. Whilst there, we’re planning a major trip round the entire coast of the British Isles before heading off abroad again.

Well, who knows exactly what we’ll get up to. All I know for now is that I’m ready to pack up the van, start the engine for the first time in two months and get back on the road!

Let the adventure (re)commence!

Home is where the sun is

Crikey, I’m getting a bit behind here. Sorry – I’ve clearly been too busy loving the Spanish life to realise that a whole month has gone past since I last wrote my blog!

Well, we moved on to a site called Kiko Park in Oliva. My first impression was that it was absolutely wonderful. We got a lovely big pitch, a minute’s walk from the beach, and from a restaurant overlooking a harbour and from a pool and spa with incredible Jacuzzis and saunas and steam rooms etc.

My first impression got a bit damp though, as it DIDN’T. STOP. RAINING!!! At first, this didn’t matter as we made use of the gorgeous spa facilities, and we hung out in the van and chilled out. But after nearly a week of this, it started getting a bit boring. The thing that really changed it for us here was when the rain was so bad that the rivers were overflowing horribly and bringing all sorts of rubbish on to the beach. Taking the dog for a walk became a nightmare dodge between dead birds, dead fish, rotten fruit, old shoes, bags – you name it. It was really horrible. And it got worse each day, as the local council obviously felt there was no point in clearing it up until the storms had finished. Which left us with one option. The ‘let’s get out of here!’ option.

So we did.

Now, at this point, my sister Caroline was staying with Mum in Estepona for a week. From Oliva, this was too far for us to meet up, but we were starting to hatch a plan. A fairly simple plan. ‘Head for the Costa Del Sol’ pretty much sums it up. Costa del Sol = Coast of Sun = Good plan! And the even better part of it was that if we took just two days to get there, we’d be there in time to see Caroline.

So off we set, on incredible roads surrounded by majestic mountains like this one almost all the way.

And then of course, there were the not-so-natural not-such-beauties of places like Benidorm.

We stayed overnight at a site on the Cabo de Gata. Now then, if you’ve read any guide books about this area, you’ll probably read things about it being a natural park and all the wildlife and bird life etc etc that you can see here. Well, I have three words of advice: DON’T BE FOOLED!

The place was really not very nice at all. Scraggy and dirty and run down and you felt like you were in the middle of nowhere, lost forever in a place no one would ever find you. The lovely little walk to the beach was a dirt track covered in litter, rough horrible ground, barbed wire and dead ends. And the beach? Well, we never quite got there. A pack of vicious, snarling, angry barking dogs made sure of that. Laura stood flapping her arms at them, shouting ‘Fuerra!’ (which she’d heard someone else shout at some other wild dogs so she assumed the dogs would understand that it meant ‘if you don’t mind, we’d quite like you to go away now please’) while I grabbed Poppy and we legged it back to the site.

Early the next morning, we were off.

And a few hours later we arrived. Oh, we arrived.

For the first time in our trip, we had everything. A lovely, clean, well organised site. Day after day of beautiful sunshine. Fantastic neighbours everywhere, who we became friends with instantly and have spent many days and evenings socialising with since we’ve been here. A five minute walk to a gorgeous beach. A little port with lovely boats to wander round looking at and playing ‘which one shall we have’. Decent enough waves a couple of times a week for surfing. An indoor heated swimming pool on the site. A pitch that gets the sun all day. A half hour drive to my mum’s in Estepona in our new car which we bought off lovely neighbour Jimmy. It’s a K reg Nissan Micra called Rodger and we love him! Here he is.

Oh, and I’m even having guitar lessons with a guy on the site – which I’ve been wanting to do for about a year and never got round to arranging.

To put it simply, we have no plans to ever leave. I’m sure at some point, the honeymoon period will begin to wear off and who knows what the future will hold. But right now, as far as I’m concerned, this is home.

P.S. And we get pretty bloomin amazing sunsets too...

Somewhere along the Costa Azahar...

Well, all things must come to an end, and so the wonderful site at Tarragona closed for the winter. Had a lovely final few days there. Brilliant afternoon flying the kite on the beach. Here’s me pulling a few nifty stunts.

And this is the kite mid-loop-the-loop.



And if you want to see me really showing off, you can see a video of me doing ten in a row here, if I've managed to get my head round the technical stuff! Oh, and I think you'll have to tilt your head sideways to watch it as I haven't worked out how to shift the pic so it's the right way up! (If anyone knows how to fix this, please will you put a comment on the end letting me know how???)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMDUqyzaO1A

We haven’t got to Oliva yet. The weather changed a bit, and we decided that as there were apparently storms further south, we might as well travel more slowly down the coast and stop off at another site along the way.

We decided on a place called Peñiscola – a really nice Spanish town with a lovely long beach, cafes all the way along the paseo, a supermarket within walking distance of the campsite and a rocky hill jutting out from the coast with a castle on it. This is where they made the film El Cid, apparently, which I think is the town’s biggest claim to fame.

What I like most about the rocky hill is that there’s a spot where the rocks are really high with a hole in the middle and when the sea’s rough, it comes all the way up the hole and bursts through the top. It’s called a Buffador . I’ve decided I like this so much that I’m currently trying to figure out a way to include it in my book!

It’s now a month since we left the UK, and that means it’s a month since I last wore a pair of socks – yay! We’ve met some lovely people already, and I’ve decided it’s time for a little roll call of thanks.

Firstly we have Jan and Kate, who we met in Newquay, and who did things like drive us down to the beach in style with our surfboards.

Then there was Jenny and David, who took us to the best beaches and the best restaurants in St Jean de Luz.

We are HUGELY grateful to Jane and John for telling us about Tamarit Park. Best site yet by far!

But in first place, I have to say it’s Len and Eileen, our current neighbours. Len has been a knight in shining armour (well, OK, an ex-cop in shorts and t-shirt) since the moment we got here. Our arrival provided the site’s afternoon entertainment, as it often does – this time because as we tried to drive onto our pitch, we got a branch of a tree lodged on the sticky-out bit of the roof.

A couple of inches either way and we’d probably have ripped the side off the van. I scrambled up on the roof but couldn’t lift the tree. Two minutes later I’m joined by Len, who helped lift the branch and helped us safely into the spot. An interesting way to introduce yourself to your new neighbours.

But the bit that wins him Neighbour of the Trip award so far is the fact that he spent the entire day with us yesterday trying to fix a leaking pipe in our bathroom.

This is him with his head in our bathroom cupboard, from the outside!

What a star! And what a lot of lovely people we’re meeting. One of the best things about the trip is the wonderfully kind and generous people we’re meeting.

Oh, and finally – just time for a few comedy moments from Poppy. This is her with her best friend, Teddy. OK, she didn’t actually put him there herself, but she didn’t move him off either.



And this is her Mother Teresa impression. She raced down to her favourite little spot by the heater but I don’t think she’d noticed the towel hanging there too. Cute!


I’ve been poorly with a grotty cold for the last few days, so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do today. No problem – there’s not a lot else to do while it rains. Makes me think of home! (Apart from the fact that if it was home I wouldn’t be sitting here in my shorts and t.shirt and bare feet and quite liking the pitter patter on the roof.)

Right, down to work. Let’s see if I can work that Buffador into my book!