My online toolbox

There are millions of websites that offer useful stuff to the learner and I spent a lot of time looking through them before settling on the ones I now use. This site was very helpful in finding good sites.

The sites I use most are these:-
For machine translation, there is of course Google Translate but a better option most of the time is Span¡shD!ct  which offers not only translation but a huge dictionary and also grammar and lessons should they be required. WordReference is a site with a dictionary that has a large number of example phrases showing how words are used.

Linguee is a site offering searchable human translations of a vast number of words, phrases and sentences and for many purposes it is more useful than a simple dictionary or machine translation.

To practice speaking and listening, I joined italki which offers both professional teachers and also facilitates finding language exchange partners. It is through this site that I have made a number of Spanish friends. I have also recently joined Verbling where you can join classes with several people at the same time

About this blog/Sobre este blog

Two holidays spent riding a motorcycle in the Picos de Europa in northern Spain have shown me what a wonderful area it is for a motorcyclist and have made me determined to to do more riding in Spain and also to see more of the country. Having packed and failed to use a Spanish phrase book on my two trips to the Picos, I decided that the only thing to do was to try and learn the language and leave the phrasebook at home.

So, since August 2012, I have been using a variety of online resources to study Spanish. In the process, apart from what little Spanish I have picked up, I have been incredibly fortunate in having got to know some lovely people as friends. The Internet has changed all our lives in many ways but making new friends  is surely one of the very best things to come of it.

I am planning to spend the month of June riding around Spain and now with a month to go before I set off, I created this blog, primarily as place to put photos and things related to my trip including the travails and triumphs involved in learning a new language at an age when I might be expected to have trouble remembering my mother tongue.


Gracias a dos vacaciones que he pasado montando en una moto por los Picos de Europa en el norte de España, descubrí que es una zona maravillosa para el motero y que me han decidido dar más paseos en moto en España y también para ver más del país. En estos viajes, había embalado pero no usé un libro de frases españoles. Por lo tanto, decidí que lo único era intentar aprender el idioma y dejar en casa el libro.

Así que, después de agosto 2012, he estado usando una variedad de recursos en línea para estudiar el español. En el proceso, aparte del poco español que he recogido, he tenido suerte increíblemente que conocer a algunas personas encantadoras como amigos. Internet ha cambiado todas nuestras vidas de muchas maneras pero haciendo nuevos amigos es sin duda una de las mejores cosas que vienen de la misma.

Estoy planeando pasar el mes de junio en España y ahora con un mes antes de que saliera, he creado este blog, principalmente como lugar para poner fotos y cosas relacionadas con mi viaje, incluidas las tribulaciones y triunfos involucrados en aprender un nuevo idioma a una edad cuando podría esperarse a tener dificultades para recordar de mi lengua materna.