Bedrock

Friday – the end of our first week back in Spain – amazing how time flies. Today we got a lot done – we bought some more furniture for upstairs, we met new neighbours this morning, we bought plenty of paint supplies, I fitted a couple of light fixtures – and ended up in Bazza in a local bar and discovered a new variation of Alhambra beer. The night ended up at the local pizzeria meeting even more Brits, a retured banker and his wife – seemed nice folks, they’ve just returned here from a trip to Southern France – and no doubt we’ll see them again in the coming few days.

Last night we ordered a new settee for upstairs (from a shop who speak no English AT ALL – thank heavens for electronic translaters is all I can say) – and the guy delivered it the same night, so upstairs is now starting to take shape – just – but I’ve not taken photos yet – coming soon. I then ended up after the odd glass of wine, on the top of the mountain watching stars. Can’t remember if that was BEFORE or AFTER the power went off – apparently the electricity we have is temporary until they hook us into some new hydroelectric plant (WHERE I don’t know as there’s not water around here). It is SO dark and SO clear up there on the other side of the mountain that you can see not dozens but many hundreds of stars and clusters of stars not to mention a clear view of the edge of the galaxy – and it’s not unusual to spot more than one satellite passing at once. If only I could actually put a picture of it up here… someday when cameras are 100 times more sensitive perhaps. The telescope though looking pretty isn’t actually up to much.

Meanwhile despite forcasts continuing to show the odd cloud, the sky remained blue and clear here. I’ve now fitted our new door anti-insect mechanism, a series of orange plastic stripes you have to fight your way through to get in the door. The small photo above-right is a reminder of the cave upstairs before we started – and the larger photo to the right is where we were yesterday before the settee arrived yesterday. I’ll print an update once we get some more furniture and the odd painting in there.

Tomorrow I have a new spotlamp to fix in the main room above the table and lights to replace – incidentally the photo on the left is the public pool in Galera – not been down there yet (telephoto shot) but as you can see it looks lovely and I’ve yet to see it crowded. Thankfully therural broadband seems to be working properly now so the phone and Internet radio are back in action (we’ve already found a couple of English-speaking Spanish stations that are worth listening to).

Maureen is off on Monday to look at another unreformed cave, this time with 3 “bedrooms” – I don’t even want to think about it!! I’ve eaten more concrete dust in the past few weeks than I care to recall. I’ll be staying in to wait for the builder. It’s all starting to look and sound more like a home. Early this morning Maureen went off to see the new neighbours leaving a whirr of washing machines and other contraptions doing their daily chores. But no traffic noise, no screaming kids, just the odd sound of blasting kit many miles in the distance as yet another home starts to take shape. Next thing I knew we had a whole family over checking out the place.They seem nice and I’m sure we’ll see more of them in future.

In our travels today we came across some kind of festival in Cullar (pronounced COOYARR) and I’ve dropped a few shots into FLICKR – one is shown here. I’ve also been on the web and bought a VERY comprehensive set of Spanish programs for the Smartphones – dictionary, text translator and holiday phrases programs – hopefully now the hated “Franklyn” heap of rubbish will end up where it belongs. The software we’ve bought allows you to enter English phrases into the phone and translate them there and then into Spanish.

We spent the afternoon in Baza (pronounced BATHA – Z’s and C’s tend to come out at TH in Castillion language) and of course wecam back having spent a bomb on carpets and furniture. Before leaving Baza we sat outside a local cafe/bar. Typically in the smaller towns if you order a beer you get TAPAS with it – thrown in as it were…. very pleasant – indeed if you drank enough you could skip dinner. We ended the evening sitting outside our local cafe in Galera and it didn’t take long for another English couple to introduce themselves… so that was a nice end to the evening.

Don’t forget these photos and many more are available at FLICKR… just go to flickr and look for the relevant set – latest photos should come up first. More later – it’s been a busy day and no doubt Saturday will also be a busy day – starting with ANOTHER trip to Baza to get some more stones – you’ll see the point in my next blog – Sunday, we’re off to the beach!

We’re back in the sun! As the weather in the UK takes yet another downward turn (Newcastle raining, London raining, Blackpool cloudy) we’ve now begun round two. As a recap and to make this legible for anyone looking in for the first time, Maureen and I visited the town of Galera, near Huescar, in Andalucia, Spain in February and came back having bought a house – to be precise, a cave-home. We call it “Bedrock” after the Flintstones!

After many phone calls and even more emails – including selling another property in the meantime, in Late July we spent our first two weeks in Spain with solicitors, builders and in furniture stores getting the basics together – including a 4-hour round trip to Carrefour and Ikea followed by intense furniture-building.

It’s early morning on Thursday and we’re off shopping. We spent yesterday building, cleaning and putting the jacuzzi together – and had our first dip it in! Maureen has been having a frantic clean-up as the builders have been in and the place was covered in dust, the main bedroom is just about ready (bed is now in) and a shower head has been fitted externally. All that remains is to finish off putting up fittings all over the house. Temperatures are currently hovering at 25 degrees C – just nice. Sky is clear – it’s going to be a hot, sunny day – again.

We’ve hired a little Ford Focus which apart from having absolutely no power is just fine for the roads around here – the petrol engine really does make a difference when going up and down the hills. We stopped at a motorway cafe on the way up – 5 euros for 2 decent coffees, a pile of bread and a large plate of tapas. See jacuzzi on left – still lots to do including putting down pavement and more plants – but it’s in and it works. Tried it out yesterday at lunchtime – with water temperature a nice cooling 26 degrees C – lovely.

In between trips to Spain, we’d long since made arrangements with friend Marsha from the USA for her and her 2 brothers, Dave and Derek to come over for a couple of weeks, so this short blog is about that interlude. Of interest, Dave and Derek work for Pepsi and Coca-Cola respectively.

We’ve all had a great time, we started the interlude with a party here at our place in Wark which went very well indeed despite the rain which stopped us letting off fireworks which friends Bob and Margaret provided. That was followed by a great night at the neighbours and several trips to the local pubs. By now the boys now know pretty much everyone down at the Grey Bull in Wark – as I write this they’re off for the day to play golf at the Bellingham course.

I think I can safely say that up to now this has been, weather-wise the worse August I can remember – pretty much constant, miserable rain throughout the summer. I can’t tell you how happy we are to be clearing off back to the sun in a few days and what a shame for the many people who are visiting Britain for the first time right about now.

We continued our journey with a brief trip to York – primarily to get the badly pitted wheels on the Merc fixed. They might be able to make paintwork that lasts forever but it’s all a waste if your wheels look like crap. I could not find anyone in the Northeast to do this promptly and so on the Internet found a company near York who would blast the wheels and powder-coat, restoring them to new condition – and they look absolutely GREAT. While we were there, we went to the JORVIK centre, my second trip – and if you’ve not been there I can highly recommend it. Experience York as it was back in AD975. Great place, they successfully recreate the sights, sounds and SMELLs of the era. Great value. Note that the top photo shows some flooding in York when we were there.

Of course I never really stop grafting and throughout the trip I was testing the new HTC Touch Diamond – which has great promise – however Orange’s current version leaves something to be desired – with the battery regularly getting hot and reducing operation to less than a day. This, apparently is due to a bug which has been fixed – but not in the Orange version. But the email works – and that’s what’s important.

After a couple of days back in rainy Wark we travelled up to Scotland to spend some time up at St Andrews so the boys could see the golfing followed by an overnight stay in Aberdour- I’m not a golfer and the weather was a challenge but the place is really nice – I can see the attraction – on a hot sunny day the scenery would be marvelous… and then we went on to rainy Edinburgh – all I can say is thank heavens for plastic macs. The festival was good but the stalls seemed to have the usual mix of people selling assorted hand-made and passed from show-to-show gothic jewelry, paintings derived from Photoshop images and skilled acrobats with attrocious people skills… and to be honest although we didn’t cover the whole festival by any means – I didn’t find a burning desire to buy anything – but then as someone who’s done this trip many times perhaps I’m a little jaded – our friends from the USA had a great time. Of course we had the obligatory trip to Jenners department store.

While in Edinburgh we visited the Royal home at Balmoral, which again for those new to Britain must’ve been fabulous, personally I found the inability to take photos indoors annoying – especially as taxpayers of one generation or another effectively paid for all of this – and the interior, well, not that exciting, really – I would not want to spend a lot of time there myself – there are far, far nicer historical buildings elsewhere in the UK. The surrounding scenery however is priceless.

Interestingly on the way down the A68 we encountered deisel costs from as low as £1.18 (at the Coop) to £1.29 and beyond. Apparently the record is currently £1.60 !!

Everyone had a good time despite the weather. I bought myself a set of noise-reducing headphones at Currys – which don’t – so they’re going back at the earliest opportunity but the guys bought lots of stuff to take back home.

A quiet day today, we’re back home, there’s a ton (literally) of gravel to spread around the garden and we’ve just a few days left to ensure we get everything we need for the return trip to Spain. The night-glow glassses and ice-cubes (for the jacuzzi) turned up, got the telescope ready, Meanwhile if my pal Jonathan, who’s been in hospital, is looking in – hope you’re feeling a lot better.

For our last couple of days in the UK for now, we spent the weekend with our grand-daugher Holly – tripping off to Bolam for Sunday lunch – wherein a bunch of folk turned up driving Penny-Farthings!! Sunday was the first day of the summer that was actually sunny all day, but today, Monday, it’s back to the standard miserable rain!! I really feel for anyone who decided to spend this summer in the UK.

Just about ready, Maureen is mowing the lawn and I’m collecting together all the bits we’ll need over in Spain. The new phone I fear is going to be an issue as I’m not getting a day out of the batteries even with the updates. Thank heavens for car chargers!

(Updated 25th Aug): The first two weeks went incredibly quickly and after a quick break back in the UK, we’re just about to shoot off again for the second part of our set-up trip.

On the last Wednesday night of our first stopover in Spain we found a decent pizza cafe in Huescar (and discovered that some Spanish parents have the same utter lack of control of their kids in restaurants as do some British parents – but at least the food was good). We have a growing list of items we need to bring back with us when we return.

While we’ve been back home, the jacuzzi has been put on it’s base, we’ve had some more sockets put in, the wine cooler is done and we’re hoping the main bedroom is ready to populate.

Currently packing everything for the trip back to Spain, bought a DVD, nice little Philips job that handles DIVX movies and has a handy USB socket on the front. MORE cables ready to go, we need to sort the above, bring back some adaptors and lights, put a couple of carpets down, bring more clothes… but you know, in the first 2 weeks we didn’t do a bad job, we discovered some worthwhile markets, bars and restaurants – and more importantly actually started to get to grips, in just the smallest way, with the business of talking to Spanish people in Spanish (most of which I’ve now forgotten), in the process discovering what an utter waste of time the Franklyn translater was – DON’T BUY ONE. I’m currently looking for something more modern for Pocket PC. Hopefully next time around we might get to spend a little more time in the sun (very little added tan this time around due to being too busy).

In the interim period returned to constant, pouring rain in Newcastle and it stayed that way until today (Sunday) – it’s been a nice day. Worse, we arrived home in Wark only to find the power had gone out in the kitchen several days earlier and so we had to bin the contents of the deep-freezer and the fridge-freezer! I’ve since uprated the house earth leakage breakers.

Last week we took delivery of a telescope from China complete with attachments for my Nikon – if the weather keeps up in Spain I be able to take some photos over there – I didn’t mention it but the sky is incredibly clear in the mountains and you can very clearly see what looks like a thin cloud but which of course is looking straight through the centre of our galaxy. Over here in Wark it’s only vaguely obvious on very clear nights.

Another scorcher – 39 degrees peak! I note meantime rain in Newcastle, Blackpool and London – some summer, huh!

First thing this morning (Wednesday) we went off to BASA for the market. The trip was interesting for a number of reasons – the market was ok, nothing special, but I did spot something I’d forgotten all about – a combination of silverskin union, red pepper, cucumber and olive on a stick, all pickled.. one of the market stalls was offering freebies to try, cooled – and I was so impressed I bought bowl full of them. Lovely – of course by the time we got back to the car they were gone.

In Basa itself we had to visit the supermarket for drinks and ended up in a bargain store buying half the shop – cheap compact fluorescents, mouse mat, keyboard, earphones and a boatload of domestic items. We then set off to the pool – and had a laugh as we had 2 satnavs – running under 2 different operating systems (Linux and Microsoft) and NEITHER of them could get it right. On the way there they tried to put us in a loop up and down the motorway – then on the way back for a second one of them tried to send us on a 15km detour!

At the pool we met a Brit who informed us that there might be a problem owning a car here unless you’re a permanent resident – we need to look at that as buying a little car is part of the provisional plan. Back at the ranch now and Maureen’s watching TV while I test out the new toys.

This is our last full day for this leg of the trip – back to the UK tomorrow (and NOT looking forward to it) for a short while before returning for round two. Hopefully by the time we return, we’ll have a bedroom, office, working jacussi and maybe the place won’t smell of turpentine (used to clean the wood).

Monday we went to "Embalse De San Clemente" – one of a series of "dammed" lakes outside of Huescar.

Note the first photo on this page. I tried my best to capture a dust storm but failed miserably – but if you go off to Flickr and view the original – you’ll see in the middle, just to the left, a glimpse of the storm, which as it went past us seemed very much alive. No more than a few yards in diameter, this rapidly rotating marvel travels around whipping up the dust, appearing almost alive. We’ve seen a couple of these since arriving.

Photos really don’t do this area justice – a superb dam, by the look of it very new like a lot of things around here, well maintained – and strangely for August, people-free. I say strangely – not really because the actual roads to get down to the waterside are pretty much composed of sharp rocks – we tried various means of getting down to the lake itself and failed miserably. Indeed I’m amazed the tires stood up to our attempts.

Driving around the area pretty much took up our Monday afternoon and so we headed back to Huescar – like everywhere else, the shops don’t re-open until 6pm and in the meantime Maureen discovered a guy in a little workshop making rustic furniture to order… (oh, dear)… we then finished the night off with a pizza at the local cafe.

With much of the furniture put together and the jacuzzi on hold until the second part of our trip (we go back to the UK for a short while later this week then we’re back here till September), Tuesday we went off to the local swimming pool so Maureen could work on her tan and then a quiet night cruising the village bars.

Included here are some photos of the trip out yesterday (many more on Flickr – just click any image), temperatures peaked at 38 degrees centigrade (supposed to peak at 38 today) and as you can see in the images – the sky was clear blue. At one point I was thinking "crikey it’s hot" in a British complaining kind of way… but then I remembered I’d had a message from one of our staff in London earlier in the day to say it was raining there. I’ll settle for the heat.

Also paid for the house insurance yesterday then went off for a couple of hours swimming. STILL no fly-guard for the front door – maybe today…

Meanwhile I’ve been checking out video sites (Youtube etc) which are slightly more flexible than Youtube and one promising system is called blip.tv – so I thought I’d give it a go. I’ve done a fly-through of the cave as it stands (warning the cave is WAY from ready – upstairs is still a building site).

Another fine day in Galera. It’s mid-morning and the sun is once again shining. Maureen’s gone off to the village to get some supplies and the all-important fly-stopper for the front door. Despite our excellent electronic tennis-racket-fly-killer and screens on the windows, the odd one is still getting in. I’ve been downloading panorama software so I can stitch stuff together – see the lake shot on the left. Moving the jacussi has apparently fallen through for now due to it being August! Apparently they all go off on holiday in August like we do! I’ll have to take a trip into town to see what can be done.

The builder should be in later to finish off the concrete plynth, meanwhile I’m going to spend a little time on the wiring in here, right now the desk area upstairs resembles a bird’s nest.

For the techies – I’ve been doing most of this blog updating in Firefox – using add-ins ScribeFire and Fireflix, editing images with FastStone and Gimpshop – meanwhile the panoramas are being made in Panorama composer. Almost all of the above is free.

Right, enough chatter, things to do, people to see, places to go. More later as things progress.