Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Scargill’ Category

This has been an event-filled week or so…. Friday night (1st June) we went with friends to the “Pizza Cave” in Huescar and on that Saturday, Maureen and I achieved several goals: the upstairs bedroom is now back in working order with a new ceiling, the hot tub is back in action though currently the heater is disconnected as it was tripping the 30ma mains breaker.

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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.

Nerja is situated on the Costa Del Sol in the province of Malaga. It is about 50km east of Malaga and a nice run down from Granada.

Somewhat over 2.5 hours  in all from our place in Galera, we decided on the trip after advice from friends.  We started with the idea of going to nearby Motril until someone said “why would you want to go THERE” and advise us to check out nearby towns – so the final destination was somewhat random – but what a good deal.

I certainly would not call the place deserted – as parking was a bit of an issue, but you could just tell we’re not kind of off-season as the many restaurants were certainly FAR from full.

The place is wonderful, a TAD “British” for me.. I didn’t really come to Spain to be in a hot Britain, not by a long chalk and that’s kind of what happens when Brits go overseas in mass – British food, British music etc. – so for example the hotel specialised in the “full British Breakfast” (though I’m not sure who told them we like re-constituted bacon) but also had some continental food. However despite that, there is plenty for everyone in Nerja including, I’m told, a fabulous cave system – that will have to wait for our next trip – which will be soon.

The journey from Granada to Nerja is in itself worthy of note as the modern, well-maintained motorway cuts it’s way through mountains and across modern, well designed bridges. That experience alone is quite nice – though I didn’t manage to take pictures being the designated driver. The photo above was our first sight of the town and as it happens our hotel was on the corner. Not far off the sea front but sadly VERY high up so there was no way we were walking up and down  THAT hill. The hotel had a decent pool and our first order of duty was to soak in it for an hour before getting back into the car and heading down to the coast.

Wonderful – the usual highly coloured stored selling Chinese plastic junk but enough variety to keep people happy – and along the waterfront a very large variety of restaurants to suit most tasted. We found a quiet little Italian and ate altogether far too much garlic, after which we  ended up at an ice-cream vendor with more choice of flavours than I EVER recall seeing before – excellent and nothing we saw along the sea front was too expensive.

After dinner we walked around the beach for a while before heading off back to our hotel. The next morning we went off in the car to have a look around town and it was then we realised that this is going to take a more leisurely trip – maybe a couple of days as the place is BIG. We also found the Nerja Cave area but again – to enjoy properly it needs more time – so we headed off out of town on our way back to Granada but taking an ever so slightly different route, following the sea for a while and I’m so glad we did  – the pictures should speak for themselves.

Firstly a few more (you can click on the links to expand) of Nerja itself – or rather the seafront…

And now some photos as we LEFT Nerja.

Hope you like the pictures – more when we return later this year. As always, more pics (and higher quality) on our Flickr area – just search for “scargill spain” and you won’t be far off.

We didn’t MEAN to end up at Santiago de la Espada, the idea was to take a drive and go down the first road we’d never explored. Well it wasn’t until we got to Puebla de Don Fadrique that the opportunity to do just that happened.

We’ve been round mount Sagra many times but never ventured off to the right – so, armed with petrol and good weather, off we went. The road isnt’ ideal – it’s a tortuous, mountainside route and it took us longer than Google would suggest – but I have to say, well worthwhile – the scenery out there in the mountains (not to mention the HEIGHT) is pretty spectacular. And the coffee in the village wasn’t bad either.

And so off we went – and spent the afternoon simply adventuring. We came back via another route avoiding Don Fadrique but to be honest the road was a little dodgy so I won’t recommend it other than to say the scenery in both directions is marvellous. Here are some photos.

I can’t believe it is a week since I wrote in here.  It’s been a quiet but productive week – we’ve had a few sessions down in the village – we’ve been to the lake and I’ve fixed the loo (most important).

Today after starting the morning with (wait for it) breakfast in the hot tub!! I’m putting up new mesh on the windows now that our far-too-bright cats have figured out that this is a potential escape mechanism.

In between jobs I’m improving my cave control APP for the phone – learning in leaps and bounds – and I’ve a spot of cementing to do later. Still some reliability aspects to sort – that watering system has to work EVERY time not most times… but I’m getting there.

Meanwhile, apart from some storms which always seem to be somewhere else, the weather has been great. typically 30c or higher during the day and still t-shirt weather at midnight.

Oh if you get a chance – check out “Legends” – there’s an entire series 1 available on Sky catchup – bloody marvelous television.

Right – on with the jobs – you can’t beat Sunday morning with your fingers covered in clear silicon sealant.

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.