Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Monday morning we left Ametzagana in Northern Spain on our long trip to Galera. We decided to break up the trip by stopping overnight in Valencia. We weren’t expecting much but I have to say the place is a destination in itself!

We left Ametzagana in pouring rain which persisted until we got down as far as Pamplona where the sun came out and the temperature started to rise, getting as high as 28 degrees. We got as far as Zaragoza and parked up to get some lunch at a typical greasy-spoon outfit “Café Benedorm” – and had unimaginative burgers – nothing to write home about other than it was wonderful to sit outside and have lunch in warm weather.

A slightly annoying feature of Spain is the siesta at lunchtime which means shopping is a non-starter, so we had our lunch and departed but not before checking out a couple of shops and looking at some great shop windows.

See the jam-packed window on the left here. Don’t forget to click on any of the images to see larger originals with information.

I have great difficulty getting out of supermarkets in France and Spain once I’m in there as there is so much choice.

We’ve never been down Spain this way and we were both surprised by the number of windmills on the hills – we’re talking in some areas windmills almost as far as they eye can see – and that’s all the way down.

Teatime we arrived in Valencia at our destination, the Tryp Oceanic hotel just off the sea-front.  I was prepared for a decent hotel but what I was not ready for was the stunning sights on the sea-front.

If you’re planning a trip to Spain you could do a lot worse than make this a destination for a couple of days or more. We got to see a fraction of the sites and sounds – the place is (well, the bits we visited) clean, modern and some of the buildings are fantastic.

See the photos – we spent the evening out at the aquarium taking in the sights and at 10.45pm they had an amazing dolphin show which certainly made me think twice about dolphins and “awareness” as they seems to be thoroughly enjoying working with their bosses for the show.

The photos above are a tiny selection from the full set including short videos of some spectacular stuff from the Oceanographic… here on our Google web albums….

We started our epic trip to Spain on 22nd of July with the long and wet car voyage from Wark on Tyne down to Portsmouth – specifically Hayling Island to visit our pals Clare and husband Craig. After atrocious weather all the way we arrived late at night to pretty decent weather and a warm welcome. After an excellent meal, rather too much wine and superb company we went off to bed to build up our energy for the European trip to come.

Saturday morning we set off first thing from Hayling Island for the Portsmouth ferry to Caen, France. We spent most of the ferry trip sleeping but I can tell you that the food on the Brittany ferry was really good and the room, though rather small, was comfortable.

Mid-Saturday afternoon we departed from Caen to head off to see our friends Carol and Graham who live in a small town called St Martin de Sanzay in the middle of France. A typical small French village, the area has a square and bags of personality. We spent the night and as you can see on the right – they have a pretty spectacular garden though you can only see part it it here.

Sunday morning after a typical and superb French breakfast with Carol’s home-made jam and croissants, we set off on our trip down to Spain, suffering at times pretty awful rain (though the temperature never dropped below 18c) and stopping on the way at a couple of French gas stations (where folk like to live the old-fashioned way – see toilet), to arrive late afternoon at our destination of San Sebastian in the very northern tip of Spain where, guess what – it was raining.

Our first hotel in Spain was the Hotel “Pension Ametzagana” in San Sebastian. I’ll save most of my wrath for Trip Adviser and Booking.Com but suffice it to say neither the iPad nor iPhone would even recognise the existence of the well-advertised WIFI and after being told by two staff that the restaurant would open at between 8pm and 9pm, we had a couple of drinks (hence ensuring we could not drive elsewhere) only to discover at 9.15pm that the restaurant does not open on Sundays. The best they could offer was warmed-over Carrefour pizzas (and Carrefour pizzas are awful).

The bedroom at Ametzagana was small to say the least, with a corner bathroom so amazingly tiny, there wasn’t enough room to swing a mouse never mind actually have a bath. The place left me with the distinct impression I’d just visited a Russian jail. NOT recommended. We left early morning accompanied by fog, rain and the promise that our next stopover, Valencia, is super-sunny! The plan is to stop-over mid-day at Zaragoza.

Incidentally to answer any questions about the cost of fuel in France – Diesel there is typically 1.53 Euros or more and up to now it looks like Spain is somewhat better at 1.28 to 1.34 Euros – but no more cheap fuel, to be sure. This must be crippling the less-well-off, especially in Spain with 40% youth unemployment. Still – given what we’re spending on travel this trip, 1.28 is better than nothing. That works out at around 1.13 a lire in British money…

After what seemed like a great start to the summer this April, the UK (probably apart from London as usual) quickly descended back into rain and freezing cold. It seems it’s been that way forever but I do remember decent British summers way back in my youth… or maybe I just didn’t know the difference.

On Friday afternoon we headed up to Ellingham to stay with friends Aidan and Helen on our way up to Edinburgh airport. Why Edinburgh? Well, now that Sleazyjet have abandoned the Newcastle to Murcia run the prices have predictably shot through the roof.

Having a few drinks on Friday night seemed like a good idea at the time but at 3.30am Saturday morning having had not much more than 4 hours sleep, it seemed much less sensible as we headed up to Edinburgh for our flight, a somewhat-under 2 hour drive.

Arriving at Edinburgh airport we dumped our car and boarded the 7.30am Jet 2 plane to Murcia without any hassles at all (which in itself is probably a first) and the rest is a haze as I immediately fell asleep…

The second the plane doors opened we knew we were back in Spain… warm air, new paintjob at the airport, smiling faces – it might as well have been a different planet. Even the security guys at the airport were in a good mood, as Maureen went off to her separate lane for aliens (having an American, not British passport) the guy was keen to point out she could in future just come in with me (mind you on the way back out the people said he’d given her bum advice and insisted on her signing the forums just in case she turned out to be a terrorist.

With temperatures around 25c and sunny we headed firstly off to the Chinese store in St Javier (who now have 45w compact fluorescents for £4 – equivalent to 225w old-school lamps), then to Eroski for the groceries and a trip around the phone shops for new phone covers before heading off to Lorca to see the effects of the recent earthquake.

We must have missed the point at Lorca because the town is a hell of a lot bigger than the area we drove through but we did spot the odd multi-storey building with the bottom storey missing, replaced with steel girders hastily fashioned to prop up the rest of the building.

We arrived at the cave on Saturday night, driving through brilliant sunshine for much of the trip but with worrying storms brewing as we approached our village. There was even a short spell of hailstones or what sounded like them but the whole thing was over in an hour and the sun came back out.

Sunday morning we awoke to excellent sunshine and by early afternoon the temperature got up to 28 degrees outside, 22 degrees inside. Just about ideal I’d say… we filled the pool and went off for a late Sunday lunch while contemplating the weeds outside our property… (see photo).

By Wednesday afternoon the folly of leaving the laptop at home was already becoming apparent.  I certainly didn’t mind the partial freedom from work email and iPad is the best thing on the planet for consuming media but it is PANTS for writing blogs. I ended up using it to Logmein to my PC at home to use  the Microsoft writer as “Blogsy”, just about the only blog writer for the iPad, isn’t worth a light.. that is, until the power went off back home.

The bad news for the week is that had to so some work on the bedroom ceiling thanks to dodgy builders and repairs to the new gateposts, again just simple misuse of materials as I’m coming to realise. We also spent a bomb on cementing up the side of the hill above our place. The GOOD news is we also signed up with a much cheaper Internet provider who not only charge less but also give us a little more speed.

Location:Galera, Spain

For those of you who’ve been following the new wall and other updates – here is the new entrance complete with lighting – I can’t wait to see what it looks like in the dark.  The gate will come later but generally it will be black wrought iron.

That’s about all we’re going to have time to do this session, I need to get water over to the left side as well to water Maureen’s plants. It’s all starting to look pretty good now. We even have the street number sign plastered into the wall along with a “welcome” ceramic.

On a completely different subject but hopefully of interest, generally I’ve not been that impressed by facilities or technology in Spain. Their telecoms is distinctly backwards, electrical items, especially those from China seem incredibly poor quality, many rural areas are in a bad state of disrepair etc.

But one area that’s always impressed me are the roads here. While some of the country roads are little more than gravel, the main roads are superb… and most seem very new. Well, we saw this in action the other day and were well impressed.

When I arrived a couple of weeks ago I noted that pretty much the entire road from Galera to Huescar had been resurfaced. It had no marketing. A few days later I was driving along and watched the machine spraying down the dotted lines on the road quite rapidly.  On Tuesday gone, we left Galera and headed off to Baza.  There were no road-works at all. The “old” road looked just as it had always been. We spent most of the day there. On our return there was nearly half a mile of working, resurfaced road leading up to Galera. Now 2 days later they’re just finishing off the white markings. Incredible!

Gateposts are all wired up and working!

Considering a holiday in Northumberland? Why not stay at Hollyberry Cottage?

I got up very early this morning for no apparent reason and started looking through blogs on the subject of cave homes in Spain.

What a lot of rot some people write: We’ve been here for over 2 years now (part time) and so I thought I would create a short FAQ for those of you thinking of setting up shop here, not to put you off but to give you some real information:

Q: I’ve heard that cave homes maintain a constant 18 degrees all year around

A: Rubbish – and you see this repeated all over the place – it’s almost as farcical as some of the claims for Android tablets. The only way you’ll keep that temperature in a cave in Andalucía is if you keep heaters on all winter with the thermostat set to 18.  It’s October here now and when I walked into the place last week the cave was around 12 degrees. We’ve decided not to come here between November and May because it’s FAR TOO COLD inside and out. Last Christmas even with a wood fire on all day we still ended up shivering. If you live here all the time and can afford to run a decent pellet heater or similar then you might just be fine – but constant temperature without assistance – erm, no.

Q: I’ve heard that Cave homes in Spain need little maintenance

A: Re-painting is one of the main hobbies for Brits over here and it’s not that unusual to hear of bits dropping off – like parts of ceilings. You just have to look at how many places sell “Pictura Plastica” and various other white paints, plasters and mortars to realise they must be going SOMEWHERE. Every winter, mainly due to really poor building practices and materials employed in some areas, the lovely white paint just drops off external walls and needs re-doing. Part of the problem is the way they construct a lot of the caves with external walls being made out of simple breezeblock, improperly prepared and with plaster or paint slapped straight on top. Take a real look at any quiet area in the hills in winter or early summer and you’ll see the kind of renovation that needs constant attention. Where we are outside of Galera, it seems to be commonplace to utilise a fairly useless substitute for sand when mixing up mortar and it has very little strength – with the result that the nicely rounded walls you see (breezeblock with a dollop of cement on the top) fall to bits as soon as the frost hits them in winter. We’ve found that the choice of materials is paramount to getting the place to look good and STAY that way… and in many cases you’ll end up doing your own renovations if you need the job doing properly. If renovation is not you thing, then you’re going to be needing a good relationship with your local builder/plasterer!

Q: Isn’t living in Spain cheap compared to the UK?

A: No, it’s not. It WAS, but fuel is now almost comparable in price to the UK (strangely, diesel is cheaper than petrol here so there’s a price advantage there), small shop pricing (at current pound-euro conversion) is expensive and electrical goods are often priced through the roof. You can buy lots of things cheaply at the Chinese stores but the level of quality generally starts at poor and goes downhill from there. On the other hand thanks to free tapas, a night out at the pub can be very reasonable indeed. The thing I miss the most here in Andalucía is B&Q. I’ve not found anywhere that holds a candle to it, the nearest being Brico-Depot in Granada and elsewhere – DIY stores in nearby Baza are so very expensive.

Q: Isn’t the weather great in Spain

A: Generally yes, it does depend where you go. For example right now in October, at the coast there are temperatures up to 23 degrees and it doesn’t get that much cooler at night – REALLY nice – but here in Andalucía we’re looking at 16-18c with early morning temperatures as low as 4-5 degrees.  In the height of summer this year we’ve seen temperatures exceeding 40c in the afternoon – which is not much fun if you’re working but is bloody marvellous if you’re up to your neck in the local pool or one of the lakes.

Q: What about broadband?

A: All depends where you live. Spain has horrendously high costs of telecoms and are still very restrictive overall. For example you can get Skype-In numbers for many countries in Europe – but not Spain (still true in 2015). If you’re out in the sticks you have a choice of very expensive 3G dongle or in some cases Iberbanda Wireless. We use the latter – and it’s expensive – basic cost 40 Euros a month for less that 1mb/s – though it is that in both directions which can be handy for teleconferencing friends and family. It’s our experience that reliability varies unpredictably (2015 update: the broadband situation has changed, we use Habland and they are reasonably priced – but the broadband has a tendency to go off in storms).

Q: And car hire?

A: Beware, we just hired a car from the airport and they asked us to take their insurance (we have our own – and you need it as people here really don’t think anything about dents in cars as you’ll see looking around) – when we said no we have our own, they insisted on a 300 Euros returnable deposit – even though there was nothing on the website or the paperwork we had for the rental to indicate that this would be mandatory.  In the summer a truck took away one of our mirrors – and back at the airport, because we’d not had the driver fill in one of the company’s unfeasibly large accident forms at the time, on the road, they simply didn’t CARE who’s fault it was. Always check EXTRAS and the fine print and when parking, retract your mirrors – never fit into a tight parking space unless you want side dents in the car when you come back.

Q: What about crime?

A: There’s a reason people have bars on everything. Be prepared – it’s a recession – but then that’s the same back in the UK. We initially took the approach that crime had to be low or non-existent out in the hills around Galera – that was before local yobs broke through the front door in our absence and stole our TV etc.  Now we have a very pleasant steel gate which remains locked when we’re back in the UK – and inexpensive cameras we can monitor from anywhere. Local kids have been known to come out and cause damage to other properties. Don’t have false expectations and you won’t be disappointed – oh and out in the sticks – don’t even think of assuming there will be a police presence.

Q: Postal Services?

A: Well, we have a post box and post arrives  – but it can apparently take weeks for post to get to and from the UK. Also if you’re not there all the time, the local post office will only hold onto parcels or letters for a short time – then you’ve had it.  We’ve had 2 notices of deliveries and each time we’ve gone to the post office it’s been too late with no information as to where the delivery came from in the first place. Couriers are UTTERLY USELESS and will not want to deliver anywhere but the town centre. They need constant pressure to deliver and sadly many locals have given up trying.

Is there a happy side to all of this? Yes of course there is – the scenery here is wonderful, people are generally friendly and the weather is MUCH better than the UK. In my experience the Spanish are very friendly – the Brits tend to form into cliques little – but I guess that happens anywhere.

Gate next as soon as we find one….