Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Castillejar is a small hamlet in the Huescar region, less than 20 minutes drive from Galera. Last night having bought tickets to a cheap night out, we headed off there with friends.

The bar, Bar Pizzeria los Mellizos, is well hidden away off the main street in Castillejar (which has a population of well under 2000 people) and so in all these years we’ve never seen that particular bar before, though we have been to a couple of the bars in that town which are very nice. This event turned out to be a little different to the norm…

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Fabulous start to the week – as well as being peaceful and quiet – the weather has been startlingly good with temperatures past 30c most afternoons – which is good for sunbathing, good for the solar panel and good for heating the hot tub! All round good in fact, not to mention the sunsets.

After a peaceful weekend, we went off to the coast yesterday. Maureen was after some more plants and while we were there I picked up an Easter Island man to ward off bad spirits (well, you get the general idea).  And that leaves the issue of how to protect HIM…

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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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This is neither the first nor the last BBQ of the year. No doubt we will attend (or organise) many more – but this is the last of the open-air-in-the-country BBQs – by law.  From 1st of June many BBQ areas like this are of course usable – but not for live fire (BBQ) because it gets so very hot and dry, it makes good sense not to set fire to the forests – it would not take much! The areas are totally out in the woods but with chairs, tables and BBQ areas – all you need is wood and there’s no shortage of that. Really pleasant.

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Last week was a trip to the dentist – a lady called Mrs Sanchez – who’s surgery  is on the 2nd floor of a backstreet in nearby Huescar.

The image you see on the right is the view out of the waiting room, a small but pleasant area in a small but modern dental practice.

I think I’ve been there 4 times now and every time I’ve been treated quickly and efficiently – definitely to be recommended.

For those interested and needing treatment it is around the back of the market – Clinica Dental Leticia Sánchez Vargas on Calle Carril. You can’t miss the sign if you look up – she’s at the end of the street on the right.

And just down that road you see in the picture, on the right is a nice little outdoor cafe with decent coffee.

I wish, when we arrived here some years ago, that there was someone local, doing a blog, pointing us to the right places to go…

Pergola is now mostly done – solar lighting is finished and the new panel provides excess power I now use internally to power up some of my gadgets. All working very well indeed and I’ve learned a lot.

My solar panel experiments continue. The sun isn’t quite up to it yet – just as well because this gives me more personal energy to get things done. Here it is on the left, my nice 250w panel which outputs maybe 36v.  I’ve yet to work out an inexpensive yet solid frame for it but at least I can experiment with the kit I have to go with it.

The panel will feed out to a pair of “buck convertors” (not seen here) which are able to put out 15 amps each at anything from the input voltage down.  Because the panel regulator I have is designed to handle 24v systems (with solar panels up to 40v) or 12v systems (with solar panels up to 26v) it is not keen on the idea of powering a 12v system using a 36v panel… so I thought of another way…

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