Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Andalucia’ Category

Quite a nice day, Saturday… the weather was sunny but not too hot, BBQ with our neighbours then off we went to Baza in the evening to catch the tail end of the horse show before returning for a mini-BBQ and a relatively early night (and I just got up at 10am!!). The horses were fairly boring but there was a mini-car show inside for Renault and they had their one-person “car” in there (see image) – granted it’s not REALLY a car as there no windows in the side (not much use in Britain then) – and here in Spain you’d end up covered in dust – but novel all the same – oh, it’s electric of course – lift a little cover on the front and plug into the mains! 

We did note however that (at least Renault) cars here are HORRENDOUSLY expensive – which might account for why the lovely modern rural roads are quite often empty!

This morning the weather is very different to anything we’ve seen up to now, it’s quite cool (relatively speaking) at 21c. Amazing what a difference a few days can make. This is more your DIY weather, but not today as we’ve a trip to the coast to take care of after checking the size of breezeblock tiles at Anna’s in town for my next building project.

Blew my first LED light to kingdom come yesterday, testing out one of the new 5w (5 leds) ES mains LED lights in the bedroom to see how it compares to Compact Fluorescent. This time I don’t THINK I can blamed the electricity – I’d left the lamps out in the damp overnight – so a lesson – these things are not waterproof.

Anyway, there was a loud BANG and the circuit breaker tripped.  I pulled the lamp apart to reveal basically a 12v lamp setup with a little power supply in the ES (screw) base which was basically reduced to charcoal. The LEDS themselves are fine in their top heatsink so I’ll find a use for that (solar?) but clearly there had been no attempt at waterproofing the lamps- but dismantled (takes seconds) it’s easy to see that they COULD be made waterproof! Something for another day.

A fine time was had last night, we met up with Alan and Ant at Cueva Cascada and also with fellow Geordie Brian and his wife Maureen – some amazing work on lighting over at Cascada which has given me lots of new ideas for the future. We all had a great time – I spent some time talking to Ant who is Russian – he has one hell of a camera and it shows in his photos… and now I’m sitting here checking out Ebay for lighting.

We had hoped to get to the lake today for a baking but despite being 28c, it’s a little overcast. The lake is quite cool and so it really needs to be 30c+ to get the best out of it.

Maureen has been checking out properties this morning while I’ve been catching up with the email mountain and figuring out some new lighting and solar power ideas. I still have to hook up my remote controlled relay unit for controlling stuff on the mobile phone… amazing how powerful the sun is at sapping enthusiasm for projects.

I reckon I’ll implement some of this stuff when it gets just a little cooler maybe in October. For now we’ve a BBQ then there’s some horse show on later tonight and of course a trip to La Posa at some point.

If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know that some of the roads around here are not owned by the local authorities and so there’s no chance they’ll fix them – yesterday neighbours Dave, Tom and I made a start on a particularly bad section of the road where the centre had lifted up and was getting to the point of being dangerous for cars with low-profile wheels.

So yesterday we started to do some filling work with stones and sand. Easy enough, but for the heat.

We had great plans to finish off our road repairs with concrete last night until I heard Maureen shout up to the neighbours “are you coming down for a drink?” – that was the end of that.

We did get to test the new LED floodlights – or one of them – very good indeed – but that was about it for productivity for the night. I’ll try all three tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a great night but 8.30am this morning I was dragged out of bed to be told that the boys were over to finish the road-works.

Feeling like death warmed up, I reluctantly got dressed and off we went – 2 hours later despite at least me feeling awful, the previously fractured and frankly dangerous section of the top road is now spot-on along with another minor pothole repair further down the hill – as long as no-one drives over the new cement for a day or so. See photo above – the right side of the road was sunk in with a dangerously raised edge along the middle. 4 bags of cement, lots of sand and stones later… perfect.

Plans to go to the lake today were put on hold so I finishing my emails and spent the morning soaking in the Jacuzzi to collect rays before heading off to the Galera hotel for a very nice Hamburgerisa Completa (hamburger with everything but the kitchen sink).The Jacuzzi is now out of bounds as it’s full of chlorine for a quick clean-up. Time to tackle the usual mountain of work and otherwise-related emails.

We had to take a short trip to Huescar today (just a few miles away from our town of Galera) before heading off to the pool… and decided to go to the park and have lunch. I have to say the food was good and they had a watering system spraying a very fine mist into the air – works a TREAT for cooling off.

Next time we’re at the garden centre I’m picking up some of the spray heads! While there we did a spot of shopping and spotted this strange little red car – note no number plate on the front and a tiny one on the back. Weird. I’ll be it’s efficient, though and great for bombing up and down the hills.

The park, incidentally if you’re in the area and have a little time – is great, a marvellous way to waste half an hour or so sheltered from the strong sun.

This morning, my floodlights  turned up from Singapore, just 1.5 weeks after being shipped. Our friendly female post-lady turned up mid-morning and strangely needed to see my passport… I’m sure that’ll not last long when she gets to know us.

The floods are infra-red remote controlled and not only manage the usual range of colours and various sequencing options – but unlike many they also manage decent shades of yellow and white! They look properly waterproofed and they are BRIGHT but of course I can’t do anything in daylight – so watch out for updates this evening!

To add to the morning’s success I figured out why my Internet cameras were not working since the modem upgrade – so they’re now working a treat.

Neighbour, Dave, Tom and I have made our first moves towards fixing the road at the top – we’ve smashed up the raised area and filled with stones then sand – the next step is to put a layer of concrete on the top but even now the road is a lot smoother (probably would not survive a downpour at this point).

At lunchtime, Maureen and I went off to the garage in Huescar to pick up our newly repaired Meganne – and I have to say the cost was lower than we expected… the car is working a treat so now for a short while we have two!

We went off from there to the main park in Huescar for lunch – there’s a little cafe in the middle of it and in an area around the front of the cafe they have a watering system giving off a very fine mist – absolutely marvellous! We had hamburgeresa completa – which in this case meant everything but the kitchen sink – well recommended and a great location.

From there a trip to Huescar pool – absolutely lovely.

To describe yesterday as a “lazy” day would be an understatement. This morning Maureen and our friend Alison headed off in the early hours with our helpful neighbours to Granada to pick up a rental car.

Meanwhile I took the opportunity for a lie-in and then after catching up with the email mountain, to read all about telephone numbers in Spain. I thought I’d found a cheap provider who offered a Spanish number for under £3 a month – turns out the advert was a little misleading – they wanted £10 up front and then a fiver a month. I’ll keep looking. Currently investigating localphone.

Oh, the saga of the broken CAR! Well I contacted ANNA last night and she was to meet us at the dealers in Huescar today at 1pm.

We turned up at 12:55 and no sign of Anna outside? – no, indeed she was already in there interrogating the dealer. She seems to have good sense of humour and certainly speaks good English – the whole thing was wrapped up in minutes – turns out a pair of large retaining clips in the gearbox had broken – they had the whole thing on the ramp open to show us – they broken bits will be replaced tomorrow and we’re likely to get a bill for around £100 – not too bad really considering the alternatives.

After a successful chat with Anna and the mechanics, Maureen, Alison and I went off to El Parador for lunch – Menu Del Dia – very pleasant indeed – nice food, helpful waiter. Armed with our rental car, by tomorrow we should be a 2-car family for a while. And now to find out why I can’t read my cameras on the mobile phone. The perils of fitting a new router. Tonight I need a trip to the Chinese store to get some cable ties then I think we MIGHT just be up to a trip to La Posa.  No sign of my new spotlights.

Our thanks again to neighbours.

Peter Scargill.