Daytrip to Denia

The Margravina and I had a trip to Spain recently and on her birthday she wanted to go to the town of Denia (in the Province of Alicante, just south of the border of the Province of Valencia). Where specifically do you want to go to says I, it's your day darling*. Let's start with the castle says she. OK, anything for you my love. Well it was more like a treat for me.

* a word I don't think I've ever used except in jest. 

We did have a wander around the town afterwards, but I won't bore you with pics. I'll justify the following photo on the grounds it is military history.

View from the town square. The Council Tower in the middle. It's part of the lower wall of the castle.

Before we climbed the hill to the castle we came across this display about air raid shelters dating to the SCW.

And this tunnel through the hill on which the castle stood was one of them.

Detail from the above poster.

I like this type of poster. Would you call it Naive Art?

Inside the castle we went inside the Council Tower and found this exhibition. The Moriscos were descendants of Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Which just goes to show, you cannot fend off a tiger by giving it a scrap of meat. 

Apologies I can't remember who this chap was.

Still in the Council Tower: a display of arms and armour from the period of the Expulsion (1609-14)

Can't not have Morions. There were a few slightly different styles on display.

The business end of a halberd.

Various breast plates (Guardapits) and a backplate.

18th C book on the history of Algiers (Argel).

Plan for the redevelopment of the castle.

Various views from the wall.

Ah ha! We get to the WSS. Memorial to the defenders of "the Valencian laws and privileges", appropriately written in the Valencian language. This region, along with Catalonia, was a stronghold of support for the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne. The Bourbons were eventually successful in this, 2nd siege, of the town.

View down on the ravelin 

A reminder that Denia is a port. Above is a ferry arriving from Ibiza.

Montgó which dominates the town.

Inside the above gate, another image of the Expulsion of the Moriscos. Apparently the process was carried out most thoroughly in the Kingdom of Valencia and it led to the depopulation of much of the countryside and economic collapse of agriculture. This probably didn't help the tax base of Spain when hostilities with the rebellious Dutch recommenced in 1621.

Another reference to the siege in 1708. A street named after the breach in the walls. Again in the Valencian language. "Bretxa" is pronounced "Bretcha".

I picked up a pack of playing cards in one of the ubiquitous "Chinese Bazaars" which each town seems to have a number of. You can buy almost anything from these places.

Literally the Clubs suit!

Here's a snapshot history of Denia. https://deniavacation.es/denia-history/

Flagging Efforts

I thought by now I would have made good progress on applying the paper flags that I'd bought for the French SYW army. Two problems scuppered my plan.

(1) The heads on most of the standard bearers are moulded to the flags.  Even if I were to cut away the flags here would be no room to fix the whole flag to the pole. I tried cutting away part of a flag, to fit around the head, only to hit issue:

(2) The things are just too flaming fiddly.

Ah, a cynic might add, that's a clever way to knock one of the items off the list! I'm not above clutching at such expedients, however, the French army's flags would still be bare. A clever person (I think it might have been Neil) said some while back that I could leave the flags white and say they are the colonel's colour - a lot of French regiments had colonel's colours with white crosses on white backgrounds*. Maybe all. I kid you not. 

* Here's some evidence.

That's a clever idea, and I might have done that (painting as thin a line as I can manage to hint at the shape of the cross). But that is not very satisfying. Where there's two flags on a unit that is what I shall do, but otherwise I'll look for some relatively easily paintable flag types. I rarely deploy regiments as their 'proper selves' as I can't readily identify what is what.

That plan will be put on hold for a while as Real Life is preventing that this week. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this picture of the Regiment d'Eu during a winter campaign high in the Hunsrück mountains, led by the colonel's colour party.

By poplar demand....

....or not, I present the finished poplars. These stand about 4cm tall, so 6 or 7 times the wee figures they're meant for. So in scale as mature trees. I'd prefer them a bit smaller. I stuck magnets onto the bases for storage tonight. It was a bit late to do a parade shot of the Piedmontese army marching in the shade.

Not totally happy with the colour, but I went with what I had in the paint box. Couple of different shades of green dry-ish brushed on black undercoat. Plus a couple of other odd colours to lighten them up a little. I've gone easy on the flock as they going to be primarily along road edges. Just enough to disguise the round metal bases and bit of 'verge'.

Oh, and I dabbed various dull shades on the 6mm civilians I had undercoated ages ago, and slapped some appropriate colour on the 10mm sheep and pack animals.

So that's tasks 1-7 off the list, and 11, 15, 16 and 17 on the way. Next up on the list (#8) is the French flags. This looks like a long, tedious job. Dozens of flags to cut out and stick in place. Not rocket surgery, but fiddly. Activity on the hobby front is a bit slow as I have some Real Life (non-serious) things taking up time at the moment. I'll be fairly chuffed if I can get the flags done this week.

Greeks & Persians re-basing completed

One of the medium sized jobs on my list has now been ticked off. Granted I have some light infantry left over, but they're in the spares box. Also, there's a broken chariot. I might see if I can mend it or use it as battlefield detritus. But I'm declaring this job done. 👌

Here they all are in their new permanent box. Persians above/left of the blue line. Greeks below/right.

I'm told that the poplar trees I ordered will be delivered by the Royal Mail to my neighbour's house on Monday so I can get cracking on them. That's doable this week if they arrive at the right place. Maybe even get the French flags done, or at least started.

Update: the trees arrived and have been prepped and undercoated. Now to research what shades I need to paint them.

I've failed to get the toys on the table. But that's task 9. 😎

Tentative Order	Job
1	Finish river pieces
2	Check stock of magnetic paper and bases
4	Paint houses
3	Order storage boxes
5	Paint walls
6	Paint and base trees
7	Rebase Greeks and Persians
8	Flag SYW figures (French priority)
9	Try Alala!
10	Try Siege Works rules
11	Paint wagons and gun teams
12	Decide what to do with SYW odds and sods
13	Paint petard crews etc
14	Prepare New Year Campaign
15	Paint sheep
16	Paint pack animals
17	Paint villagers (6 and 10mm)
18	Make fortress
19	Ottoman painting guide
20	Order Irregular Ottoman army
21	Paint Ottomans
22	Run ECW siege campaign
23	Make AWI boats
24	Maybe rebase some Romans
25	Build & paint sailing ships

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

After August's "Do Not Adjust Your TV Set" moment and September's Tuesday Wednesday Happy Jaze headline*, the metaphorical TVs in Grimsby, and its diaspora, were displaying the "Normal Service Has Been Resumed" message last night.

* For our American viewers, 'Wednesday' refers to Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. The game was played on a Tuesday.

A tanking by the Bees of Brentford was only to be expected. The idea of going all the way to the final, qualifying for Europe, and away trips to Almaty and Košice, were just the dreams of a deranged mind. Mine.

Today's chip wrapper.

But there was no crying into the beer. And the outcome led to a more wide-ranging conversation in the London pub afterwards than would have been the case if the improbable had happened. One old geezer (i.e. me) reminisced about the early days of Channel 4, and this little beaut of a film (which I watched again this evening on Prime).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084459/