Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Galera’ Category

Cracking night in downtown Galera Thursday night – sadly as often happens when one enjoys good company (and some new company), one had a slight headache yesterday morning.

And so a very quiet day. After I’d handled the usual email mountain, Maureen and I went off to local bar/restaurant La Posa for a late lunch yesterday (and a REALLY nice ham sandwich) before heading off to help out our friends with their Kindle. I took a couple of pictures while we were out including one from way up at the top of the hill where the Church is but the place really shines when the weather is great – which it’s not now… maybe in 3 months time.

All week the sun has been trying to appear but it’s quite damp – I think there’s going to be a fair bit of rain before this clears up. Temperatures up to maybe 14c in the afternoons.

We decided to give the Friday pub-crawl a miss last night and were just giving up when our new neighbour dropped in a note from one of the guys to remind me of a corrosive wall treatment we’d been discussing (if you’re looking in – thanks!) – I can see me stinking the place up shortly (we get a mica-like substance appearing in the walls from time to time which is pretty, but destructive).

I was rather disappointed to find that one of our road repairs which had handled the winter so well, from one day to the next a bloody great crack has appeared down one side (3 inches across) – one has to wonder what the builders were thinking about when they put some of this stuff together. Actually I think they were thinking about payment, not quality.

I’ll give it until May to settle then the bags of concrete are coming out – unless some kind nearby soul beats me to it.

And that’s that – after a slightly punctuated night’s sleep, we’re up early, lots do to.

It’s 9.30am and the sun is once again having an attempt to force it’s way through – and it’s not the only thing, as I was typing this I looked through the mesh covered windows and… you may notice there are two of them – fair-weather friends. I see now why people put bird-mesh on the outside – to stop these fellows poking their noses through the insect mesh!

Weather is weird… as you see in the picture below, you’d think I’d photoshopped the mountains out – but I haven’t  – that’s what it looks like – flat land!

I got up around 7.30am this morning – of course my computer still says 6:30am – it’s still on UK time. There was a thick fog over the mountains and it looked like the sort of day you just want to go back to bed.

Maureen arose somewhat later and we went off down to Galera market to get potatoes for lunch – and then headed off to nearby Huescar to get a mains extension and some cheese for the potatoes. Surprisingly few sources of cheddar out here. Our normal supermarket (Ole) was closed for reasons beyond me so we went in search for another, calling in at the paint store for some wet rot repair….

We came back to the house for lunch and spent the afternoon catching up with emails and going for a walk across the hills.

After a brief interlude, putting up new fittings in the bathroom, thinking about throwing my laptop out of the window… you, know, holiday stuff… we spent part of the evening relaxing watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona – an excellent Woody Alan movie and one that shows Tom Cruise’s ex-girlfriend in a great light.

The weather was not quite bright enough to get my solar lighting running at full belt… and there was a little rain overnight. I’m hoping it’ll be brighter tomorrow but I’m not complaining compared to what we left back home in the UK.

A couple of glasses of wine and Norman Lay rang up –"trouble at mill" as it were… as Maureen was watching the movie I went outside to continue our Skype video – only to find the weather was improving (pitch black of course). Once I was off the phone I thought I’d try putting on the external lighting (we’ve a full complement of colour-changing LED lights outside) – that went well but by now the weather was turning again to cold – so I wrapped up the extension and as I was reeling it in – BANG!!!

Pitch black….  the extension lead feeding my external camera fell to the ground and the plug-in-the-wall supply made a WELL over the top exit in the form of a dramatic explosion, taking out the breakers.

I sit here typing, surrounded by a faint smell of firework night… it’s no big deal, I brought spare kit with me from the UK, everything is fine except for the power-less camera, but just something else to repair first thing.

Tomorrow the plan is get our CHURROS fix at the Huescar market and then to take our new neighbours down to visit the Brits for our usual (when we’re here) Thursday night session in town. I anticipate a very pleasant day and it’ll be nice to see who’s out here in the depths of winter.

The movie was great… reminded me of "Shirley Valentine". Woody Alan may be strange but he understands people.

Perhaps a glass of Rose?

It’s been a very busy week having spent the latter part in Dublin visiting Google’s HQ over there (and learning LOTS from a bunch of talks and chats), I came back in time to grab a quick night’s sleep before driving up to Edinburgh.

We hardly got off to a good start to our break…. the plan was simple… because flights to Murcia were a tad expensive this year, we would fly into Alicante from Edinburgh and the company looking after our car would meet us there with the car.  We’d then drop the driver off at San Javier on the way to Mojacar where we’d booked a hotel for the night – with enough time for a spot of shopping and dinner.

That was the plan. The company screwed up big time and despite a very clear email with instructions, the driver was sitting in San Javier as normal, waiting for us there. Things went downhill from there. The driver had to come all the way up to Alicante, pick us up and drive us down to San Javier – by which time it was FAR too late to have dinner in Mojacar… We dropped the driver off any by now all our electronic devices were flat and in desperate need of charging from the multi-charge station in the car… easy enough except that someone had broken the charge unit while the company was holding onto our car… and blown the fuse – so it was impossible to charge anything. With time moving on and no ability to make a call if something went wrong we had to abandon our plans for Mojacar for the night and instead made a last minute booking at the King Alphonso 13th hotel in Cartagena after having dinner in a German restaurant in Los Alcazares. The company will soon know just how I feel about this one.

This morning after an atrocious night’s sleep thanks to round two of the flu, we had a nice room service breakfast at the hotel before setting off, devices fully charged to Mojacar where we had lunch at La Murala on the seafront as well as a trip to the local market before heading back off to Galera.

Our place is fine, the wood fire is glowing and after a couple of hours nap I’m sorting out photos and about to have my first glass of wine. The coast was really warm and sunny – here in Galera, it’s looking to be clear and dry and maybe approaching 20c tomorrow (not that we care as long as the sun is out and it’s dry, more than we’ve seen in the Northeast of England for a while).

We’ve a busy week ahead providing neither of us succumb to even more flu, we’re off at some point with friends to Marbella to see our ex-neighbours and I’ve brought a new solar panel over to give it a thrashing (ultimately I want to run cameras and routers etc. from solar in our absence for reliability) and of course I could see at least one trip to the Chinese junk store.

After reading some time ago on the web that the average cost of electricity in Spain was something in the order of 14p per KW/H (I’ll explain later) I was shocked to say the LEAST to actually sit down with a real modern bill now that we have “proper” electricity – the basic cost per KW/H isn’t bad – but by the time you add in the standing bill (ie payment for nothing) and all sorts of other perks and then the dreaded VAT (which most of us have to pay and can’t claim back) – the TRUE cost of electricity at least around here is currently around 22.4p per KW/H. That’s a LOT.

To put that in perspective for those who don’t do maths – the little dial in the electricity meter is usually marked in KW/H – might be marked to 0.1 KHW or just to the nearest KW/W

How does this work? Simply – if you run a gadget that uses a Kilowatt (Microwave) – for an hour – you’ve spend 22.4p. If the gadget uses 2KW (maybe an oven) it’s costing you 44.8p an hour.

So why am I showing you my new lights (temporary setup) – because thanks to LED technology which most of these are, the display you’re looking at comes to around 50w all in a running cost of around 1.1p per hour – not too bad, all except for the distant green rope light which is going!! 

I can’t do much about hot water and washing machine etc.. until we get organised and get a solar heat panel – friends recently told us they’d used no electricity for hot water since May! I figure using that same feed for the dishwasher and washing machine would reduce their electricity use by a massive amount also – but that’s for the future. For now with Compact Fluorescent (and some LED) inside and solar outside we’ve made a start at a decent lighting setup without running up huge costs. The lights are all able to take on any colour.

We never did make it to the pool! After a good start – i.e. morning coffee down in the village, I spent most of the day indoors tackling the work email mountain and trying to solve a pesky broadband issue (the router dies occasionally for no good reason – my current guess is heat and sadly I don’t have a spare router to compare with). Early evening I had the silicon sealant out to make sure my latest electrical additions outside don’t give up at the first sight of rain (I know, don’t be daft) and then last night Maureen, Alison and I went down to the Galera Hotel wherein I was tackled for advice on tablets from one of the guys and then we all went off to La Posa.

FINALLY I got to grips with the WIFI passwords at both locations (not that it made too much difference as La Posa’s WIFI is down at the moment – maybe they have the same bug I have here).

As I’d anticipated I was approached by a gentleman who’d given me grief about the blog a couple of nights earlier – of course it had been the demon drink for which he gracefully apologised and we ended the night amicably. Thanks incidentally to everyone who was supportive at the time – really appreciated.

And so the night ended as it started – we all had a nice time – it’s comforting to know that temperatures back in the UK are back to abysmal summer norms. Today I’m up in the early hours for no reason. I can see a walk to the village coming on when the sun comes up and the plan is to go to the lake at some point before helping out a friend with Windows 7 issues this afternoon. Our neighbours are arriving today which will be nice and I’m waiting for a slight drop in the temperature to go drop a bag of cement in the increasingly large crack in the road up at the top of the hill!  Never thought I’d end up doing road maintenance! I also need to find something to use as a bracket for the new LED lighting I bought in San Javier.. I’m amazed just how much light the new 5w LEDs put out.

Yesterday I spent most of the day working, I had a ton of emails to attend to and with friend Alison having brought my new router from the UK I decided to tackle replacing the existing one. I’ve been having issues with the main broadband router simply stalling occasionally, something I’ve not been able to pin on the broadband supplier so I decided I’d swap it out. Sadly that simple task took several hours and failed miserably.

It turns out the new router doesn’t handle the external connection side and so instead I tried swapping to the Netgear router I use as a booster for upstairs. That would simply NOT connect to the service provider here (Habland) and so it’s going to have to wait until I can bring another one from the UK. Meanwhile I did manage to get the NEW router to perform a couple of tricks – it’s designed for hotels and despite being low-cost and tiny, allows you to create a welcome screen and integrate voucher and credit card handling. Currently experimenting with leaving a connection called “WiFi for You” up and running which allows anyone within range to gain access with Paypal etc.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying out the lights we bought in San Javier – a pair of 5w LED spots and as you can see in the picture above (right side, the white lights flooding the hillside) they give off a considerable amount of light for their size! Just need to come up with a mounting arrangement. Indeed apart from the green rope-light, all the lights you see above are LED and most are solar. With these new 5w jobs giving off so much light, the need for fluorescents and old style lighting is rapidly disappearing.

Today a trip down to the post-office and then we’re going to visit Huescar pool, I’m hoping the mist from yesterday has cleared away but it’s guaranteed to be in the mid-30s anyway so no worries about not being warm enough for a plunge.