Bedrock

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Just to prove it’s not ALL bad back in Blighty, we’ve had on and off a few good days recently. I’m in Blackpool this week stopping at the Big Blue before heading off to see my pal Jonathan in West Yorkshire. The weather here today has been superb and after a quiet night at one of my favourite Italian restaurants (San Marcos here in Blackpool) I took a walk down to the seafront (all of 100 metres away) and took some photos, the result of which you see above. If only it was warmer here more often. Really pleasant.

A mere 4.5 weeks to go before heading off to Galera, where the temperature is currently sitting at 33 degrees mid-day – lovely. The inside of our home over there (according to my new remote temperature monitors) is 22 degrees in the kitchen. I plan to try out my new solar phone charger (it’s not bright enough here in the UK to test it properly) and of course to kit out the new automated timer for watering the plants (it IS possible to grow plants near our place but if they don’t get watered every night it’s curtains for most of them).  I can’t wait.

According to that last bastion of truth – the BBC website – the hottest place this Sunday gone was Britain!! Hotter at 27 degree than Tenerife, Nice of Athens!

It’s a shame I’d just fitted digital thermometers in and around Bedrock in Galera – which showed a peak temperature around lunchtime of over 30 degrees in the shade.

Poor old BBC!

I could not tell you how many times Maureen and I have looked at the weather forecasts for Galera only to see that they are WRONG. This Sunday was going to be cloudy and raining. It was clear blue skies and sunny.

So – a first ever for here… remote from the UK where we’re now enjoying sunshine… the temperature in Galera, Spain!  It’s now early afternoon, it was 33 degrees this morning in Galera, it peaked (in the shade) at 35 – and it’s currently 34.

INSIDE the cave is another matter… it’s been 21/22 degrees all day inside (blinds closed all but for one).

So there you have it – accurate info – and according to the webcam, the sun is blasting down!

An early start Thursday and off we went to Granada – just under 2 hours later we arrived at our hotel, the Corona De Granada and then off to La Alhambra, a Moorish strong-holding with 3 palaces and wonderful gardens. At 30 degrees+ all day it was quite wonderful.

After a great day touring La Alhambra touring the historic buildings and grounds in fabulous sunshine, Maureen, Louise and I went off in the evening to see some flamingo dancing – bus picked us up at 9.30pm and the festivities lasted until the early hours of the morning at which point I separated from the girls to go with a tour guide for some night shots of historic buildings. Sadly she then returned me to the wrong bus and off I went for a midnight tour of the city, with no map, no phone  and not a clue which hotel I was in – thankfully, the other visitors had maps and so alls well that ends well.

Great start to the morning, sun was running flat out from very early on and has continued through the day. The girls went off to the Panateria and I stayed in bed – sounds like a plan  – anyway the critters on the left we found wandering around together and the patterns on their backs were interesting enough to take a picture of – no idea what they are…

The other critter photo was actually taken just 5 minutes before updating this blog but I figured it belonged in here.. very obliging – stayed put while I took several shots…

So then off we went to the garden centre to get some plants and to investigate irrigation systems – sadly the latter fell through as they had the pumps but no pipes to go with it – their loss – as usual – Ebay comes to the answer. There are a ton of systems therein and I’ll soon order and fit one of them – the problem is it gets VERY hot here in the summer and unattended plants just can’t manage it – but as we won’t be here all the time I need some kind of automated setup – hence the search for a cheap, reliable irrigation system.

This afternoon is proving to be a sun-tanning session, I’m at the computer, the girls are turning red….last I heard they were tea-totalling tonight but as we’ve just brought in a ton of wine I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Update: Wednesday – I’ve just discovered the most AMAZING new video editor – life-changer – I’ve been using crappy Ulead Mediastudio for years and this blows it out of the water.  So while I’m off taking videos in the mountains – here’s Maureen at her first flying lesson back in the UK just before we left!

We’re there…. after weeks of rubbish weather in the UK  last week we’re in Spain.  Just before leaving the UK, Maureen had her first helicopter flying lesson – details and a video at our main Scargill site.

The weather forecasts were rubbish but it was super sunny here in Galera all yesterday afternoon and the girls were out there straight away having a chatting session with our very friendly neighbours. Photo above shows Maureen (top left) with Louise who came with us from the UK. We walked down to the village last night and for the first time, walked back – though I still can’t believe we actually made it up the hill. Alcohol is a wonderful thing.  On our first full day here the sun has been out all day – clear skies and according to the meter in Huescar it was 27 degrees around lunchtime. 

Tony the builder has been over, looks like the pavement will need re-doing so that’ll happen in the summer. We’ve also been out looking at wood burning stoves as the one that came with the property is useless. From there on we spent the day BBQ’ing before coming across our new neighbour Stephen from New York… and after spending some time with us he went off to Galera for more supplies – and we all spent the remainder of the evening outside our cave enjoying the fine weather and fine wine!