Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Markets’ Category

Thursday is the day for the Huescar market. As you can probably tell from the photos, I originally wrote this back in 2009 when we were new to this part of the world. Here is an update. Huescar of course is in Granada, Andalucia, Spain but ”Granada” covers one hell of a large area and in reality the town of Huescar (population under 8,000 in 2016) is 90 minutes by car from what most people think of as Granada.

Maureen and I parked on the outskirts of Huescar and walked in (just a few minutes walk) – the town for the most part has only the most gentle inclines and is largely flat (unlike nearby – and larger – Baza) and so parking just about anywhere is easy except in August when the number of visitors swells a lot.

The market is bigger than the Wednesday market at nearby Galera, has lots and lots of fruit and veg as well as spices, pottery, clothes, shoes and more and spans much of the town. To the newcomer it may seem massive. In reality there are much larger markets at the coast (Vera for example) however this one should keep you occupied for an hour or two, longer if you meet up with friends for coffee.

Here’s one for you – a popular snack here looks like fried batter and that’s because it pretty much is. Churos. They fill up a syringe maybe 20mm diameter and star-shaped) – and inject it into a pot of boiling oil… swirling it around as they go. It is in there for minutes at most then taken out, cut up into strips and sold. What most of the locals do is shower it in sugar, order hot chocolate and dip the churos in the chocolate… Amazingly most of the locals are thin -  but then, many SMOKE LIKE CRAZY – indoors and outdoors. There’s a message in this somewhere. We tend to limit ourselves to churos once a week at the Thursday market.

For most of the morning when I wrote this, the temperatures were in the middle 20s, by lunchtime it was up to 32c, not untypical for the summer here. Maureen bought herself some fried chicken at the market and I experimented with chicken slices and tuna for lunch! We finished the afternoon at the local pool to cool off.

The next day we took a drive down to Aquilas – that’s not taking a chance on the weather of course, it WAS going to be hot and sunny, but back in 2009 we’d never been to Aquilas before and knew nothing about it – but a trip around the place on Google Earth suggests it has much to offer. It is about an hour and a half, maybe more from here in Galera, not as the crow flies but as the winding Spanish back-roads take you and we like to do things the hard way.

Since our Valencia trip we’ve stayed largely local, visiting friends and enjoying the weather – which has been a little more unpredictable than usual for the time of year with a pretty cold breeze for most of the month up to now, though the last couple of days have been superb.

Don’t get me wrong, it has been sunny most days but the air itself when the sun dies down – has been cool. We’ve done some work around the house and garden, Maureen has been catching up with her reading while I’ve been learning some new stuff on the computer. Meanwhile we’ve had several sessions down at the local pub.

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What a nice evening – Maureen and I headed over to the Orce Medieval Market… great evening – lots of atmosphere and a whole load of drum banging.  Many of the folk we’ve come to know from the village go along so there is always someone to talk to. The pictures pretty much say it all so at this point I’ll shut up… Sunday 3rd August Orce Sunday Medieval Market.

Friday night we had a small party here at Bedrock – just a few friends over – sadly not enough room for everyone we know but we’ll make up for that at a later date. Cracking night as the weather was just right – I think we finally got to bed at 2am in the morning or so. Funnily enough, last night we met neighbours who we could not find to invite to our do and they just invited us over next week for their own party!

We had about 16 people over and had a great time but not before Dave and I had replaced a fence section and done some work on the Pergola – leading to me burning my head in the sun – which I’m still paying for. Some of us never learn.

Here on the right is a shot early on before most people arrived showing the new side we’ve added to the Pergola to give a little extra shade and privacy without compromising the view. Click on the images to expand.

Saturday was a relatively lazy day, time to catch up with emails etc., but Sunday morning we went off to Baza for the Sunday market – it was ok, not sure it was worth the trip other than to meet up with people – the hotel there serves a mean sandwich but the service was atrocious – there was one stand selling UK-type food – i.e. meat pies etc. which are very rare here – I bought a corned beef pastie and I have to say, nice try but next time putting some corned beef in it would be good. Essentially it was a potato pastie with a sample of corned beef. Maybe we’re in the wrong business!

In the evening we headed down to the Galera Medieval fair with neighbours and had another nice evening in town and once again the weather held, lots of people we know showed up, we didn’t stay out really late but it was still 25c near midnight with a nice breeze – lovely. All manner of entertainment including a band in the town square.

Today I have some work to do including various FSB short meetings – and Maureen has schoolwork to attend to – I suspect tonight will be a quiet night! At that point I’ll leave you with some pictures.

After another late night Tuesday night in which we were down in the village until 1am, I had had an early start Wednesday – a Skype technical meeting with Blackpool. That out of the way, we went off down to Galera for some essentials – you know, food, grease, sockets….

Maureen then headed off to the hot tub while I took apart an old power supply to extract one of those lead-acid batteries to try out solar charging which I have to say went well, but after I while the battery warmed up and I was worried about overdoing the charge and so ordered a controller from the UK which I expect will turn up in a week or so.

That will allow me to leave lights running including the new false window, on the battery until the voltage drops at which point they’ll turn off – but NOT frying the battery in the process.  Finally got the security cameras working again and in the process managed to clean the lenses – amazing what a difference that makes.

I had a bit more work to do in the afternoon (someone had discovered that a map we use in the FSB has West Yorkshire in the wrong place, now fixed) but then the urge to sleep took over (a combination of the night before and 3,000ft in the mountains) and that was the end of that afternoon.

Early evening and friends turned up somewhat unexpectedly so we sat for an hour or so chatting at the Pergola before they headed off just in time for some new guys (well new to us) to come walking down the hill and we stuck up a conversation there which went well into twilight!  By then it was too late to start anything and so Maureen went off to bed while I decided to ruin my day by messing with the WIFI.

Well, it wasn’t deliberate but as often is the case, the router decided it was not playing ball so I spent ages messing with settings before being able to clear off to bed to watch “Prometheus” – I think for the third time – saw it originally in the cinema  – amazing movie –  I think Ridley Scott’s best work so far.

Got up at 7am this morning, some unfinished coding to do which took no more than half an hour, Maureen went off for an early morning walk and then we headed off to the Huescar market for Churros and coffee. 27c outside so a bit cooler than recently but very nice non-the-less.

There was really nothing new at the market… and far fewer than the normal number of Brits we talk to so here we are back at the cave at lunchtime – I have some wiring to do before we head off to the village tonight.

Sometime in the next few days – I need to stop my office wall from snowing!

It’s Thursday, time for the Huescar market. After a late start, due in no small part to overdoing the alcohol on Wednesday night, I set off for the market in brilliant sunshine. Hardly a cloud in the sky.

Not as many people as usual out today but it’s early summer so I guess most of the summer home folks won’t be here yet, though I did stop and chat with three sets of friends while walking through the market. I picked up essentials for lunch and headed off, determined not to miss the opportunity for a spot of sunbathing and still struggling to get used to the sandals having worn thick soled boots for the last several months.

It’s still a little cool inside but outside at lunchtime the temperature was up to 26c.  Came in to check the mail to find that Dell have at last put up my first blog entry – and interview. Here’s the Dell blog. Put down a little more weedkiller as some of the larger weeds that I’d failed to pull out by hand were sitting looking stubborn – let’s see how they manage against concentrated Pathclear!

And that’s that, really, can’t do much until Maureen turns up with the bits I need for my remote temperature monitoring project… which I’m hoping to leave here, working. All that’s left to do this afternoon is a little more sun-collecting! As usual, click on any photo to enlarge.