Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

This morning after a somewhat late start we headed off to the Huescar Thursday market – nothing remarkable but Maureen as you can see headed straight for the plants – several of which are now in plant-pots outside our cave. I bought myself a new set of cabinets for storing tools.

Then we went off in search of a new Ferreteria on the outskirts of town and bought an extension and some gardening stuff.

After a mid-day session of mounting towel rails and bog-roll holders followed by a spot of weed-killing, Maureen went off to do her staining thing while I continued to work on my new remote control board (bag of gadgets controlled via the Internet using my phone – nearly there).

I can’t believe it’s 7.30pm already – been experimenting controlling my board with a pal in Canada and the time has just disappeared. Off to La Posa later on as most of the Brits will be out tonight…. and we promised several we’d turn up – but it’s not going to be warm enough to sit outside in t-shirts unfortunately. It’s great while the sun is out but there’s a bit of a cold breeze behind it…

Yesterday morning we headed off to the coast – to Alicante to be precise. The entire album of our trip including yesterday is here for those interested.

From Galera it’s somewhat under a 3-hour trip – and Maureen and I watched as the weather went from partially sunny, through heavy rain and back to full, glorious sunshine.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend any amount of time in Alicante in the summer when it’s heaving with tourists but we had a very pleasant few hours there yesterday including stopping right at the coast for a late lunch at Rudy’s Pizzeria. REALLY nice pizza.

We made the sensible move, given the choice of small, medium or large, of sharing the medium – I’m convinced we could not have managed the large version – the waiter was kind enough to warn us beforehand.

This is the first time we’ve done any more than touch the surface of Alicante and while much of it seems to have been put together in the 60’s it certainly beats the hell out of watching the snow fall in the Northeast of England this time of year.

The beach was superb – almost no-one there due to it being the end of the UK school holiday week and the temperatures were no more than 18c but the sun was blasting and that made up for everything.

We took a good walk around to minimise the effects of lunch before heading off to the airport. A pretty eventless flight. Last night in Edinburgh was AWFUL, after some confusion over the name of the bus company taking us to our car which meant we spent half an hour standing outside waiting, the trip back down the A68 took place in blizzards. This morning – it’s snow here in Wark.

I’m sure there is some saving grace to being back here, but I can’t think of anything off-hand apart from the ready availability of half-decent bread for my bacon sandwich.

Don’t forget – you can click on any of these photos to see a larger version.

I got up around 7.30am this morning – of course my computer still says 6:30am – it’s still on UK time. There was a thick fog over the mountains and it looked like the sort of day you just want to go back to bed.

Maureen arose somewhat later and we went off down to Galera market to get potatoes for lunch – and then headed off to nearby Huescar to get a mains extension and some cheese for the potatoes. Surprisingly few sources of cheddar out here. Our normal supermarket (Ole) was closed for reasons beyond me so we went in search for another, calling in at the paint store for some wet rot repair….

We came back to the house for lunch and spent the afternoon catching up with emails and going for a walk across the hills.

After a brief interlude, putting up new fittings in the bathroom, thinking about throwing my laptop out of the window… you, know, holiday stuff… we spent part of the evening relaxing watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona – an excellent Woody Alan movie and one that shows Tom Cruise’s ex-girlfriend in a great light.

The weather was not quite bright enough to get my solar lighting running at full belt… and there was a little rain overnight. I’m hoping it’ll be brighter tomorrow but I’m not complaining compared to what we left back home in the UK.

A couple of glasses of wine and Norman Lay rang up –"trouble at mill" as it were… as Maureen was watching the movie I went outside to continue our Skype video – only to find the weather was improving (pitch black of course). Once I was off the phone I thought I’d try putting on the external lighting (we’ve a full complement of colour-changing LED lights outside) – that went well but by now the weather was turning again to cold – so I wrapped up the extension and as I was reeling it in – BANG!!!

Pitch black….  the extension lead feeding my external camera fell to the ground and the plug-in-the-wall supply made a WELL over the top exit in the form of a dramatic explosion, taking out the breakers.

I sit here typing, surrounded by a faint smell of firework night… it’s no big deal, I brought spare kit with me from the UK, everything is fine except for the power-less camera, but just something else to repair first thing.

Tomorrow the plan is get our CHURROS fix at the Huescar market and then to take our new neighbours down to visit the Brits for our usual (when we’re here) Thursday night session in town. I anticipate a very pleasant day and it’ll be nice to see who’s out here in the depths of winter.

The movie was great… reminded me of "Shirley Valentine". Woody Alan may be strange but he understands people.

Perhaps a glass of Rose?

Not the best start to a holiday… we set off 10am on Saturday morning ready to enjoy a nice quiet break over in Spain… no worries, just a nice, relaxing holiday with sun.

So first things first, by the time we’d driven up to Edinburgh airport, the keeper of the keys realised she’d left them on the hook back in Wark. We deliberated but really, there was no going back.

The lady at the airport parking company had all sorts of ideas about putting the keys on the plane – ideas instantly dashed by the ever so useless attendant at the Easyjet stand who simply said that Easyjet don’t do packages. I don’t think they’d ship their own dead mothers to their funerals – but hey, they’re cheap! Before getting on the plane, Maureen rang up our friends here in Spain to see if they could help with the no-keys-for-the-house situation.

We arrived (after I have to say quite a pleasant flight in which I slept for all but the part in which I watched Prometheus for the umpteenth time) in Alicante around 8pm – dark outside but really quite pleasant temperatures. Our car was waiting for us at the airport – and looking at the queues for Goldcar rental we reminded ourselves why we go through the hassle of having our own car!

We figured we might have to stop over in Alicante until the key situation was resolved but on ringing up we were told that the locks had been bypassed and we were ready to go!  Well done Shirley and Cyril.

Of course it didn’t take me 55 minutes to find the Chinese junk shop in Alicante and Maureen needed groceries. Thus, a quick spot of grocery shopping and a few photos and we started our 2.5 hour drive to Galera, arriving around midnight

We’d had the sense to have the heating turned on before we left and so while not cosy, the place was quite liveable once we arrived. One pizza and a bottle of wine later we gave up for the night.

This morning, Shirley and Cyril came over to give us the loan of a chain-lock as the builder won’t get here until the morning to sort out replacement locks. Excellent.

That means we can pop out tonight down to the village to see what’s happening.

Not a lot, I should guess, at this time of year.  It’s been foggy here today but the sun keeps trying to sneak out and occasionally succeeds. My solar lights are out there praying and we’re in here watching TV and blogging. By teatime, we’ve spent the day relaxing (not much else I can do until I get access to my tools) and realising that of the new LED lighting I brought – I forgot the WHITE! Ah well. Thank heavens for Ebay.

Even on a Sunday, the FSB emails keep coming in so I’ve filed all but the most important and we’ve just returned from dinner – a night at LA POSA with friends –priceless…. the sun never really did make it out – which is strange because apparently until today it’s been fine here with 21c at lunchtime not being uncommon!

Unusually we found ourselves in Alicante yesterday. We normally fly back and forth via San Javier but the prices this time were just a little over the top and so we did the Edinburgh-Alicante trip as against the Newcastle-Murcia version.

For those who don’t fly regularly, the airlines have this off to a fine art now – if it’s school holidays, you get ripped as they have a captive audience – so we find ourselves regularly checking all possible routes for the best deals. Advice welcome incidentally!!

Anyway, with a couple of hours to spare we decided to actually drive into Alicante. First impressions were not good. We headed for a set of blocks of flats thinking they might have some interesting shops – no – a graveyard. No shops, just housing – maybe that’s what some Brits want – a place to sleep and the beach… that would bore me silly – so off we headed to what looked like the city centre and sure enough it was.

Alicante from what little we saw, pretty much looks like any other city and isn’t a patch on the many rural sights Spain has to offer, but we did enjoy a reasonable half-hour checking out the quayside market in the sun.

Unlike much of Spain and pretty much all of the UK in early November, Alicante yesterday was enjoying weather in the lower twenties with lots of sunshine and very little humidity.

Worth another look in the summer? Sure! Don’t forget to click the images if you want to see larger originals.

Sadly, I can’t show the same enthusiasm for the airport which is huge, impersonal and just, well not that nice – ok it’s clean, I’ll hand you that. We dropped our car off and went in search of some grub.

What an absolute rip. The “Air Food Court” as it calls itself sells the most abysmal-looing crap in the name of food.  Here’s an example.. Maureen’s dish was no better…

I ordered Nachos – despite the apparent high price of a fiver+ (more than even the overpriced cinemas here in the UK) – and what did I get – well judge for yourself – most of the cheese looked like curdled milk.

I’ve been eating Nachos all over the world for decades and never seen anything like it (the best I recall were at the Hard Rock Cafe in Florida – cheese right down to the bottom chip).

I took them back for an explanation and the trainee desk operator told me the cheese was “Al fresco” – I’ll remember that next time I get served something that’s half-cooked… “oh, is this al-fresco?”.

So if you happen to be at Alicante Airport – SKIP THE NACHOS….

A fine time was had last night, we met up with Alan and Ant at Cueva Cascada and also with fellow Geordie Brian and his wife Maureen – some amazing work on lighting over at Cascada which has given me lots of new ideas for the future. We all had a great time – I spent some time talking to Ant who is Russian – he has one hell of a camera and it shows in his photos… and now I’m sitting here checking out Ebay for lighting.

We had hoped to get to the lake today for a baking but despite being 28c, it’s a little overcast. The lake is quite cool and so it really needs to be 30c+ to get the best out of it.

Maureen has been checking out properties this morning while I’ve been catching up with the email mountain and figuring out some new lighting and solar power ideas. I still have to hook up my remote controlled relay unit for controlling stuff on the mobile phone… amazing how powerful the sun is at sapping enthusiasm for projects.

I reckon I’ll implement some of this stuff when it gets just a little cooler maybe in October. For now we’ve a BBQ then there’s some horse show on later tonight and of course a trip to La Posa at some point.