Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Galera’ Category

Not a bar we normally visit, Cafe El Cruce is on the edge of Galera and the atmosphere in there has recently improved as you can probably see in the panorama below.

Meanwhile in-between the odd (careful) day-trip out with various friends in the scorching summer heat including the odd rip to the one still-available lake in the area (thanks, Covid and those who help spread it), Maureen has been working on the house and garden and I’ve been upgrading our home control. Too hot in August to do much physical work outside.

Electronics growing on trees in the garden 🙂 – I’ve been writing lots of reviews during these restrictive times – no chance of getting bored here.

Below, slightly out of date panorama as we’ve had the broadband dish moved to free up wall space on the main building (left).

How well I remember the last of the Spanish sunsets of 2019, before we headed off back to the British rain in October.  The weather prospects for the Northeast of England in October were as usual, not good and have remained poor since. That Spanish summer (aside from the odd flood and scorching hot August) was special for us. When we first came to Galera many years ago, who could have thought we’d come to think of the area as home.

In all that time, many have come and gone but we’ve stayed and made friends along the way. In our absence we have great neighbours and trustworthy cameras, so the place should be in great shape for our return  – somewhat delayed thanks to Covid-19.  Now, if I could just say something nice about the reliability of our electric supply, I would, but I can’t.

On our last full day in 2019 our friends and neighbours Karen and Dave along with Maureen and I took our cats Simba, Ruffy and Percy (their dog) for a nice walk to one of the “seats”up at the higher local peaks. It all seemed quite normal at the time, I can’t believe how much we miss that now.

Not something you’d expect in the South of Spain in summer, but here’s our local river in Galera after the floods, just as the sun was re-appearing… the weather was bad enough to have me wake up in the early hours – hence the photo taken early evening once the sun re-emerged…

Watched a decent and original sci-fi movie “FAST COLOR” tonight while earlier today we saw a great example of Spanish driving: Maureen and I were enjoying Cafe Con Leche in a little park in Huescar this morning when along came a supermarket delivery truck. Determined to get through the very narrow road, he ploughed across the pavement and into a road sign, damaging the sign and no doubt his side-mirror in the process. I’d be surprised if his vehicle side escaped unscathed. This is not untypical behaviour but it did raise a nervous laugh or two. When done, the driver just continued on as if nothing had happened..

After that, we popped by an office building and just happened to notice the most beautiful wall tiles you see in the photo above. As always I had my phone handy to take the odd pic while out and about. See church below – also in Huescar, a town which has more than it’s fair share of Kodak moments and I can never resist, especially when the sun is out.

Next, Maureen found a new (to us) Chinese store to buy some embellishment for at least one of her dresses. The results I’ve seen so far look good.

We also had a reminder of just how treacherous our little approach road can be to someone not familiar with it. Our neighbours were getting a large delivery and Dave and I were guiding the driver from the village and to his cave. We’ve been doing this for so many years it is second nature but the delivery guy seemed absolutely mortified at the idea of driving down a road only marginally wider than his rather large vehicle. As you might imagine we found that incredibly funny.

This evening, I went with Dave who was taking the dog for a walk and I took my wanna-be dogs with me. Simba and Ruffy (our cats) both enjoy going for walks with us, something denied to them for so long in the past when we had inconsiderate dog owners for neighbours – unlike the current situation where the dogs are all well behaved, lovely animals with responsible owners. Today our corner of Galera is generally very peaceful though we did have a scare as 2 women came by with 5 barking dogs NOT on leashes, which scared the cats – there are laws about keeping dogs on leashes, sadly not too well policed and even if they were, the laws don’t seem to cover the noise aspect of unruly dogs. Thankfully in this case no harm was done as the cats were quick to find hiding places then re-joined us when the danger passed. Perhaps next time the owners may be more considerate – one can only hope.

Finally, for technical readers I’ve discovered a relatively new web browser today (always something new) called “Brave” – got it running on the PC and Android phone and it is looking very promising. Also found several new watch faces for (IMHO) one of the best watches in the world, my Samsung Gear Classic – the experience is almost like getting a new watch every day and most of the watch faces are free – I keep several dozen on the watch at any time.

Much as it was tempting to go to the village pubs AGAIN, instead, this evening, we went for a walk in the hills and here are the photos…

Thanks to the heat we’ve not travelled too far since we got here early in July, but we’ve met lots of our friends here and below is a pic of one of our afternoon sessions with our neighbours.

The weather has been quite stunning, providing many opportunities to sit and do nothing. Now I have my Doogee camera back, I can capture the lot in style. Of course, as you can imagine we’ve also been to Lake Negratin and the pool at Orce. Sadly the regular post lady is on holiday and we’re not convinced all of our post has arrived.

Here we are at Emilios just a few km away for a quiet coffee and tostada… again, stunning weather.