Bedrock

After what seemed like a great start to the summer this April, the UK (probably apart from London as usual) quickly descended back into rain and freezing cold. It seems it’s been that way forever but I do remember decent British summers way back in my youth… or maybe I just didn’t know the difference.

On Friday afternoon we headed up to Ellingham to stay with friends Aidan and Helen on our way up to Edinburgh airport. Why Edinburgh? Well, now that Sleazyjet have abandoned the Newcastle to Murcia run the prices have predictably shot through the roof.

Having a few drinks on Friday night seemed like a good idea at the time but at 3.30am Saturday morning having had not much more than 4 hours sleep, it seemed much less sensible as we headed up to Edinburgh for our flight, a somewhat-under 2 hour drive.

Arriving at Edinburgh airport we dumped our car and boarded the 7.30am Jet 2 plane to Murcia without any hassles at all (which in itself is probably a first) and the rest is a haze as I immediately fell asleep…

The second the plane doors opened we knew we were back in Spain… warm air, new paintjob at the airport, smiling faces – it might as well have been a different planet. Even the security guys at the airport were in a good mood, as Maureen went off to her separate lane for aliens (having an American, not British passport) the guy was keen to point out she could in future just come in with me (mind you on the way back out the people said he’d given her bum advice and insisted on her signing the forums just in case she turned out to be a terrorist.

With temperatures around 25c and sunny we headed firstly off to the Chinese store in St Javier (who now have 45w compact fluorescents for £4 – equivalent to 225w old-school lamps), then to Eroski for the groceries and a trip around the phone shops for new phone covers before heading off to Lorca to see the effects of the recent earthquake.

We must have missed the point at Lorca because the town is a hell of a lot bigger than the area we drove through but we did spot the odd multi-storey building with the bottom storey missing, replaced with steel girders hastily fashioned to prop up the rest of the building.

We arrived at the cave on Saturday night, driving through brilliant sunshine for much of the trip but with worrying storms brewing as we approached our village. There was even a short spell of hailstones or what sounded like them but the whole thing was over in an hour and the sun came back out.

Sunday morning we awoke to excellent sunshine and by early afternoon the temperature got up to 28 degrees outside, 22 degrees inside. Just about ideal I’d say… we filled the pool and went off for a late Sunday lunch while contemplating the weeds outside our property… (see photo).

By Wednesday afternoon the folly of leaving the laptop at home was already becoming apparent.  I certainly didn’t mind the partial freedom from work email and iPad is the best thing on the planet for consuming media but it is PANTS for writing blogs. I ended up using it to Logmein to my PC at home to use  the Microsoft writer as “Blogsy”, just about the only blog writer for the iPad, isn’t worth a light.. that is, until the power went off back home.

The bad news for the week is that had to so some work on the bedroom ceiling thanks to dodgy builders and repairs to the new gateposts, again just simple misuse of materials as I’m coming to realise. We also spent a bomb on cementing up the side of the hill above our place. The GOOD news is we also signed up with a much cheaper Internet provider who not only charge less but also give us a little more speed.

Location:Galera, Spain

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