Bedrock

Not too many updates in here recently, sorry about that – we’ve spent the past 4 months working on our new home in Galera. OUR FIRST HOME IN SPAIN SHOWN HERE – Bedrock – served it’s purpose from 2008 until the end of 2025, firstly for holidays in it’s most basic form to it’s final development a few years ago when we moved to Galera “permanently”.

When we moved into Bedrock it was just a cave, no garden, no wall, no gate… it didn’t take us long to make it our own, above you see our first pergola and the hot tub imported from the UK, necessary because of the severe summer morning heat here in Galera…. we simply could not sit outside in the sun for breakfast in our new holiday home without the shelter of a pergola….

As time went on we got more and more ambitious… the second pergola is shown here…

And finally, Bedrock in it’s ultimate version, seen here below at night internally and then externally in daytime 2021 with the hot tub replaced by our new pool.

By 2025, Maureen was yearning for a new project and in December 2025 we looked over at Calle Jaen (the local council calls it Calle Cordoba), an old, pretty much abandoned property which had not been lived in for 6 years and had never been given proper mains electricity.

Vast in size compared to Bedrock, the property needed immense amounts of work and in January 2026 we took the plunge and moved in – no water, no electricity – just weeds and the most horrendous taste in paint and decorations.

By mid-January 2026 we had started cleaning up the place, getting some of the basics up and running, we bought our first Lithium power supply and we replaced countless (mainly broken) 100w filament lights with modern LED lights so we could find our way around… lampshades are still a work in progress as I write this…

The cave came complete with a massive open fire which seemed wonderful until the first powerful winter winds shattered that illusion….

Next came the gas fire and countless Spanish shopping trips for furniture..

Note the gas fire running flat out to save us from freezing to death…. then came our first mistake, a massive, powerful generator able to power anything in the house yet unable to charge a simple battery pack – the Genergy 5500W unit was powerful, noisy and not cheap… and that’s when we started learning..

It all seems obvious by now but having never lived off-grid, we had no idea that there are TWO types of generators, one for builders etc. to power heavy duty kit like welders, and other high power tools and then there’s the “invertor” type for charging batteries and general domestic use. Ours was the former.

Then came what seemed like the answer, a Chinese “Invertor” generator… for the first day this changed everything… instead of running flat out constantly with the resultant horrendous consumption of petrol, the MaxPeedingrods unit (below) consumed fuel as needed and charged our battery no problem…. for the first day.

Then it packed in. It turns out it had a faulty coil. We got our refund and started all over again. This time we bought another Genergy unit but this time the right one for the job – 4.6KW of smooth 230v power output.

In the meantime we bought a gas cooker as the one that came with the house, like every other appliance and almost all of the remaining fittings and decorations – was complete and mainly broken rubbish. We’re still using the new gas hob in April and getting to like it.

Meanwhile we had/have our new, smaller, quieter and more efficient generator, again from Genergy – the Feroe 4600W which turned out to be a good purchase from a leading company… and we put that and the power unit out in the garage (with ventilation).

An early photo here on the left – the generator runs for a couple of hours or so a day and together with our battery pack and the loan of a similar battery from a friend – and with our first solar panel in place and a second one coming soon (with the hope of real electricity in the coming month or so) we’re starting to get somewhere – that and the improved weather in April has helped immensely.

Were I to start all over again I’d have bought a battery 3 times the capacity of the one we have but hey – you learn as you go along and the larger units are obscenely expensive.

As well as a second battery we also have the loan of some travel solar cells and on a sunny day can generate enough electricity to power just about everything except our washing machine and drier, the latter needing over 3KW to run… thankfully the weather is holding and we can dry everything in the sun 🙂

As we reach the end of April 2026, things are starting to come together – 3 functional bedrooms, 2 functional bathrooms, a functional kitchen, semi-working office (was a 4th bedroom) and of course the living room complete with pellet burner (with teething issues but generally superb and which we’ll probably not need now until autumn). The gas fire should hopefully soon be retired.

A work in progress – yes and with several more months to go before it’ll be done… but what looked at first impossible is at least now do-able. We have great views and the potential for a great outside.

The image you see on the right is representative but has had the pool and firepit added by AI and is currently a construction site – the pool base is being built as I write this, the firepit has yet to be started… the outside lights are up and running with more to come when I can honestly say they are running on free energy.

We’ve worked very hard on this since the end of 2025, cramming in the odd short break including a Christmas trip to the UK to visit relatives and see the superb Christmas lighting in Newcastle, ending 2025 back in Spain – in Mojacar with their spectacular Christmas lighting, then a trip to Telford UK for our friends wedding, back to Spain and the spectacular Aquilas winter festival then a Tina Turner Tribute in Benidorm and finally back to the grind here in our new base in Galera.

Early May I’ll be working on the cave (wiring, painting etc.) while Maureen takes another short UK trip – all in, a very busy time. And they call this retirement…