Running For It….

Running for It….

If you have not read the first part of this story, you can see it at this blog post.

So…. Tuesday.

The air temperature is forty plus, disablingly hot, and all we can do is sit under the air-con.

Except that the air conditioning is working full-blast and periodically knocking out our fragile electricity supply. This in turn knocks out the water pump and we have to re-prime the thing before we can turn a tap on again.

This involves going down ten flights of steps in our built-into-the-mountainside garden, clicking on the main electric supply, re-priming the pump and then returning up ten flights of steps. After doing this three or four times in temperatures more suited to basting chickens, it loses its appeal.

And the bloody electricity clicks out again.

“Let’s go out to the village, have a drink at one of the bars and hear the local word on the fires. We can sort out the electricity and pump as we pass the bottom gate.”

“Good idea.”

So, He, Guest and I pile into the car to head for the village, stopping at the bottom of the garden to sort out the house services.

“I’ll do it,” He says, jumping out of the car to head for the pump house, and leaving me and Guest to twiddle thumbs for five minutes.

Meow

?

Meow

?

A small white kitten with black tail and Long-John-Silver eye patch mewls at me from inside my garden fence.

Wtf?

Meow

A second white kitten with ginger tail and matching accessories follows the first, pushing a small friendly face at the wire fencing towards us.

Where the hell have they come from?

Dumped….

Bastards….

Oh, God….

He’s only been gone three minutes….

…. I’ve only just dumped one kitten on him a month or so back….

Guest eyes me, laughing. “I witnessed it.”

“Thank God for that. He’d be sure it was a set up otherwise.”

We go to the gate, talking to the kit-lets as we go and they rush along the inside of the fence, following us all the way and almost throwing themselves into my arms.

Definitely not ferals….

I put them in the car to contain them and He returns about a minute later.

“Er, I’ve something to tell you.” I eye-point two small white faces looking out from the back windscreen.”

“How?” He looks baffled. “I was only….”

I cut it short. “Drive back up with the kittens. I’ll get the kitten cage. They can go in there while we’re out.”

So, we return to the house. I fid the kitten cage I bought only a few weeks ago to accommodate Harley-Chimera-Kitten while I got her and the dogs habituated. I dump in water, a scratch tray and a pile of food. Add two kittens and they fall on the food as though it’s going out of fashion.

And now it’s time for a drink….

In the village with a good view of the evening and the ridges and cliff-faces around us, the atmosphere is eerie. There’s a feel to the light; that egg-yolk quality it gets when something’s brewing.

The evening is almost a dead calm, the air sultry with heat and humidity. A red glow from the fires hangs over the mountain ridge, but it has moved from its original position where we saw it the previous day.

As we knock back chilly beer, at the horizon, quite suddenly I see a bank of white cloud.

Extraordinarily suddenly….

And I can’t figure what I am looking at….

What the hell’s that?

Is it fire or weather?

Cloud or smoke?

It surges and boils, moving with incredible speed towards us, a billowing surging cloud cover that turns darker as it approaches.

If it is fire, there is something major and new happening.

If it is weather, it’s the mother of all storms heading our way.

He says, “I’m just going up the road for a better view.” As he marches up the road, I watch the bank of cloud rolling in. It looks more like something from an Indiana Jones movie or Close Encounters than a storm.

In under two minutes the thing is overhead and our mellow evening turns dark. The bats suddenly come out, flicking and flitting around.

Lightning floodlights the clouds, then starts spiking down the ground. And all the time the wind is rushing and rising, tossing the palms around and knocking glasses from tables.

He returns five minutes later. “The fire’s in two places now. I can see a glow and a bit of smoke over there and there, but there’s not much to see.”

But I don’t trust the effect of this rising wind on any damped down fires. “I’ll go take a look myself.”

I wander up the street, up the hill and onto the top road which is the high point of the village. Looking back where He pointed, I can’t see much at all.

But then I look forward and down the valley….

Christ!

The red glow and the smoke is in a different place entirely. Last night it was beyond the mountain ridge, up on the plateau and in the next valley. This is in our own valley and has apparently jumped to the opposite side.

With the winds and curves of roads and ridges, it’s difficult to judge exactly where/what I am seeing but it is nowhere near the area I expected.

Looking across the valley and to one side, down the ridge, there is a stream of descending orange lights, a constant conveyor of vehicles taking the tiny winding road which so terrified me the one and only time He and I drove up there.

Mountaintop village being evacuated?

As I look back, I see the glow ahead of me turn to a bright point of light, then within seconds a gleam. The gleam flickers and grows and smoke begins to billow up. I watch like a rabbit staring into headlights. In less than a minute I see flames striking up.

I am watching from at least five miles away. Almost dark now, the sea-planes and helicopters cannot fly. The fire is in my own valley and in a spot where should the fire move uphill only a little, it will hit an unbroken line of pine forest. That forest extends up the mountain and over, then down to my own house where, nestled under the trees, my home sits in a tinder-dry landscape of pine needles, resin and oils.

The wind is rising still, the trees lashing, and lightning lances through tumultuous black clouds. The fire continues to flicker and grow, flames licking upwards.

I turn on my heel and march at a smart pace back to the bar. “Drink up. We’re leaving”

We head for home. As we leave the building-blocked view of the village, we can see the ridge edge.

The ridge is a beautiful piece of natural sculpture, cragged and split by ravines from the plateau down to the valley bottom. When the rains come here, water cascades down in white foaming cataracts, but now those gulleys glow brilliantly down as fire rivers down.

It is amazingly beautiful….

But…. Jeez, that’s a scary sight….

At home we pack my tiny car. Three adults, three dogs, and, as luck would have it, one chimera kitten plus two more, into the car. Harley hisses at the new strangers, but there is no choice. I have one kitten cage and no time to make better arrangements. If the wind changes and the fire hits the pine forests….

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

In the back seat; Guest, Honey the mastiff and Eddie the Podenco; terrified of cars and travelling.

In the front, He, driving. Me in the passenger seat with Rosie at my feet and a bag with phones, tablets, bank cards, passports and back-up hard-drive.

In the back: kitten cage and laptops, and a bag with water bottles and drinking dish.

And we go….

We drive down the back mountain route. It’s a winding descent; a good, well-built road but with twists and turns every few hundred yards (think ‘The Italian Job’). The easier Gandia road is closed.

And the weather stages a performance to suit the occasion. Clouds roil, lightning flashes and thunder rumbles. And then the rain comes down in fat splats on the wind-screen. If it were a movie you would say it was hideously over-scripted and give it a one-star review.

But the rain is not enough to quell the fires.

“Got a tissue?” asks Guest.

“Sure.” I delve in my bag. I’m not surprised. Eddie has thrown up over Guest’s trousers.

“Where are we going?” asks He.

We drive and descend. From the sea-level highway we can see up the valley – the same spot I was looking at but from the opposite direction. Fire blazes in the night.

We end up at Gandia beach. He opts to sleep in the car with Eddie. Guest and I take Rosie and Honey and settle on a bench. Guest sits. I try to stretch out to sleep.

I’ve slept in a few odd places, usually when I was roughing it for camping when I was younger, but I’ve never slept on anything to compete with a slatted bench. No matter which way you turn, something digs in. It is not a good night’s sleep.

I wake at stupid-o-clock in the morning. “You got some funny looks,” says Guest. “I think they thought you were drunk.”

Tempting idea…

“Any trouble?”

“No. Honey growled at them.” Guest reaches down and she rolls over to have her tummy scratched.

Despite the occasion, I’ve gotta smile. There’s something about being growled at by a mastiff that deters the unfriendly.

In fact, the night is quite interesting. Seeing the beach life, the clean-up squad with their machines tidying up the sands for the following day. The late-night revellers. Lovers. Dog walkers by the water. It’s a great spot for people-watching.

A cheese rind moon rises. How far behind can the sun be? The late-nighters turn to early-morningers. Joggers, more dog-walkers, holiday-makers coming out for the coolth.

Six am. He appears. “Let’s go home. See what we find.”

We haul reluctant dogs back into the car and head back for home. As we drive through the dawn, the first aircraft appear, spotters planes we assume, heading for our valley.

As we approach home, everything is fascinatingly normal. To my surprise, the rivers of fire descending the cliffs are exactly where I last saw them. They’ve not moved at all.

We pull up and cramped dogs leap out of the car, barking joyfully at being ‘normal’ again. All is well. Nothing is touched.

An hour later as we head for the bar and breakfast, a small plane dumps water on the area, a plume of red steam boiling up, some fire retardant we assume.

At the bar we find many of the ‘evicted’ ahead of us, often with dogs on leads, enjoying coffee and getting up to date on the news. All is well.

The current news is that some forty homes were ‘damaged’ by the fires, but I have heard no reports of injuries. And as I write this, having had a ‘bit of a nap’ this afternoon, we’re heading out for beer and pizza in the village. If I learn anything new, I’ll let you know.

The short video above was taken by me but the photos are not my own – I didn’t have a camera handy for most of the event. I’ve taken the photos from the local paper: ‘Levante’.