Our Spanish Adventure – Part Six

When we moved to Spain in 2006 I knew that most of our leisure time would be taken up with hill walking and wargaming.  I did not realise that I would find a third interest which would take up just as much time as the other two.

I cannot remember even reading a blog before I retired, let alone writing one.  Nor can I remember when I did discover them, but I know it was after we moved to Spain.   I suspect that I found them through TMP.

I have always been one of those strange people who keep a daily diary.   I also used to make an album of holiday photographs.   So it is not surprising that blogging appealed to me.

I believe Napoleonic Wargaming was the first blog I wrote.  The first entry was May 2009 and the aim was to write one entry a week about all aspects of my wargaming activities.   I have kept to that objective, and have posted at least one a week since then.  I kept an index of each subject by using the Labels function.   I always wanted them to be a source of reference, and have continued to do so with all of my blogs.

About the same time I started Jan and Paul in Spain.  This was to be a record of our life in Spain and our regular hill walking.  It was intended for friends and family in the UK, but quickly became popular with nor only our walking group and also walkers throughout the world.   I have one blog for each year and usually post twice a week during the walking season.   Pretty well every walk we have done in Spain since 2006 is recorded in words and photos.   Each blog has an index and it is quite frightening to compare the same walk over the years, and to see how everyone has aged.

The third major blog was my 1813 Campaign Diary.   Started in April 2009 it is a series of blogs covering the countless phases of the campaign.  It would be difficult to count the number of posts over the many blogs, but on average I have posted about 3-4 time a week.

The fourth major blog was Walking Napoleonic Battlefields, also started in 2009.   Over a period of years Jan and I had spent summer holidays walking most of the major Napoleonic battlefields.   I had compiled an album of each holiday and I used these to write a blog about each holiday.   Again they are indexed so that I can find each individual battlefield visit.   I wrote the last entry in 2011, but still get 10-20 visits each week.

These are the major blogs, but I have also written a number of minor ones

Wargames in Spain was a collection of the early wargames we played when we first moved here.   It was also started in May 2009, but covered wargames played over the previous three years.   It lasted less than a year and was replaced by my 1813 campaign blog.

Wellington’s Battles recorded my wargames of his battles.   Started in November 2009 and the last entry May 2012, there were only 14 battles fought.  I used maps and OOB researched for our battlefield visits to plan each wargame.

And finally Napoleonic Wargame Rules and Campaign Rules.   Both started in May 2009 so that anyone could follow my campaign diary blog.   They both received some interest, but really came into their own when I converted my solo campaign to PBEM in September 2009.   The Wargame Rules still receive 10-20 visits each week.

I am really surprised how involved I have become in writing the various blogs.   I am a creature of habit, and always have been.  I have always enjoyed writing my diaries, so I am a natural for writing blogs.  I have always done them for my own enjoyment, but have been greatly encouraged by the comments I receive, and by noting the number of visitors weekly and monthly.   As I write, this blog has had 191950 individual visitors over the years, and has 104 followers.   I would like to thank you all for following my journey and assure you that knowing someone out there reads what I write has been a great encouragement to continue to do so.

And that is enough of my Spanish Adventure, at least for the present.  Next week I will look for something more current to post about.