Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Markets’ Category

After a very warm morning at the Huescar market, the girls decided to stop in for the evening, but not before dropping me off at the town centre for a night with the British locals – the famed “G7” evening.

As it happens I didn’t manage to crawl back up the hill until something like 2:30am in the morning after a very entertaining evening solving most of the world’s problems – as you do.

The image above was taken using the iPhone in night vision software while propped up against a wall (and yes, that’s the moon). The panorama above was created with PhotoSynth, one of Microsoft’s better offerings recently.

Another day with no post – and I found out today that my friend Aidan in the UK sent me a test envelope LAST THURSDAY – is it any wonder the Spanish economy is in the state it is – I ordered some small items from the UK and China about a week ago and nothing – not a thing has turned up – yet we have in the past had post turn up here so it’s not as if they don’t know we’re here.

After a very busy day yesterday which ended up with an early night, we headed off to the Huescar market this morning (Thursday) – had our cafe con leche and Churros and did a little shopping – after a LED flood-lamp blew up last night I looked in vain to find one in Huescar, seems no-one does them so we’ll have to manage until our next trip to a larger town (no shortage in San Javier but that’s 2 hours away). For those looking in for the first time, the Huescar market happens every Thursday and is a relatively large market with fruit and veg, clothing, shoes, kitchen stuff and more – no-where near as good as the better French markets but a nice trip out for the morning. Takes about an hour at most to get from one end to the other and back.

This afternoon we spent indoors as it was a TAD HOT out there – 37c (98F) and I’ve been doing a little research on Android media players. We bought a car radio for the car here with USB connector for music and it’s basically useless with only limited support for folders – so I came to the conclusion the best way would be to put the music on Maureen’s HTC ONE X phone with a suitable player and feed that to the car radio. That is now all done with thousands of tracks on the phone ready to go. Ultimately I picked GoneMad Music player for the phone.

Right now they’re busy setting up lights and sets in the village for the August festivities and we’ve grabbed a list of events from the town hall.  Still awaiting first proof that the posty actually delivers post here in the mountains!

Our last full day for this short break then it’s back to the grind for a while, but not long before we’re back here again for the summer hols. Meanwhile today, armed (finally) with a working car we went off to Huescar for some goods and "churos and coffee" – rapidly becoming an essential part of visiting Huescar.

We go to the little corner cafe you see here near the square. We also managed to get some round staples so next time I’ve some wiring to fasten up, we’re all set….  at lunchtime we returned to Galera and I fitted the new radio to the car, not without issues as the aerial socket is ever so slightly different to the car fittings as you can see in the photo below. Just found an "iso to din" adaptor on Ebay for the aerial so that’s on it’s way.

As that means no Spanish FM radio for now (which we don’t understand anyway), that’s not too big a deal, the radio has Bluetooth (tested, working), auxiliary input, USB input (tested, working) and SD memory input  so all I have to do it kit out a 16 gig SD with all of our music and Spanish lessons and we’re all set. That’ll be ready for the summer.

Bought a new storage cabinet which I’ve just spent part of the afternoon filling up with electrical rubbish and tonight we plan to stay in and enjoy a glass or two of wine and take in the view.

Next week I’ve a ton of meetings lined up in London and elsewhere but first I’m putting my trusty oscilloscope on Ebay as I’ve spotted a modern pocket version which will be ideal for the summer (I’m sure if I brought a proper scope over on the plane, they’d think it was a terrorist device and not let me on the plane. I was stopped on the North/Southern Ireland border once with the same kit and they were convinced I was up to no good).

Making the best of the REALLY nice weather as I’m let to believe that (surprise surprise) the weather back in the UK is rubbish – on the other hand I’ve lots of Chinese goodies waiting for me back home not to mention our kitties.

Incidentally, while we were over here, obviously the BBC i-Player doesn’t really like one being overseas neither does Netflix but we were fine thanks to the continued reliability of Hide-My-Ass.

Ultimately, everything we do is temporary, even the giant stainless steel and glass structures won’t last forever – but the builders here have taken temporary to a new art form…

See image below – electricity meter just down the road from us. Work of art.

The weather was so nice this afternoon we went for a walk – and I always have the camera ready… here’s something else we spotted on the way, looks like Dyson’s going into the caravan business. Cute, huh!

Not much else happening, sun is going down, it’s going to be a cold night and so a night in front of the fire is likely. Huescar market tomorrow morning – and the week’s treat at the market – CHUROS – or fried dough if you want to be basic about it!

Arrived yesterday (Saturday), after doing the usual shopping round in San Javier and visiting my favourite Chinese junk store therein.

As you can see, the weather here in February at the coast is not that bad – it’s not summer that’s for sure but you could sit outside and drink coffee at the coast, no problem. For the first time we picked up our own car (usually we do car rentals but if you check earlier posts, we bought a Spanish car in the summer and so this was it’s first test). The storage company guy who dropped it off at the airport (right at the arrivals door – we only ended up walking 4 metres out of the airport!) spoke good English and warned us the battery had gone flat in storage (they check the car and get it working if there is an issue), perhaps not surprising as it’s been sitting doing nothing for 3 months – but as we found out – it was working perfectly and still is 30 hours later.

Our new (old) Spanish Renault Mégane is so quiet when idling you would think it was turned off… and so we had a great 2-hour trip over to our place but not before checking out Aldi and the Chinese store and getting supplies for the week over at San Javier – definitely my favourite place to shop for food and rubbish up to now.

We arrived at teatime Saturday to discover that AT LAST we had proper electricity but no water… it’s sunny and several degrees here in the mountains during the day but it’s been quite cold at night. This morning Maureen got the hair drier out and the water is running but there’s a hairline crack in the cheap Chines crappy water valve…  no surprise there, most of the other stuff the original builder put in was, well, crap.

We took a slightly different and longer route than normal, partly as we decided to manage without the satellite and partly because – well, it was such a nice day.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not summer and along the way we could see the snow in the mountains but for much of the trip the temperature stayed up near 10 degrees or so and perfectly clear skies, dry air and no wind which makes all the difference.

We opened the place up – no surprises other than the odd length of silica trying to fight it’s way through the concrete walls – nothing new there and easy to sort out in the summer… and after getting some heat going we went off to the local pub for a pint – so much for the diet.

Today, as I promised the neighbours, I put up some solar lights we brought over onto the tree on our newly re-furbished roundabout (not enough, needs more) and spent some time getting the NetFlix TV working properly on our limited broadband here in Spain – with great success – see the blog at www.scargill.net for getting Netflix and iPlayer working over here…  and I caught up with paperwork – not to mention both of us watching the best movie of all time (IMHO) – Iron Man 2 – AGAIN… the opening scene with AC/DC playing and Iron Man landing on stage has to be the best movie scene ever. I can’t wait for the Avengers movie coming out in May which will also feature The Hulk, Thor and Captain America to name a few – now they’ve pretty much gotten over the need to make these movies funny for people who never read Marvel, they really are doing a good job. A shame the CD Comics people seem to have missed the boat.

Tomorrow we need to get a hairline crack in the cold water feed tap fixed (well, we need to replace the tap – easy enough other than finding out where on earth the main tap for the area is!) so we need to organise a plumber, then we’re off to the local market to see what’s new. As always you can click on these pics for larger versions, hope you find this interesting.

The rain today didn’t help, but here it is, the start of a new Pergola, poles treated and buried in concrete. If the weather holds we may have everything put back together before the weekend is done… it doesn’t look much now, but just wait… what with that and the soon-to-be-functional pylon (just out of view behind the rearmost post) all that’s missing now is a decent US or British-made power supply for the broadband – and we’re all set!

Not much else happened today, we went to the Huescar market, it rained, nothing new – oh, Maureen got some new material as she’s planning an insulating curtain between downstairs and upstairs (to keep the heat out of our bedroom in the summer – and keep it downstairs in the winter (there are both upstairs and downstairs bedrooms). IN THEORY the new car turns up tomorrow night! If that all works out, no more car renting – which means I can pop over anytime for a few days.