Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Not too many updates in here recently, sorry about that – we’ve spent the past 4 months working on our new home in Galera. OUR FIRST HOME IN SPAIN SHOWN HERE – Bedrock – served it’s purpose from 2008 until the end of 2025, firstly for holidays in it’s most basic form to it’s final development a few years ago when we moved to Galera “permanently”.

When we moved into Bedrock it was just a cave, no garden, no wall, no gate… it didn’t take us long to make it our own, above you see our first pergola and the hot tub imported from the UK, necessary because of the severe summer morning heat here in Galera…. we simply could not sit outside in the sun for breakfast in our new holiday home without the shelter of a pergola….

As time went on we got more and more ambitious… the second pergola is shown here…

And finally, Bedrock in it’s ultimate version, seen here below at night internally and then externally in daytime 2021 with the hot tub replaced by our new pool.

By 2025, Maureen was yearning for a new project and in December 2025 we looked over at Calle Jaen (the local council calls it Calle Cordoba), an old, pretty much abandoned property which had not been lived in for 6 years and had never been given proper mains electricity.

Vast in size compared to Bedrock, the property needed immense amounts of work and in January 2026 we took the plunge and moved in – no water, no electricity – just weeds and the most horrendous taste in paint and decorations.

By mid-January 2026 we had started cleaning up the place, getting some of the basics up and running, we bought our first Lithium power supply and we replaced countless (mainly broken) 100w filament lights with modern LED lights so we could find our way around… lampshades are still a work in progress as I write this…

The cave came complete with a massive open fire which seemed wonderful until the first powerful winter winds shattered that illusion….

Next came the gas fire and countless Spanish shopping trips for furniture..

Note the gas fire running flat out to save us from freezing to death…. then came our first mistake, a massive, powerful generator able to power anything in the house yet unable to charge a simple battery pack – the Genergy 5500W unit was powerful, noisy and not cheap… and that’s when we started learning..

It all seems obvious by now but having never lived off-grid, we had no idea that there are TWO types of generators, one for builders etc. to power heavy duty kit like welders, and other high power tools and then there’s the “invertor” type for charging batteries and general domestic use. Ours was the former.

Then came what seemed like the answer, a Chinese “Invertor” generator… for the first day this changed everything… instead of running flat out constantly with the resultant horrendous consumption of petrol, the MaxPeedingrods unit (below) consumed fuel as needed and charged our battery no problem…. for the first day.

Then it packed in. It turns out it had a faulty coil. We got our refund and started all over again. This time we bought another Genergy unit but this time the right one for the job – 4.6KW of smooth 230v power output.

In the meantime we bought a gas cooker as the one that came with the house, like every other appliance and almost all of the remaining fittings and decorations – was complete and mainly broken rubbish. We’re still using the new gas hob in April and getting to like it.

Meanwhile we had/have our new, smaller, quieter and more efficient generator, again from Genergy – the Feroe 4600W which turned out to be a good purchase from a leading company… and we put that and the power unit out in the garage (with ventilation).

An early photo here on the left – the generator runs for a couple of hours or so a day and together with our battery pack and the loan of a similar battery from a friend – and with our first solar panel in place and a second one coming soon (with the hope of real electricity in the coming month or so) we’re starting to get somewhere – that and the improved weather in April has helped immensely.

Were I to start all over again I’d have bought a battery 3 times the capacity of the one we have but hey – you learn as you go along and the larger units are obscenely expensive.

As well as a second battery we also have the loan of some travel solar cells and on a sunny day can generate enough electricity to power just about everything except our washing machine and drier, the latter needing over 3KW to run… thankfully the weather is holding and we can dry everything in the sun 🙂

As we reach the end of April 2026, things are starting to come together – 3 functional bedrooms, 2 functional bathrooms, a functional kitchen, semi-working office (was a 4th bedroom) and of course the living room complete with pellet burner (with teething issues but generally superb and which we’ll probably not need now until autumn). The gas fire should hopefully soon be retired.

A work in progress – yes and with several more months to go before it’ll be done… but what looked at first impossible is at least now do-able. We have great views and the potential for a great outside.

The image you see on the right is representative but has had the pool and firepit added by AI and is currently a construction site – the pool base is being built as I write this, the firepit has yet to be started… the outside lights are up and running with more to come when I can honestly say they are running on free energy.

We’ve worked very hard on this since the end of 2025, cramming in the odd short break including a Christmas trip to the UK to visit relatives and see the superb Christmas lighting in Newcastle, ending 2025 back in Spain – in Mojacar with their spectacular Christmas lighting, then a trip to Telford UK for our friends wedding, back to Spain and the spectacular Aquilas winter festival then a Tina Turner Tribute in Benidorm and finally back to the grind here in our new base in Galera.

Early May I’ll be working on the cave (wiring, painting etc.) while Maureen takes another short UK trip – all in, a very busy time. And they call this retirement…

We’re moving across town shortly and while tidying up, I had no idea we had anywhere near this amount of incense – so I took a quick video… here it is…

After a quiet June, mid-July Maureen and I headed to Chicago and on to Minocqua, safe in the knowledge that we have friends visiting back in Galera and looking after the kitties.

First stop Malaga for a one-night stopover then onto Chicago via Dublin. The wine (right) was at a so-called Irish bar in Malaga 🙂

The Air Lingus flight to Dublin was easy enough but I can´t say the same for the onward flight to Chicago with legroom clearly meant for short people.

Once we got to Chicago we found that while hot it was a welcome relief from the endless sweltering in Spain. A relaxing few days with my sister in law then the three of us drove up to Minocqua.

Here are a few photos, I will put the lot on a publically visible library once back home, along with some drone and phone video. Watch for updates.

For now, we have spent a lot of time on one lake or another. A great way to spend the hot summer days.

I thought I had this covered, buying a travel screen and mouse for the phone here at Wallmart Minocqua, but the keyboard is letting me down so I will keep this short for now…

A friend of mine here in Galera just pointed out that I’ve been a bit remiss in updating this site – my Facebook pages and the tech blog are updated a lot – so – time to catch up in here.

Let’s see, since the last post in here – Maureen and had a nice trip to (of all places) Benedorm – a great tribute band at the Palace – then we spent 2 months over Christmas in the UK (mostly in the rain). It was never meant to be that way but between both of us having both eyes fixed (cataract operations) and the inherrent delays, made worse by having the flu meant we spent far more time over there than we planned.

Just before leaving Spain we discovered a great Chinese store near the Thader shopping centre in Murcia – something for absolutely everyone – dwarfs our local Chinese stores..

Here’s a picture taken before heading off to the UK of our then fairly new Bengal cat – then known as Lilly – because neither we nor the vet checked to see if he had bits.

I spent much of the UK Christmas on eBay – including selling my “old” DJI Mini 2 drone and buying the Mini 4 Pro – a major upgrade – I’m so glad I did that.

While in the UK we worked on building our set of Cobra glasses as you see here… I love Cobra..

Of course we also stopped to watch the first Starship Mechazillla landing – a phenomenal, momentous event – sadly things have gone downhill a little since then – possibly because Musk has taken his eye off the ball?

I also bought a new mini-PC for the UK – a marvellous piece of work for the price – maybe £250.. it replaces the old huge tower I’ve had for years over there and is faster, much smaller and generally a good move.

While in the UK we visited the superb Hancock Museum in Newcastle.

Back to Spain in February to discover the village now has 5G mobile signals – and now an updated picture of BILLY as he’s now known as he is starting to settle in nicely..

A trip to Cartagena with friends – the weather was great – more than it has been here in Galera until June…

You can’t see it but there’s a submarine just behind the folks above – and since then we’ve been to Guardamar, Rojales and several other place including a very brief look into Albox wherein we popped into one of the Indian restaurants there – not bad – see photo below…

– and now of course in June we’re enjoying the weather here in Galera. Sadly we recently lost my best cat-friend Simba but other than that all’s well.

Pool time now it’s hot…

Meanwhile, if I ever recommend a mobile phone service provider again, feel free to remind me – they are all an insult to used-car salesmen. For over 2 years now I’ve been using DigiMobil here in Galera, never needing support and hence never realising how shockingly bad they are. Very early in 2025, Galera went 5G and for maybe 3 months we were able to get tremendous, high speed mobile signals (we are line of sight to the mast) – no problems. Then, sometime early May, around the time of the national power outage. possibly before, it all went wrong with frequent dropouts.

Many users would not notice as they use their phones intermittently, travelling around in an area with regular dead spots – or using the 5G in a router (not many) to feed TV watching. What most non-tech-savvy users don’t understand is that given fast data, TV boxes will often buffer for minutes in the absence of a signal as will many Apps like YouTube – but for those of us relying on router-based 4G/5G for real-time communications and data transfer – frequent dropouts are a disaster – and what do Digi do about it? ZILCH. I’ve sent umpteen emails with proof of my claims that the signal is dropping frequently. I’m collecting ping data and have sent it to them. Then they come up with this “we only guarantee the service with phones”… so I went out and bought a phone to use as a router and what difference did it make? Zilch. Next time you hear the word “guarantee”, remember you heard it here first… I see Starlink in my future.

And that’s about it for now, we’re off to Granada soon and Maureen is off to the UK mid-month while I cat-babysit and sunbathe…

Just a brief entry… I may be wrong but I don’t remember such continuous August heat – indeed It was just as hot in most of July here in Galera (we escaped to the UK late July – early August but I’m told that while we were away, it was as hot as it has been since) – all gets a bit monotonous after a while – so it was interesting tonight to see a LITTLE bit of rain tonight.

Nothing like Northeast England rain mind you – it was still 30c -in fact really pleasant for sitting outside. I’ve been hiding away a lot working on my tech blog – and Maureen’s been doing a lot of reading. At least in our cave it is possible to shelter from the extremes, albeit I’ve been using my office air conditioner more than usual recently.

Update Late November 2024: I’ve been writing a lot elsewhere and not doing a good enough job of keeping this blog up to date – accordingly – after a VERY hot summer, Southern Spain has had some horrendous flooding – thankfully we’ve avoided most of that in the hills above Galera and continue to have nice weather WHEN THE SUN IS OUT, but I should stress it’s starting to get quite cold in the shade. Been keeping up with Spacex’s latest failure and hoping that Starship flight 7 will be much more successful. Maureen and I continue to enjoy the area and fairly regular trips to the coast.

Watched the PENGUIN series on TV – quite impressive makeup. Meanwhile our 4G broadband provider DIGI has dropped their prices again (25 euros, then 20, now 15 for completely unlimited use), sadly still no joy on 5G in Galera and coverage in nearby Huescar remains somewhat spotty. I note that back in the UK, prices continue to go UP – how not to attact long-term customers.

Please note: Items prefixed SALE: are not commercial – private items placed here only because Facebook is UTTERLY USELESS.

Unless I know you personally, cash only, buyer collects from Galera 18840, Spain – no couriers.

€85 + post or collect from our village.

This versatile, powerful yet simple to use GL-iNET 4G router can be used several ways.

Firstly as a 4G router – it can provide Ethernet and WIFi outputs – far more than a simple MiFi unit yet not much bigger.

Spitz initial setup – wirelessly –  turn on – leave on for a minute or two – hold in the tiny reset button for 10 seconds until the indicator is flashing quickly.   Within another couple of minutes you should have 2 new WiFi access points on your phone. Default WiFi password is goodlife. Ensure your phone is using the first access point – then in settings on your phone – go to 192.168.8.1 and access the control panel. Select ENGLISH and NEXT.

Create a new admin password – I use Pass123 for testing only (and temporarily untick “prevent weak password”.