Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Another cracking day here in Galera and we took a walk down to the village this morning to get an early lunch and grab a sandwich.  It turns out our long-missed car was ready and friends here VERY nicely took us to go and get the car at Caravaca De La Cruz. Sure enough it was NOT the battery as the roadside technician had concluded but a filter issue which had then gone on to cause damage elsewhere – the upshot being a bill in excess of 500 Euros!!   Having said that, the car now works perfectly and we took a drive over to Huescar for provisions and a new storage unit for my electronics stuff before returning to Galera.

This evening we ventured out to the Galera hotel where there were doing, as they do on Friday nights, baked potatoes the size of which I’ve never seen before – those of us who had them were totally beaten by the end but they were REALLY, REALLY nice!!! Interestingly we met a Geordie there who used to have a shop in Bedlington and knew a pal of mine, Davy Milne from years back – what a small world.  A great time was had by all and now we’re back early, totally beaten by the food.

Tomorrow we’re off to Huescar again having been alerted to a new supermarket out there and to get some round staples to replace the ones that friend Cyril loaned to us so we could light up the tree on our communal roundabout!

It’s 10pm, still warm as you like outside and the view is excellent. Perfect… how, if we could just get the electricity to work properly.

This photo is that of the wiring to our place…… this is what effect years of regulation poured upon regulation has had… ZILCH! Yes, that’s an un-armoured mains cable – with electrician’s tape covering the joints – outside – on the top of our hill!! Lovely.

As Britain descends back into the long autumn (after several days of superb weather in May) I can’t tell you how much we’re looking forward to returning to Spain for a short break. You’ll be able to tell when we’re here as we’ve brought some new lights for the communal “tree” in the middle of the roundabout!

Thanks to rubbishy Ryan-Air scrapping the flights and having to quickly get replacements, we’re heading off up to Scotland to get the flight to Murcia, stopping briefly only to watch the long-anticipated Prometheus – in 3D of course…

Our last day for a short while and the weather is absolutely marvellous, accordingly Maureen and I went off to the lake so she could collect some rocks…

In the process we ended up having lunch at the excellent lakeside cafe, NOT CHEAP I hasten to add but the view is magnificent (and I skipped breakfast and so was GAGGING for something to eat).

That’s where we spent the morning. Some of you looking in here might think I’ve pulled the same trick as the holiday companies with the editor on some of these shots – but I’ve not. There are two types of photo here, panoramas and HDR (to capture the range of dark to light) and that’s about it – cropped and dumped into this blog.. Amazing what you can do with an iPhone, the right software and just a little time and effort.

If I could have stopped here for another week, this morning alone was worth the trip as you’ll see. Enjoy the photos and please do click on them to see larger versions.

And if you want more.. I’ve put the whole series up onto Google Web Albums. Enjoy.

Día de la Tortilla occurs on the Thursday before Lent – and apparently this means everyone goes off into the countryside and eats Spanish omelette in a communal picnic.

Or, put another way, the BARS are closed. We found one bar open thankfully and had a nice drink with some of the Brits.

TODAY (Friday) we went off to the Renault dealer in Huescar in search of a replacement radiator pipe – a simple looking item but guess what – you can’t buy the PIPE, you have to buy the ASSEMBLY – which means replacing a load of kit that works perfectly and shelling out £140 in the process. Thankfully the dealer managed enough English to point us in the direction of duct tape! A trip to the Ferreteria and we’ve a radiator pipe that works as good as new – though it does look a little Heath Robinson. I’ll find some proper pipe somewhere when we get back.

We then went in search of lunch and on the way spotted a procession marching through the town… no need for explanations so here are a bunch of photos… marvellous. Feel free to click on the images for larger versions.

What an interesting day! We left Galera at 9am sharp and headed off to the outskirts of Murcia for a spot of shopping. Murcia is about 2 hours drive East for us and on the way, the temperature rose from just a few degrees to around 12c or so, sunny most of the way but with a little wind – to keep that in perspective we didn’t bother with coats when shopping. First stop Ikea at the Avenida de Juan de Borbón, Murcia.

Our cave gets very dark at night, well, pitch black so I was pleased to find some little adhesive movement sensor lights for the staircase… marvellous little devices which worked out at around 2 Euros each (packs of 2) – amazing value. Maureen bought a table (which no doubt I’ll get landed with assembling today). Next stop the nearby shopping centre and the Chinese junk store and on to the centre itself, somewhat smaller than, say the Gateshead MetroCentre but respectable non-the-less.

The Spanish excel at TV stores and so we ended up in SATURN 2, a massive store with everything from TVs through cameras, PCs through electric heaters. Pride of place in the store was a 100" LCD monitor costing a mere 22,000 Euros!! Needless to say we didn’t buy it.

After lunch, a mediocre affair within the centre, we headed off down to the coast to Torrevieja, about an hour’s drive just to take a look around. The temperature continued to rise but unfortunately the clouds also set in, contrary to weather forecasts. Interesting place, with a mix of absolutely DIRE touristy places on the one hand and on the other, some very up-market hotels and housing areas, well worth a couple of hours.

We had a very interesting walk along the sea front, taking in the view, seeing some VERY expensive yachts, a black submarine and a shipwreck! There was a market but it didn’t look worth investigating. The town smacked of a British tourist dump with lots of stuff in English – which kind of ruins the experience for me.

Around teatime we set off on the 3+ hour journey back home to Galera, expecting the temperatures to drop but not expecting blisteringly cold, almost impassable SNOW – which is what came out of the blue when we got as far as BULAS on the way back… we spent the remainder of the journey following 2 trucks which we could barely see and wondering if we were going to make it back… yet amazingly when we got as far as just outside of our village – it stopped – no sign of snow, rain or… well, anything really. We popped into the local bar for a pint and a pizza to warm up before heading off home for the night.

Quite an eventful day. I’ll leave you with some more photos…

Didn’t get up until around 10am this morning (9am UK time) – with double comforters as it’s a little chilly… I could have quite comfortably stayed there all day… but – we had to go find a plumber to get some repairs done to a burst pipe and so off we went into the village, stopping by Don and Carol’s place to see their pellet heater, a very efficient modern, remote controlled beast. Next stop the village and we managed to get the contact details of a plumber who turned up within the hour to fix the pipe! Job done.

We spent the afternoon doing odd jobs and a spot of reading before heading off to Huescar, encountering a bunch of sheep on the way as you see in the photo above. First stop the Chinese junk store then some groceries before filling the car up for our trip to Murcia tomorrow (to buy a table!!) and now we’re back at the cave, armed with groceries, warm as toast… and about to select a movie from NetFlix to watch. 

I spent part of the afternoon testing the new VPN solution to let us watch the likes of the BBC iPlayer and CatchupTV over here, after a couple of false starts and some amazingly fast technical responses from the HIDEMYASS people, we’re up and running. I checked out TOP GEAR on the iPlayer to make sure it works  – no problem.

So, some travelling tomorrow… quite looking forward to it – guaranteed sunshine and blue skies though it’s unlikely to get TOO much above zero degrees C before lunchtime!