More on hot beverages

I don't long for marmite or pork pies. There's plenty of food and drink to be had here. There is, though, one "English" thing that I could not do without - tea.

Fortunately for us one of the big supermarket chains, Mercadona, carries Tetley tea in each and every one of its stores. Lots of the other supermarkets sell tea where there is a Brit population but we are a bit thin on the ground here so no tea in Eroski or Carrefour.

Amazingly we managed to run out of tea bags yesterday and, of course, it was a Bank Holiday with most shops closed. We were lucky though, Ciudad Rodrigo has a tourist trade and one of the things that modern tourism spawns in places like this is speciality food shops. You know the sort of thing: cheeses in muslin bags, honey jars with gingham cloth lids, local cakes in separate cellophane packs and strange herbal teas. On one of the shelves in one of the shops there was one old and dusty box of 25 Hornimans tea bags.

Now Spanish tea, even when it's made properly, as distinct from the barbarous methods that native Spaniards normally use, is not good. As Maggie said "Well, it tastes a bit better than plain hot water". But it will see us through to the shops opening on Monday.