Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

After recovering from this morning’s efforts, Maureen and I headed off Zujar in search of a “park natural”. Well, as often happens we got sidetracked.

See the mountain in the image above? That is the view from a “kodak moment” stop in Zujar, just outside of Baza (if you’re still not sure, upper Granada area).  You can’t see it in this image but right at the top of that mountain – there is a set of dishes…… a blow-up might help – see right.

The top of that mountain is just under a mile above sea level – and it’s BIG. So as we were driving through Zujar, for no particular reason we took a side-road – which looked like it was heading to the mountain… and kept going and going and getting narrower and narrower. About half way up the drive up the mountain, my ears started popping but by then our interest was up – we were going to take this through to conclusion…..

And so we did.. approaching the top the scenery was stunning not to mention the distance DOWN – but as always photos fail to capture this – here are some attempts however – including pics at the very top with the towers… Feel free to click these images to see larger versions.  I should add that these have not been touched, enhanced or colour-corrected in any way. It’s a great trip but if you are of a nervous disposition – don’t try it – some parts of the road which winds it’s way up the mountainside is – well, interestingly narrow with a sheer drop on at least one side!

Oh and take a good look around Zujar if you’re in the area, lots of excellent houses and buildings – quite an interesting town in general. See more photos on Google.

Thanks to a converted neighbourly effort… a sparkly clean roundabout! a couple of tons of stone, large amounts of black plastic and a lot of hard work.

Of course, it didn’t take a Spanish delivery truck more than 5 minutes to drive over the edge and give it a nice new black bootprint – but once again there we were with the paint-pots – and it’s still as good as new.  Richard is also having some work done – and in standard fashion the builders have been in – carved a load of material out and simply thrown it over the wall… it’s a different world here!

On Friday we set off from Galera to see friends Angie and Dennis down to the area around Cuevas Del Almanzora, near VERA, in Almeria. One of the problems with Spain is… it’s big and in rural areas there are simply not that many main routes – so you might be looking at the map on the right and thinking “surely there’s a straight line from A to B – well, no.

However, the route is pretty much motorway except for a short stretch at either end.

Arriving mid-afternoon Friday we all promptly went off to the beach and then after coming back to their place for a chat and a dip in the pool (remember we’re talking upper 30s temperature here – water’s pretty much part of the day’s entertainment) ended up in a nice little nightspot area nearby for drinks.

The following day we went back to the beach and after a battle with the (not insignificant) waves in which I ended up peddle-dashing my knee on the rocks – after fighting to get back on my feet without getting a mouth-full of salt water, I discovered I’d lost my specs in the sea – hardly a good start to the weekend as you can imagine.

Thinking about it, writing this blog isn’t much fun without specs – so guess where we’re going tomorrow – well today as it’s 1.45am already Monday morning. Anyway, we ended up in a really nice restaurant Saturday night to finish off a very pleasant weekend break. We spent most of Sunday morning driving back up to Galera, but managed on the way to find a great market near Vera (and temporary sunglasses for me – I normally wear reactolite varifocals). Spanish rural markets are much of a much-ness – you see the same Indian guys selling fake watches and fake sunglasses, but the quantity and variety of fruit and veg is worth seeing and in this case there was quite a large covered-over area selling plants, much to Maureen’s delight.

We got home mid-Sunday afternoon and as it was too hot to do anything outside, I finally got my two new remote cameras working…lots of improvements over earlier models – these allow 2-way audio as well as quite decent imagery, though being cheap Chinese IP cameras the audio is nothing to write home about…. at least now I’ll be able to keep an eye on both the UK and Spain on the iPhone… handy given the increasing unemployment rate in both countries!!

Oh, so there’s this puppy who seems to have adopted ourselves and our neighbours…he’s cute as well until he craps in the garden and starts barking at 1.30am – just after some “caller unknown” has rang twice on Skype and THREE have left YET ANOTHER stupid message saying how cheap calls are in Spain (despite being instructed verbally 3 times not to ever send me a text again). It’s going to be a long night…

Don’t forget you can see larger versions of most images by clicking on these smaller ones. More pics here on Google Albums

Hot doesn’t explain it- 43 degrees today, we went the long way around to the lake and eventually got there maybe 2pm and spent the afternoon. About the only thing that detracted from a beautiful day was a bunch of feral British children and their parents, screaming as if they’ve never seen water before. This was the turning moment that will ensure we buy a PROPER blow-up boat next time with a MOTOR. The lake as massive but most of even the beachy areas are inaccessible – unless you have a boat.  Just something big enough to take the two of us, two chairs and a box of iced drinks….

Tomorrow is the Huescar market, no doubt more swimming and tan-collecting – then Tomorrow night is the G8 summit as the Thursday drinking session is called – wherein a select group of Brits meet up and, well, drink. So tonight I’m settling down with a glass of wine and getting on working on my Facebook developments. No sign of my remote control cameras turning up yet…

You may wonder why no blog… well, that’s because we’ve not done anything new for a couple of days. It’s quite hot here, touching on 40c in the afternoons – and so yesterday I spent the morning working on a programing issue (Facebook refusing to do as it’s told) then wasted ages trying to sort SKY out (the EPG only shows the next 12 hours and so we can’t schedule recordings) – the afternoon in the lake and the evening catching up with the new Smallville series (not to be confused with the old series with Lana Lang which was quite lame) and the new and brilliant Hawaii 5-0.

Today Maureen’s been working on the watering system for her plants, I’ve been programming and answering emails and we’re just about to go off to the lake again to spend the afternoon getting some tanning done. Forecast remains the same for the next week.

Yesterday we went off to check out alternative lakes in the area. WHAT alternative lakes you might ask? We normally visit Embalse De Negratin – so for a change we thought we’d go visit Embalse La Bolera.

So, the first disappointment of the day though not ENTIRELY unexpected – you can’t SWIM in it – apparently it’s restricted for fishing though we did note one small group in there naked! No, I didn’t take pictures. Nice looking lake but if you can’t go in it when it’s 40c outside,  I’m not sure I see the relevance – so we skipped that and continued our trip to the little town of Pozo Alcon.

We got to Pozo Alcon around 2pm and of course nearly everything was closed. One of the Chinese supermarkets was open so we had a look in there and decided then to have a pizza for lunch. There were a number of pizza restaurants in town but recalled seeing a decent-looking one on the way in – so we headed back up just Northeast of Pozo-Alcon to the Restaurant Montealegre.

Bad mistake – firstly despite the big sign that says PIZZA, they don’t do them during the day, just at night – so while Maureen chose a Carbonara, I had my favourite – Carne Con Tomate, a simple dish of small meat cubes in a tomato-based sauce.  Second bad mistake – it was like chewing string. First time I’ve ever had a bad eating experience in Spain other than an over-greasy salmon in Velez Blanco.

Still, you can’t win them all, so we headed off to our normal haunt of Embalse De Negratin and spent the rest of the afternoon in the lake – with temperatures approaching 40c it was WONDERFUL.

We finished the day with a trip to BAZA for some supplies and a lazy evening.

Today I was back to my usual grind, fathoming out some coding issues and continuing to learn about Facebook Apps. It’s amazing how many hours you can sink into something so apparently simple – Facebook’s atrocious documentation doesn’t help. We finished the evening with a trip down to Galera village – lots going on until way past midnight…then caught up with the excellent “Superman- the early years” series and now giving up for the night, ready for a day of meetings tomorrow.