Bedrock

Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

After enjoying the fireworks over the weekend in Galera, yesterday (Monday) I did as sadly life insists I must – I got lots of business done – but today we headed off to the coast. We started our trip in Galera, drove through through Orce, then (the somewhat deserted) Maria, Velez-Blanco, Velez-Rubio and onto the coast.

We had a brief trip through Lorca where I managed to get a somewhat half-hearted (but free) repair to my specs – before heading off through Aguilas and on through San Juan de Los Terreros to ultimately reach Cuevas e Almanzora (Dennis if you’re looking in we didn’t have your phone number and assuming Angie is in the UK) before ultimately heading back, stopping briefly at Velez Rubio to show Marsha the castle (which was closed). Along the coast there are some incredible variations in architecture – WELL worth seeing – some of this stuff is worth forcing down the throats of Britain’s somewhat lack-lustre building designers (though I’d not want our lot to copy the building practices).

In the process we wandered around the back of Vera – and some of the natural sights there are fabulous – fruits I’ve only ever seen in supermarkets or on TV! We just picked roads at random – on the assumption that worse-case the sat-nav would get us out of a mess – which it did.

We finished the early evening with a trip to the Galera Hotel before coming home (to find no post – again). The girls are watching a movie, I’m doing the blog.

Still watching TV awaiting more images from the Mars explorer – the most impressive thing the human race has ever landed on another planet. Meanwhile Spain has it’s own impressive sights.. album update here..

Tomorrow more important stuff to do – but Thursday, we’re back a the coast for some sunbathing!

We’re onto our second full weekend and it looks like the weather is going to hold. Friday night we went off to the pizza cave up the Fuente Caliente turnoff for a pizza. The place doesn’t show up on the map but it’s just south of the A-4302  turn-off to Huescar, under the motorway and on up past the pool to Huescar, it’s on your left 2/3rds the way up – looks like a deserted Western movie set.

We arrived early and were the first in which was nice… sun setting, 32c, ice-cold coke.. what more could you want?

After a very nice evening, having overdone it the night before, we retired early and hence first thing Saturday morning, the girls walked down to the village for coffee and toast+tomato+olive oil. I followed shortly thereafter in the car (I started the morning off watching “District 9” on the tablet and checking the email for even more urgent stuff) but not before dumping the venerable and much-loved S600 printer in the skip!

After breakfast we had a wander around town to get some essentials and came back to freshen up and so I could do some blogging and a little research. Saturday night we went down town Galera and enjoyed a chat with friends. Today (Sunday) we’ve been down to the Galera pool for the first time – which apart from being a little derelict (the pool is great but they’ve let parts of the grounds go to seed) and some particularly noisy children was very pleasant.

We came home to a nice email from our Internet service provider who has moved us onto a quieter link as we were getting massive download variations – which is nice – and tonight the plan is to go to the old Orce market. Tomorrow I have lots of FSB work to catch up on and I’m hoping my new iPhone replacement lens and back will turn up as there’s a very slight scratch on the current one….  we’ve promised ourselves that on Tuesday we’ll head off to the proper beach over Aquilas area to the South-East for a few hours.

After a very warm morning at the Huescar market, the girls decided to stop in for the evening, but not before dropping me off at the town centre for a night with the British locals – the famed “G7” evening.

As it happens I didn’t manage to crawl back up the hill until something like 2:30am in the morning after a very entertaining evening solving most of the world’s problems – as you do.

The image above was taken using the iPhone in night vision software while propped up against a wall (and yes, that’s the moon). The panorama above was created with PhotoSynth, one of Microsoft’s better offerings recently.

Another day with no post – and I found out today that my friend Aidan in the UK sent me a test envelope LAST THURSDAY – is it any wonder the Spanish economy is in the state it is – I ordered some small items from the UK and China about a week ago and nothing – not a thing has turned up – yet we have in the past had post turn up here so it’s not as if they don’t know we’re here.

After a very busy day yesterday which ended up with an early night, we headed off to the Huescar market this morning (Thursday) – had our cafe con leche and Churros and did a little shopping – after a LED flood-lamp blew up last night I looked in vain to find one in Huescar, seems no-one does them so we’ll have to manage until our next trip to a larger town (no shortage in San Javier but that’s 2 hours away). For those looking in for the first time, the Huescar market happens every Thursday and is a relatively large market with fruit and veg, clothing, shoes, kitchen stuff and more – no-where near as good as the better French markets but a nice trip out for the morning. Takes about an hour at most to get from one end to the other and back.

This afternoon we spent indoors as it was a TAD HOT out there – 37c (98F) and I’ve been doing a little research on Android media players. We bought a car radio for the car here with USB connector for music and it’s basically useless with only limited support for folders – so I came to the conclusion the best way would be to put the music on Maureen’s HTC ONE X phone with a suitable player and feed that to the car radio. That is now all done with thousands of tracks on the phone ready to go. Ultimately I picked GoneMad Music player for the phone.

Right now they’re busy setting up lights and sets in the village for the August festivities and we’ve grabbed a list of events from the town hall.  Still awaiting first proof that the posty actually delivers post here in the mountains!

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…