Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Andalucia’ Category

What a scorcher, after a pleasant if uneventful trip to the village last night which ended early despite the band starting up in the town square, this morning we headed off to the ORCE market… fairly average – it’s now fairly obvious that the traders travel from area to area as you see the same faces at each market…. but pleasant.

A quick trip to BAZA where I found a battery-operated pump for the new boat  (and a new GREEN laser) and off we went to the lake where we spent the afternoon relaxing in the water and testing out the new blow-up boat.

I’m now sitting at the computer catching up with emails – and I’m roasting – head’s red, legs are red – I reckon I’ll be suffering soon. Still – keeps me occupied instead of stewing about being embarrassed to be British (see riots on TV)

After a lazy Wednesday afternoon in the local pool, we took a trip to the Skips on Thursday (the girl in the photo is a dummy someone conveniently strapped to the entrance) to get rid of our now defunct and replaced dishwasher, then we headed off down to Granada to get some supplies and pick up my sister-in-law Elizabeth from the airport, stopping on the way at a Chinese outlet to pick up a solar car (about an inch square, marvellous – but I’ve not found a flat surface yet to test it out).

On the way back up from Granada we stopped at set of roadside stalls to pick up some pottery (I have to take pictures next week to show you – more items of pottery than you’d believe) followed by a quiet night in.

With Elizabeth staying with us I spent the morning struggling with work stuff and dreaming about nuking tech support after which we spent much of Friday up at lake Negratin, followed by a quiet pizza at the pizza cave restaurant just outside of Huescar. The reason the photos look “wet” is that the staff had just been spraying everything to get rid of the dust of the day, it’s very dry here.

As you can see in the photo above, the lake wasn’t exactly “crowded” (Maureen and Elizabeth on the LEFT, our chairs on the RIGHT) and at around 33 degrees it was an ideal say for a swim.  When we were done we went off to the Chinese store in BAZA and bought a 73” inflatable boat + electric inflation gadget and I’m quite looking forward to sinking that in the next few days. Photos will follow. We inflated it last night to test it out and it looks solid – of course that’s started Maureen off looking on EBay for a proper inflatable with electric motor – because we’d both dearly love to go exploring around the far end of the lake and much of it is not accessible by road.

Don’t forget to click the images if you want to see much larger originals. Today we went to Velez Rubio and Velez Blanco –(pronounce that “VELETH”) there’s a market on and of course we had to take Elizabeth to go looking at ruins! Finished the trip with a visit to Orce pool (no boat as the car power supply doesn’t have enough power to run the pump) and we’re back now to cool off and I’m going to get some work done.

The Orce market was ok – could have been a little more exciting – but the air was really nice and warm and so it was worth the trip. (Don’t forget to click on these images if you want to view larger originals)

Some old cars on view, lots of stalls selling everything from soaps from France (everyone seems to sell the same ones – even in France – it’s nearly always the Provencal soaps) to locally-produced wicker baskets, jewellery.. you know… market stuff.  Best of the lot however are the many and varied herbs on sale claiming to cure everything from cancer to diabetes.. not sure how I feel about that as clearly they DON’T but then LORDES gets the crowds in as well and clearly that doesn’t perform miracle cures either…  for my own purposes I assume they’re just being light-hearted about this…

After that we cleared off to the local Pizza place in Galera for a few quiet drinks and finished the night off in the Jacuzzi (which is currently cold – strange you may say, well ,it was still 30c outside when it turned dark!!) 

Today I’ve spent most of the day glued to the screen learning how to program Facebook Apps and writing reports, Maureen is glued to the TV, I’ve fixed the nodding solar Queen (again, it keeps getting dropped)… and neighbour Richard is back and we’ve agreed that this Wednesday night we’ll take our shovel and cement and fill in a couple of holes in the road (well, someone has to do it and there’s no-one else here!) and tonight we’ve been invited to a local BBQ – I’ll take the camera.

Oh and people keep asking where we are.. I keep saying north of Granada which is not strictly correct. Here’s Orce in respect to Galera and Huescar.

So in the map below, Galera is highlighted with the A symbol, Granada is lower left, Murcia upper right… maps clearly are copyright Google!  Tomorrow I think a trip to Cullar pool which we’ve just found out about! (directly down from Galera in photo below)

With only days to go, the new Habland broadband is working a treat – and my new iPhone software gives me a lot more control over the cameras, so all’s well in Spain and I’m bringing new cameras with me as the existing ones have little coloured marks no doubt due to being cheap Chinese rubbish!

Weather here in the UK is actually startlingly good for a change – no less than 22 degrees outside – a far cry from 35C which I believe it’s going to be this weekend in Galera – just the job for swimming.

Boatload of meetings then we start our long journey late in the week. Can’t wait…

We got to the Baza market today, I have to say I’ve seen it larger than it was today… but Maureen managed to get some cloth for curtains so she’s happy – we then went off to the Garden Centre and that was more productive with some new plants bought.

The place is still extremely expensive and for the life of me I could not find any weedkiller other than a single small bottle at £20 (which I didn’t buy) but Maureen’s happy as she has new plants to put around our wall.

After a fairly cool start it’s now what you might describe as roasting outside – at least in the sun (not so in the shade).  I managed to get an hour or so in the sun before I got too hot and came in to do the blog and check for new toys for the iPad.  Tomorrow we get the lamps fitted to the gatepost and decide what the gate will look like – and really that’s about it – nothing else is new. Still no-one out here so it’s been incredibly quiet – which is absolutely fine. 

It is of course not warm enough now to go swimming in the various pools and lakes and we’ve drained the hot-tub for the year. We’ll probably start that up again in May as last May was quite hot.

What a day it’s been today, 20c in the shade and non-stop sunshine which made it feel a LOT hotter – if only every day could be like that. We’ve been over to BAZA for a spot of shopping and lunch at a local Chinese who offer menu delights such as “Sour and Hot Soap” and “Fried Rice with Trhee Delights”.  The mind boggles…but at 5 euros for the lunchtime menu comprising 3 courses – it really was quite nice (main drive into BAZA for those interested, not the shiny new Chinese on the left, the older one further up)  but first we stopped off at the lighting store who had a genuine 50% off sale to get white lamps for our new gate posts… they’re BIG – but they look good.

After lunch we picked up one of those little plug-in FM wireless transmitters for the mobile phone to let you pick up the audio on the car radio – I have this facility back at home but that’s not much use in a rental car. Last night I downloaded all 64 episodes of “Coffee Break Spanish” podcasts which are really quite interesting other than taking up over a gigabyte of space – and so we started on that course in the car on the way to the garden centre (an aborted trip as we arrived at 2.15pm, figured they opened at 3pm and so went on a trip… turns out they didn’t open till 4pm – we’ll try again tomorrow. But the weather was so nice it didn’t matter.

On our journey into the countryside, something you don’t see every 5 minutes…  a field full of CD’s tied to sticks to scare off the birds.

In bright sunlight they look absolutely brilliant but they didn’t photograph too well. When we got back to the garden centre the entrance to the main building was closed, we hung around a little while taking photos of trees and plants – then cleared off. The sun is failing now as it’s after 6pm but it’s still very bright out there – hopefully tomorrow will be another lovely day. A quiet night in I think…