Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Huescar’ Category

This entry covers our trips this weekend to Orce pool and the Huescar Ruta De La Tapa with friends. In this late-June heat, anything more energetic has to be saved for early in the morning or later in the evening. For anyone looking in and not familiar with the area, our home town of Galera is 90 minutes drive Northeast of the city of Granada in Southern Spain and Orce “Piscina Natural” or pool is around 8 minutes drive south-east from Galera whereas Huescar is just 12 minutes drive up north.

We share the spring-fed pool with the local fish, some of which grow into monsters well over half a metre in length but they are completely harmless.

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Last night we visited Restaurante Ufe for the first time in outer Huescar. It took us a little while to get the street right and I commented that it made me think of one of those streets in Mexico where you might expect your car tires to last mere moments in your absence before being replaced by bricks.

However, looks can be deceiving, we parked up and went into the restaurant – or rather to the enclosed area outside the restaurant, complete with bar which has TONS of atmosphere.

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Well, this was never going to be easy. Last week we opened an account with CaixaBank in Spain – as the performance of our existing bank had been less than stellar.  We filled in all the forms, got the App and were promised by the one English-speaking member of staff (after waiting for half the morning) that our cards would be ready on Tuesday.

Of course we went in on Tuesday and they WEREN’T ready. She offered to send an email when they were in. Maureen then got a TEXT to say the cards were in – as we’re also collecting for friends we really needed her to be there. Yesterday we popped by the bank – no sign of her and we decided to make an early start this morning.

Not there. We popped into one of the local cafes for cafe-con-leche – a lovely little place one of who’s specialities is pastry effigies of Bob Spongepants!

On our return – our contact at the bank was still not there – so another week goes by – we’ll try again on Monday. Meanwhile seems like a lovely day for the lake.

I think it’s possible we timed our trip to a lake this afternoon, perfectly. This time, Embalse De San Clemente – via a particularly inhospitable road. Back at the ranch now and I can hear thunder all around – but we managed a perfect afternoon of sunbathing and (well, I was going to say swimming but more like sunbathing in the water, really). I’ve figured out why my “Owncloud” wasn’t automatically uploading camera images from the phone – it was sitting waiting for an upgrade – major design flaw there!!  Anyway, it’s getting darker now, more to do with weather than the time of day I suspect… and the rain, at last seems to be coming.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still 28c and so no problem and as you can see from the panorama above, the lake really does need a good soaking. Chances are it’ll last a couple of hours and we’ll be back to glorious sunshine.

Meanwhile I’ve ordered an “Orange Pi” – an oriental competitor for the Raspberry Pi – at just over a third the price of the original it’s going to either be a complete waste of time or another game-changer. Put it this way, virtually the innards of a complete working (for example Ubuntu + Open Office) computer for £12 !!! Add monitor and keyboard. More on that in a couple of weeks when it arrives.

I’ll keep this one short – the power is very likely to go off in the storms – more pics… and don’t forget to click for larger versions of any pictures in here. I was going to say Maureen is watching TV but that won’t last unless the weather picks up.

Friday: One of those afternoons with nothing concrete in mind so we headed off around the back of Huescar to check out Embalse de San Clemente. Turns out that while the way we went was good for taking pictures, short of putting the car across a 3” drop in the road, it was not the best way to get any swimming done – so we ended up spending the afternoon driving around and stopping into Asador La Parra – which I can’t find on Google maps but which is on the way to San Clemente and pretty hard to miss. NICE cup of coffee.

That was the highlight of the afternoon – apart from the pleasant drive. We came back and I made the mistake of deciding to upgrade Maureen’s computer to Windows 10 – that was just before we had 10 power cuts in a row (Thanks, Endessa). The only good thing about the rubbish electricity here in Spain is that it is focussing my attention on getting my various gadgets to handle power cuts gracefully. Got up this morning and thankfully managed to revert her computer back to the previous version and start again. Time will tell.  Meanwhile, here are some photos.

It’s been a great first week here in Galera, met some new people who’ve been great company and we’ve already gotten a fair bit of work done.

Yesterday I went off to Huescar in the morning in search of washers to complete the gazebo (or carbuncle as Maureen calls it – after she bought it!!) over the hot-tub. On the way I popped into Spanish Inland Properties to pick up the solar panel delivered from England – I’ve tested that and it’s chucking out 2.5 amps reliably during the day so now I just need to find a suitable 12v 20amp (or so) “deep discharge” battery. I can get one overnight in the UK for around £40 but they won’t deliver to Spain.

We spent the afternoon putting up screens on the new carbuncle – and immediately ran out of screen so last night we went off in search of more – turns out the local Ferreteria in Galera stocks the stuff so that was easy -  of course we had to drop into the pub (La Poza) on the way back and that was the end of that night – we sat outside all night had a great time.

Got back very late but not too late to get the camera out as it was a clear night with a smashing view of the edge of our galaxy which you’ll see in the first picture. – look over on the right and you can see it coming out of the corner of the image (the left corner is light pollution from the village). That was a 16-second exposure incidentally – tonight I plan to try taking a bunch of them and averaging out the noise.

This morning I’m taking it easy – slight alcohol poisoning and it’s quite warm out there. I can see a quiet night in coming along and with luck we’ll get some more wall patching done (it’s a never ending task) and maybe we’ll finish off the carbuncle. I’m doing some work on the home control stuff but I’m kind of stuck waiting for parts to arrive from the UK which might take a few days.

I took the shot below late last night – most of the lighting you see there is either solar or LED or both.

Things I’m short of it anyone local has ideas for suppliers…. I need a couple of posts for the Pergola (to run horizontally for fencing off one side) – maybe 75mm diameter, 3 metres long.. and a deep discharge battery (camping type) 12v at maybe 20ah or so – got to be cheap as the solar panel is just an experiment for now.. haven’t even figured out where to mount it yet 🙂