Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Andalucia’ Category

If you’ve read my previous blogs we’re here at Bedrock to get the place ready for the summer – the usual – holes appearing in walls etc. and the plan was to get some paint and cement and start the process early this week.

That was kyboshed when our Spanish-registered car packed in on the way over here. I can’t remember ever being without a car… it’s an interesting experience… not half as bad as I expected but we were beginning to wonder how to get the next set of groceries up the hill (it’s a BIG STEEP HILL) when one of our local friends who’s been talking to the garage in Caravaca De La Cruz for us informed us that it’s a wiring issue (so much for the road-side mechanic and his BATTERY theory) and we can pick it up tomorrow –AND it’s not going to break the bank. We’re so grateful for offers of help we’ve had – nice to have decent neighbours.

Meanwhile it turns out there is still an issue with some paperwork stopping us getting the electricity sorted and so we’re ok as long as we don’t go above 2-3Kw – which means no hot-tub…

On the upside the broadband is working a treat and the weather has been SUPERB – it’s 33c out there as it was yesterday also – BEAUTIFUL sun-bathing weather with a nice breeze to stop you frying.  Maureen is alternating between outside jobs and watching the royal celebrations – I on the other hand have two genes missing – one for watching sport – the other for following the royals – so instead I’m alternating between plugging holes in the walls, doing a spot of programming and buying cheap Chinese crap on Ebay – I managed 30 minutes in a deck-chair and that was it – too many things to do, too little time.

We just found out today that Lorca has a decent shopping centre with an Eroski supermarket so no doubt we’ll be taking a trip there before long. But first… a trip to the local bar for a beer and pizza.

Our June trip to Spain got off to a flying start when the utterly useless and never to be used again Ryan air sent us a refund on our plane tickets, having decided the trip was not worth doing! We quickly rebooked (at additional cost and hassle) with Jet2.com and on Friday we started our long trip to Spain via Edinburgh.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like Edinburgh – it’s a vibrant city with lots to do… but like most cities it has its share of DUMPS and that’s where we found ourselves on Friday night. After a very pleasant drive up the A68 we arrived at our hotel and headed off in search of food before going to see the new and much-anticipated 3D movie "Prometheus".

No matter where we drove the place was a mess and we ended up at a Kebab joint before heading off to the cinema.  The movie was, as you’d expect from a Ridley Scott production, EPIC and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maureen by way of contrast found it a tad gross.. well, with Alien-type movies you do tend to get that, but EXCEEDINGLY well done and something I’ve not seen for a long time, presented some ideas to ponder about the origins of mankind…. all in all excellent.

First thing Saturday morning (like, 5.30am) we headed off to Edinburgh airport and that’s where things really started to go badly – the computers were off so the airport staff were operating in headless-chicken mode, we had the entertainers coming round for friendly chats hoping we would not notice we were in very large queues… so that was the relaxing breakfast out of the way. The plan took off only marginally late and we found ourselves wishing to hell we’d brought noise-reduction headphones as the plane was full of exceedingly noisy babies! Not nice for 3 hours.

Other than the landing – which I’ll bet costs the pilot 3 month’s salary as he slammed the wheels into the ground so hard that passengers were, for a second, somewhat alarmed… apart from that it was as you’d expect, SUPERB weather and a relatively friendly welcome.

Our Spanish car was waiting for us (the one we bought last year) and we set off to visit friends on the coast, but not before filling the car wish shopping from a nearby supermarket. We did notice the car seemed to be less keen to start that normal.

Our friends are on a week’s break at a golfing resort and we popped in for a very pleasant lunch, their apartment overlooking the (massive) resort as you can see in the panorama below. Very calm and peaceful.

And that was fine – we set off mid-afternoon at a leisurely pace for the 2-hour trip to Galera. Less than an hour up the road, the car started to stall as if it were out of fuel. It just kept getting slower and slower, the more I pressed the accelerator the more it slowed down. Eventually we stopped on the hard shoulder right on an overpass and contacted the insurance company who after some translation issues eventually sent someone off to come and have a look. After half an hour of waiting I tried the car again and hey presto it was fine. We set off to see how far we could get before updating the insurance company… and managed a few miles – ending up on the RM-15…. same again – slowing down to a half.

The roadside service eventually turned up at teatime and the guy put his jumpstart leads on our car which then appeared to work. We drove off – only to find the same thing happening within half a mile and thankfully he was following us. He’s convinced the battery is to blame, Maureen and I are more inclined to believe there is a problem with filters as the battery had PLENTY of power to turn the starter motor…  it didn’t help that the repair guy didn’t speak a WORD of English and our Spanish is still rubbish.

And that was that, after many phone calls and semi-decipherable discussions, the car headed off in one direction and a taxi turned up courtesy of the insurance company to take us and our bags to Galera, about 100Km away!

Being the weekend of course there is NO way anyone’s even going to look at the car until Monday so I expect we’ll be stranded here until mid-week – we’ve plenty to do but as some of it involves cement we don’t have, the logical choice would be to enjoy the sun and get the wine out – sadly – we don’t have any of that either.  The plan was to attend to all of that stuff today (Sunday) at nearby Huescar. Our neighbours up here in the mountains have come and gone and so here we are.

To add to the problems, the electricity people appear to have "improved" the electricity as promised however in the process, running the hot tub triggers some kind of reset and so we can’t put the hot-tub on! The upside is, as promised the broadband speed has increased and so now we have faster broadband in Spain than we do at home – and better mobile signals!

Our last day for a short while and the weather is absolutely marvellous, accordingly Maureen and I went off to the lake so she could collect some rocks…

In the process we ended up having lunch at the excellent lakeside cafe, NOT CHEAP I hasten to add but the view is magnificent (and I skipped breakfast and so was GAGGING for something to eat).

That’s where we spent the morning. Some of you looking in here might think I’ve pulled the same trick as the holiday companies with the editor on some of these shots – but I’ve not. There are two types of photo here, panoramas and HDR (to capture the range of dark to light) and that’s about it – cropped and dumped into this blog.. Amazing what you can do with an iPhone, the right software and just a little time and effort.

If I could have stopped here for another week, this morning alone was worth the trip as you’ll see. Enjoy the photos and please do click on them to see larger versions.

And if you want more.. I’ve put the whole series up onto Google Web Albums. Enjoy.

Día de la Tortilla occurs on the Thursday before Lent – and apparently this means everyone goes off into the countryside and eats Spanish omelette in a communal picnic.

Or, put another way, the BARS are closed. We found one bar open thankfully and had a nice drink with some of the Brits.

TODAY (Friday) we went off to the Renault dealer in Huescar in search of a replacement radiator pipe – a simple looking item but guess what – you can’t buy the PIPE, you have to buy the ASSEMBLY – which means replacing a load of kit that works perfectly and shelling out £140 in the process. Thankfully the dealer managed enough English to point us in the direction of duct tape! A trip to the Ferreteria and we’ve a radiator pipe that works as good as new – though it does look a little Heath Robinson. I’ll find some proper pipe somewhere when we get back.

We then went in search of lunch and on the way spotted a procession marching through the town… no need for explanations so here are a bunch of photos… marvellous. Feel free to click on the images for larger versions.

What an interesting day! We left Galera at 9am sharp and headed off to the outskirts of Murcia for a spot of shopping. Murcia is about 2 hours drive East for us and on the way, the temperature rose from just a few degrees to around 12c or so, sunny most of the way but with a little wind – to keep that in perspective we didn’t bother with coats when shopping. First stop Ikea at the Avenida de Juan de Borbón, Murcia.

Our cave gets very dark at night, well, pitch black so I was pleased to find some little adhesive movement sensor lights for the staircase… marvellous little devices which worked out at around 2 Euros each (packs of 2) – amazing value. Maureen bought a table (which no doubt I’ll get landed with assembling today). Next stop the nearby shopping centre and the Chinese junk store and on to the centre itself, somewhat smaller than, say the Gateshead MetroCentre but respectable non-the-less.

The Spanish excel at TV stores and so we ended up in SATURN 2, a massive store with everything from TVs through cameras, PCs through electric heaters. Pride of place in the store was a 100" LCD monitor costing a mere 22,000 Euros!! Needless to say we didn’t buy it.

After lunch, a mediocre affair within the centre, we headed off down to the coast to Torrevieja, about an hour’s drive just to take a look around. The temperature continued to rise but unfortunately the clouds also set in, contrary to weather forecasts. Interesting place, with a mix of absolutely DIRE touristy places on the one hand and on the other, some very up-market hotels and housing areas, well worth a couple of hours.

We had a very interesting walk along the sea front, taking in the view, seeing some VERY expensive yachts, a black submarine and a shipwreck! There was a market but it didn’t look worth investigating. The town smacked of a British tourist dump with lots of stuff in English – which kind of ruins the experience for me.

Around teatime we set off on the 3+ hour journey back home to Galera, expecting the temperatures to drop but not expecting blisteringly cold, almost impassable SNOW – which is what came out of the blue when we got as far as BULAS on the way back… we spent the remainder of the journey following 2 trucks which we could barely see and wondering if we were going to make it back… yet amazingly when we got as far as just outside of our village – it stopped – no sign of snow, rain or… well, anything really. We popped into the local bar for a pint and a pizza to warm up before heading off home for the night.

Quite an eventful day. I’ll leave you with some more photos…

Didn’t get up until around 10am this morning (9am UK time) – with double comforters as it’s a little chilly… I could have quite comfortably stayed there all day… but – we had to go find a plumber to get some repairs done to a burst pipe and so off we went into the village, stopping by Don and Carol’s place to see their pellet heater, a very efficient modern, remote controlled beast. Next stop the village and we managed to get the contact details of a plumber who turned up within the hour to fix the pipe! Job done.

We spent the afternoon doing odd jobs and a spot of reading before heading off to Huescar, encountering a bunch of sheep on the way as you see in the photo above. First stop the Chinese junk store then some groceries before filling the car up for our trip to Murcia tomorrow (to buy a table!!) and now we’re back at the cave, armed with groceries, warm as toast… and about to select a movie from NetFlix to watch. 

I spent part of the afternoon testing the new VPN solution to let us watch the likes of the BBC iPlayer and CatchupTV over here, after a couple of false starts and some amazingly fast technical responses from the HIDEMYASS people, we’re up and running. I checked out TOP GEAR on the iPlayer to make sure it works  – no problem.

So, some travelling tomorrow… quite looking forward to it – guaranteed sunshine and blue skies though it’s unlikely to get TOO much above zero degrees C before lunchtime!