Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Fortuna’ Category

Thursday began with a walk down to Galera village to pick up the mail. My order of button cell batteries turned up from China so the colour-change party glasses are now restored to their former glory.

We then spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon driving cross-country to Fortuna, somewhat North of Murcia to visit our friends Dave and Mary who have a very nice house on the outskirts (somewhat opposite the interestingly-name Bombay Indian Restaurant which didn’t smell at all Indian) and so it was that we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in their pool before heading off along with a couple of their friends Tony and Mo for dinner.

The Menu Del Noches at restaurant La Puerta Grande (which is just off the main road to Fortuna) at 12 Euros for a 5-course day or evening meal including beer and wine, is not to be sneezed at (closed Mondays)! Very nice indeed and apparently the restaurant is a popular haunt. We met some friendly Dutch folks there and generally had a great time.

After a somewhat excessive amount of alcohol thanks to the all-inclusive pricing and an early start, we returned to a warm (maybe 28c) sunny starlit night and straight back into their pool for a hilarious time where we spent the rest of the night rolling about laughing, while (for reasons that escape me now) competing for who could do the best Essex accents (hence the blog title). Very entertaining, girlfriend!

Friday morning, or more accurately late Friday morning with the temperature in the upper 30s, our hosts prepared a 2pm BBQ – if they felt as bad as I did I have the utmost admiration as I’d have been just as happy to sleep the day away but with some excellent grub consumed I was back in the pool as right as rain. We met some more great neighbours but had to leave mid-afternoon in order to head off to San Javier for a planned airport pick-up and supply refresh.

Maureen and I set off for Murcia and Ikea in the search of various items – we got to Murcia Ikea and found the nearby Chinese store which sadly wasn’t a patch on the one in San Javier and so after a brief check which saw Maureen buying more yard-art, off we went to San Javier -  all of this of course was supposed to be on the way to pick up friend Alison at the airport but as we got nearer to arrival time, it became apparent via a text message that we had the day wrong. Ah, well.

So we ‘re back again on Sunday for a re-try! It’s 9.30am Saturday, Maureen’s still fast asleep – I don’t see a lot happening today… time to catch up with the emails. The photo on the right I could not resist taking – something for sale at Eroski – I wasn’t about to investigate any further with a title like that.

A quiet day yesterday, we’d planned a trip to the lake (holiday, all the shops were shut) but people turned up and we ended up chatting then sitting watching the scum known as “accident insurance companies” on the TV. Meanwhile I’ve been having a play with black plastic pipe coiled up to see how quickly or otherwise it heats up water.  It does – nearly burned myself! I reckon 100ft of black pipe on a simple black corrugated plate would give us all the hot water we need. We have a bath here but generally don’t use it as it’s a little small, so showers are the main reason we have hot water and they don’t use a lot. I reckon feeding the cold water into the tank VIA 100ft or so of coiled pipe as above would preheat so much of the water, we’d really use very little electricity to heat the tank. Simple solution for a simple life!

Meanwhile, after being warned by friends last night while enjoying their company at LA POSA,  that someone over the hill is competing for most-fancy-lit-cave with a set of colour-changers on their wall, last night we took a look over the hill and sure enough. Well, we CAN’T be having THAT, so I’ve ordered a full set of high-power state of the art colour changing LED floods – give it a couple of weeks and you’ll be able to see the place from MOROCCO! I’ve already made a couple of changes but I need outdoor sockets which I’ll get tomorrow.

For now, a nice lazy trip to Fortuna for tonight, then tomorrow we’re off from there to pick up our friend Alison at San Javier (Murcia Airport) and of course fitting in a trip to the Chinese junk store therein.

Another lovely day for it – temperatures in the mid-30s (again).