Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Another sunny day today, warmer than the forecast. After a late start then doing some jobs around the house, putting up the postbox and our “welcome” sign on our new wall, we went off for a late and leisurely lunch at the Monte Carlo restaurant in Cullar – my favourite “Magra Con Tomate” in my case… then we went for a drive around the back of Cullar for no particular reason and discovered the municipal pool!

The pool isn’t in the best of condition but then it is the end of season – and it’s closed – it will be interesting to see what it looks like next summer. There’s a nice bar and restaurant there as well and what looks like a smaller pool for the kids.

From there we went off to Huescar for the “SpongeBob SquarePants” 3-day Fair – which turned out to be just a bunch of migrant types selling cheap Chinese goods – and a fair with rides in the middle of the town square…  when we got there the sun was going down and it looked a bit cheesy – lots of plastic goods and handbags – but to be fair we didn’t see it in full swing.

Personally I think Huescar does a lot better in it’s weekly market on Thursdays than this.

All in all not a bad way to spend a day – but wait for the next blog!

Yesterday was the airport run to St Javier (Murcia) – to pick up Maureen – and in the process I decided to make a travel day out of it and stopped by at Puebla De Don Fadrique at the same time.  A small town but it has some interesting sites as you’ll see in the included photos. I actually stopped off at some of the towns on the way to the airport just to check them out to see if any are worth visiting in the future…  I was wandering around Puebla De Don Fadrique when the solar power people rang me on the mobile to make arrangements -  they’re considering photo-voltaic tubes for our flat roof area(s) back in Wark in the UK so we had a brief chat on the subject and somehow by the time I shut the phone off I ended up near a Kodak moment.

I actually took quite a few pictures – at first with the conventional camera but I have to say for the likes of blogs I’m beginning to think I’m better off with the iPhone and the new processing software – slow but it does make decent pictures.

With only intermittent sun but decent temperatures, stopping off at the various towns made for a nice day out – sadly some are in bad shape no doubt not helped by the recession. Eventually after a shopping expedition to Eroski and the large Chinese store in San Javier, I arrived at the airport – Maureen’s plane turned up on time – sadly along with 4 others so it took them half an hour to get from the airplane to arrivals – this in a tiny airport carrying only hand-luggage!

We  headed off to San Javier and beyond and stumbled upon a pleasant looking Italian Pizzeria in the next town along…  and stopped for a pint and a pizza – my favourite type – Calzone – and one of the better ones I’ve had here (though I’m sure the Spanish know what they are doing, to me, most of their bread and pizza dough tastes like cardboard -  unless I’m just looking to the wrong places). This was the exception – very nice. Next time we’re there I’ll detail the name of the place and the location.

So the plan for today (Sunday) is to go to one of the better restaurants for lunch tomorrow then head off to Huescar for the last day of the festival. I’ve no doubt in between all that I’ll get a load of drilling jobs – re-sighting the letterbox etc etc….. All good fun.

Here it is.. the new wall in front of Bedrock– now that’s a little more like it. I have to wait a couple of days for the plaster to harden properly before finishing off the paintwork but from this distance you can’t tell any discolouration. How we get just a little bit of privacy without losing our view of the mountains etc… Sometime next week we’ll get a couple of lights for the posts and a gate.  If only we could get the builder or the council to get their finger out and maintain our road – life would be perfect.

Yes, the little pokey green car is my rental car. We’re still wrestling with the idea of bringing the Merc over – problem is – it’s too big!

Meanwhile our new friendly donkey is still working on the same patch of grass… I’m going to take him down a bucket of water as the poor thing looks parched…

It’s a lovely day today, the mist I referred to earlier is hanging around as you can see in the photo. It’s absolute magic. I went off to Huescar to get some shopping only to find that the place was closed down – something called the “Spongebob Squarepants Fantasy Show” (at least that’s what it looked like and there was a sponge on the advert and the word BOB) is on over the weekend so the entire place apart from a cafe on the square – was closed! I popped in for Cafe Con Leche and some Churos and on the way back noticed the mist. Well, I just had to get out and take some pics.

Now at 11.45am it’s hard to believe it’s nearly winter, the only thing that gives it away is the spectacular colouring on the trees.

I’m hiding out of the way now as Tony the builder is sending clouds of concrete dust up in the air… with luck I’ll finally get to take a decent pic of the new wall shortly as he’s finishing the rendering. That and a spot of white paint…. and job’s a good’n.

I’m just hoping this wonderful weather is going to keep up for Maureen’s week here. According to the weather forecast it might drop a degree, but the sun is planning on staying put. Magic.

Now to try the processed milk in my coffee… I’m not looking forward to this…

Lovely. Full moon, it’s 9pm and around 13.5c outside which isn’t stunning but it’s not freezing either… got a nice fire inside (22c) and the worst broadband connection possible! I screwed up TomTom on the iPhone and the only way to reload it is via the PC – which says it’ll be done in another 10 hours!!!!

As you can see on the right, I’ve now got 2 sets of the colour-changer solar lights – what a bargain (B&Q) and they work as well. Everything you see there is solar – sky was pitch black but the picture was a 6-second exposure. Tomorrow Tony the builder turns up to fix the gateposts and I’ll put a final coat of paint to cover up my wires.  I spent the afternoon working on the WIFI – I promised neighbours I’d try to come up with an arrangement that lets them use the connection when I’m not here for a contribution to my monthly bill (which I pay whether I’m here or not) and I’ve now got an extended external aerial and teatime I tested it – it pretty much covers the entire area, outdoors at least, I doubt it’ll penetrate cave walls. That meant fitting a second router internally but I had one lying around and now that’s all fitted up properly and tested.

I notice this fellow (left) appeared in the grassy area just in front of our place – he tethered – I’m guessing the farmer put him there to eat the growth – thankfully he’s not quite close enough to smell!

In the process of doing my wiring I ended up face to face with the horror you see below and right – something of an irradiated cricket – except I’ve never seen a cricket even REMOTELY that size, this fellow was near enough 6 inches long! I say was because he’s now languishing behind the woodpile with a mouthful of wasp killer. Hopefully he’ll have told his pals to keep away before going to meet his maker. Nearly gave me a heart-attack!

So not a bad day’s work altogether, finished off with a nice chat with my pal Jonathan and Maureen – though in both cases the quality was crap thanks to the TomTom download. I need to get shopping tomorrow and finish the vacuuming so I’m ready to to my rounds on Saturday which include a trip around Puebla De Don Fadrique for Kodak moments, shopping along the coast and finally a trip to the airport to pick up Maureen – that sure was a quick week… but then I learned how to do some serious programming in PHP (a language for the non-technical reader) and I’m feeling quite de-stressed which has to be a good thing. Hopefully Maureen  and I can find a suitable gate and post-lights next week and that’ll look really nice.

Up bright and early this morning to put the fire on just to add a couple of degrees.

It’s cool outside here in Galera, but the skies are crystal clear.  Hopefully by 11am or so it’ll be nice enough to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. Last night I was jealously eyeing up our neighbours pellet heater, a very high-tech device that takes small pellets of fuel (£3.50 a large bag good enough for perhaps a couple of days), starts automatically and gives out a frightening amount of heat, controllable over the Internet (though he’s not set that up) and generates no smoke, no internal fumes… and yet has the nice flame glow of a fire… magic.  Not that it’ll be doing much business here for a while as you can see by the weather forecast.