Bedrock

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

As always, photos published in this blog can generally be enlarged by clicking on them. Enjoy.

The end of another week – and what a nice couple of days. Yesterday Maureen headed off for the “4a Ruta De La Tapa De Galera” tapas competition in the morning while I got some quiet work done in the cave and put up some new lighting – though this isn’t permanent stuff as I want to bring some much better lights over next time we’re here – I’m short of basic materials like power supplies after a few incidents (ok, explosions). 

Last night we once again joined others in the town to check out the Tapas competition but it turns out it only happens during the day – so instead we went off to one bar offering 14 bottles of beer in a bucket of ice for 9 Euros!! Can’t be bad.

Basically the idea is commercial – you go have a beer or a coke (some say not coffee) and get free tapas – you have a sheet of paper for 6 bars and in order to put your vote in for the best, you have to go to all 6 – it’s basically just a way to drum up business. The drinks are cheap, the food is free so everyone wins.

Today we went down town to do the afternoon session – if I never drink a coke again it won’t be too soon. The winner – La Posa – a combination of decent grub and fast service. And the loser? Bar Cazador – quite the opposite – the most unappealing tapas we’d been served to date – and the service was awful. Like many of the Brits we’d never been to that bar before and it doesn’t look like we’ll be back.

All in all a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Starting in Galera, then off via Granada , Seville (on the way back), Rio Tinto and Portugal – what an adventure – the general idea at the start was to leave Galera (right on the map – we’re looking at the south end of Spain here) on Monday, pop into Baza for an early morning sandwich and then head off down to Gibraltar to spend a little time with Gemma Vasquez and her husband (Gemma heads up the GFSB – the Gibraltar Small Business organisation over there – and as a Brit who has been there more than once and listened to the traders and local government complaining, I have considerable sympathy for the hassle the people of Gibraltar from time to time get from the Spanish authorities) and then head off to Huelva in Spain for some history.

Well, as it happens,  all of that mutated into something completely different and we scrapped the Gibraltar trip PARTLY due to fears of horrendous queues at the border and partly due the inevitable restrictions caused by Maureen’s (at the time) bust foot. As it turns out, I emailed Gemma to apologise for our change of plans – and it would seem that was a smart move as that the queues at the border were as bad as ever – with a change for the worse which apparently allowed Spanish traders into Gibraltar without issue while making everyone else wait!!! I wonder if our press ever picked up on that.

So – the revised plan took us to Rio Tinto and Huelva. Let me explain – Rio Tinto is a small town and also a mining area in South West Spain not far off Portugal, famous for a river that runs blood-red due to the iron oxide and other chemicals in it. Turns out this mining has been going on since Roman times until very early in the 21st century and one of the mines is as deep as the Empire State Building is high!!! Worth a look, surely, we thought.

So, we set off on Monday and, as you do, we stopped off along the way, discovering Spanish towns we’ve never even thought of before – and one area we passed late in the day seemed to have two suns (see above) resembling the fictitious Star Wars planet Tatooine (a beige-colored, desolate world orbiting a pair of binary stars) – we figured we’d check that out on the return trip. We’re glad we visited Huelva – very nice – see ships lower down.

Moving on, we had arranged bed and breakfast in a little place called Rio-Tinto – straight off the Internet as you do – and what a winner. Ok, I’ll grant you we had a little issue that neither the owner nor his wife spoke much English but we managed – between Google translate, enthusiasm and arm gestures… we managed – what a REALLY nice couple – she has her own paintings all over the house – he was into gadgets and he’d taken the time to study my blog with the aid of Google…. the house was pristine, neighbourhood pleasant and they had a pool – a NICE pool.

The reason we travelled to Rio-Tinto was to see the river, which runs red due to iron oxides. We were not expecting the history we found – turns out they’ve been mining there for the last 5,000 years!!! More photos at the end of this blog entry.

All done with Rio Tinto we headed off to the Algarve in Portugal – to Vila Real to be precise – just for a quick visit before heading off home. It’s a long time since we’ve been to Portugal and I have to say after settling down for dinner at the sea front, I’m not in any mad rush to go back.

Portugal… well, the bit we were in…

So then we headed off back home – and again the strange “suns”  below, resembling Tatooine in the movie Star Wars – We had to investigate – the result – STUNNING – the twin solar collectors of Seville – 2000 mirrors, designed to produce 30MW of electricity, a world’s first. 20Km west of Seville this plant generates power from steam – receiving up to 15 hours of sunlight in summer per day… I really can’t explain how bright the tops of those towers are except to say you can see them from a long, long way away. 624 moving mirrors ensure the towers are hit with concentrated sunlight all day. Check out this link for more information.

And so here are more pictures of our trip…

The mines at Rio Tinto

Yes, the water really IS a strange colour…

The main roundabout at Rio Tinto… yes that’s a full size steam engine – more pics coming…

Christopher Columbus history at Huelva

And inside the ships complete with sound effects..

We finished our visit at the museum where we learned all about the mining operations and the fantastic range of materials they got out of them – Galena, Yeso, Quartz, Galena and much more.

The scale of the mining is (was) incredible. and  if you want to see some great pictures of the Rio Tinto area check here…

Marvellous trip!

We’re on our second day in Spain and the weather is wonderful – as yet not too hot and crystal clear skies.

We arrived last night and had a couple of drinks Before heading off to bed.

Today, well we didn’t do much really, I didn’t surface until 11am and got on with ensuring my remote controls were working (updating software to new mesh code I’ve been playing with at home and installed both at the house and the cottage) – as well as finding a leak in the watering system for the plants and fixing up some solar lights.

We were planning nothing for the night when our neighbours dropped in early evening to say we’re going out! So we all went off to Orce and had a nice, quiet meal and drink – very pleasant.

Tomorrow we’re off in a 2-car convoy to Albox where we will find a garden centre, a supermarket, a general hardware store and one of the largest Chinese shops in the area – all in all everything you need for a good shopping day out.

I need some shelving, we need a TV cabinet and a whole boatload of supplies. Shops close at 2pm so we’re making an early start.

Click on images to expand.

Our first weekend in Spain of the summer over, not quite the weather we’d anticipated but still way better than the Northeast of England I’d expect. After Saturday’s excellent wine-tasting, a quiet Sunday down at the Sunday market in Baza.

This is not one of the best markets by any means, tends to be the same old tat on sale every time but we did manage to get a nice coat hanger for the hallway and the Hotel Abadi does a very passable bacon sandwich.

Spent the afternoon working on my cameras – finally getting a combination of settings allowing all 3 IP cameras to operate at once. Maureen is still having a little trouble with the TV due I suspect to WIFI bandwidth or the VPN that lets us pretend we’re in the UK. We finished the weekend with friends testing the sparkling wine we’d purchased the day before.

Today I’ve lots of little projects to be getting on with while Maureen goes off to Pilates. Still have an office that resembles a bring-and-buy sale.  Weather is looking good – the sky is clear and I suspect it will be at least 25c by mid-day.

Popped down to the lake today with our good Friends Aidan and Helen – today was their last day here and they’re off very first thing in the morning. It rained this evening but we’re hoping the weather will pick up tomorrow so Maureen and I can get back to the lake tomorrow – missed a trip to the Chinese store today as we were too late getting out of the water. 

We found a new place to go on lake Negratin today – just being built but already usable – no-one there but 3 kids one of which was female and somewhat deranged as she never shut up all the time we were there –often screaming for no apparent reason even though the boys were elsewhere – at one point I developed a serious fantasy about throwing a grenade in her direction – but I let it pass mainly as I don’t keep grenades handy, Thanks to Brian and others here in Galera for that information – very pleasant and there’s a nice floating barge to swim to.

I need a plastic sleeve to protect my external temperature sensor here hence the need to visit the Chinese store in Baza tomorrow. Tonight for the first time, my light up time and dawn timing software is working as part of the remote control system I’m putting together for the cave – inside solar lights are still on while the outside lights are due to turn off in a few minutes. Spent a little time with Aidan at teatime researching cricket generation software and we have a little chip making a fine impersonation of a little cricket – something to take home – the idea being to make it solar powered so the sound comes on at night without needing wires etc.

It’s approaching midnight and I’m shot – time to give up – just waiting for midnight to ensure my lighting is working as it should be – tomorrow, as they say, is another day – hopefully a beautifully hot and sunny one.

In the build-up to our forthcoming trip to Gibraltar, yesterday was pretty ordinary – Maureen spent most of the day doing schoolwork, I spend most of my day answering FSB emails. We’ve had a fair bit of interest in Hollyberry Cottage since moving to the new advertising company so that’s taken some handling and so yesterday, generally was a work day.

We took off late afternoon to head off to Baza to buy some mains cable and to see if we could find a new lamp for our ceiling fan – with success, I have  a couple of holes to drill in metal today to modify a standard lamp to fit the fan and we should be ready to install in the living room sometime this morning with luck. On the way back from Baza we stopped off at a couple of bars and finally ended up in Galera for a short chat with friends which was nice.

Today we’d normally be off to the Huescar market but there is a question mark as to whether it will run as there’s a religious holiday so it could be a short trip, coffee and Churos and back again. Once again I’ve meetings this afternoon and Maureen has much more work to do but I want to get the fan fitted and a couple of other jobs out of the way.

It’s likely to be another clear-sky hot day – yesterday was around 36c most of the time, no doubt it will be similar today. Can’t complain as it makes for REALLY pleasant evenings where you can sit outside until midnight in a t-shirt.