Bedrock

A quiet New Year’s Eve: An interesting day, we went out shopping and then I spent the afternoon updating the computer equipment and software. Had a visit from our friendly local builder and as usual exchanged stories with local Brits taking their dogs for a walk. Considering we’re up in the middle of no-where there’s plenty going on. The rumours proved correct – pubs are now closed until midnight tonight (NYE) here in Spain! But as we’ve several bottles of wine, chocolates and enough raw materials to make a couple of decent pizzas we’re going to be just fine. Waiting for the neighbours to realise the pubs are closed and I would not be surprised if we get a knock on the door!

New webcam setup: On the left you can see the teatime image taken by my new webcam setup – new software, newer, faster PC – hopefully this time it’ll keep working for a couple of months before we’re back. Popped out tonight to get supplies and we were pleasantly surprised by the street lighting in nearby Huescar. It’s cold up here in the mountains but by the look for the forecast, nothing compared to the conditions back in the UK.

Cold but not THAT cold: It’s 8pm here and the temperature is around 7 degrees, JUST warm enough to put up some rope light as you’ll see in the image below. On our way back from the shops (way up in the far left of the webcam image above) you can see our blue light clearly so by now I’d imagine we’re the brightest thing on the horizon! Got the Cava ready and Maureen has the DVD working so we can catch a movie!

Early flight: Up early tomorrow as we’re on the plane mid-morning. Can’t say as I’m particularly looking forward to going back to rainy old Britain but we’ve only a couple of months to go before we’re back here – at which point I reckon it’ll be a wire brush and a pot of paint for me!

For anyone looking in and particular for our friends – a very HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL – here’s hoping the weather forecasts are slightly pessimistic! (Update 8am New year’s day… we’re off!)

Snow-capped mountains in Spain: Spent the day doing repairs and a spot of painting and then going for a walk across the top of our mountain. It’s been a lovely day considering it’s the end of December and there has not been a cloud in the sky. In the photo on the left you can just see snow on one of the mountaintops in the distance – if you click on the photo it should take you to the FLICKR original.

Hello Vera – planting plants in the rocks: Maureen’s been experimenting with planting aloe vera in the ground – which is a kind of white clay… only time will tell if this is a success.  If this weather keeps up, tomorrow I may well open up the jacussi with a view to replacing the electrical panel and pump, however the forcast for today wasn’t that good (though totally wrong) and so I’m not counting on it.

More caves in Spain: Over on the left is a cave as yet unsold which is lovely – it might not be obvious but it’s huge, there is enough room up front to park 2 or 3 cars but the road is currently unfinished (rumour has it the builder put the road in without permission) and so it could be some time before this is on sale. You can walk up the side of the house and around the back and if you walk over the hill behind it there is a “back entrance” on the other side of the hill with a rather large bathroom therein. It’s 4pm here in Galera, I’ve been filling in spare time reading my new search engine marketing book and putting some notes together (how sad is that) but now I think a spot of TV. May as well enjoy it while I can – next week we’re back to the land of the wet and a busy schedule.

Spanish rip-offs: Monday – a nice enough day, went to Huescar to pick up some bits and pieces and ended up getting fleeced in the new hardware store – £17 for a pair of needle-nosed pliers!  Did a spot of travelling around as you can see in the image on  the right… and ended up back here early afternoon just in time to fix a “small” problem with the bedroom wall – a bit of loose paint which then turned into a 2-ft square problem with the wall, all of which was fine until I started to vacuum the mess and the vacuum gave up spraying the room with my collected dust!  So we’re watching a spot of TV then it’s off back to the town to get parts for the vacuum. No rest for the wicked!

Comparison of Spanish and British fuel prices – we’re being ripped: Some information for you….  checkout the price of diesel over here.. and that’s not the cheapest. The price is in Euros incidentally.  81.9 cents – and that’s a on dual carriageway in the middle of no-where.  Compare that to motorway diesel in the UK even despite the high cost (for us) of the Euro right now. Doesn’t it make you sick. Americans looking in will wonder what the big deal is (that’s a litre, not a gallon – and in the UK we’re paying around £1 right now)

New door sign at Bedrock: Well, the hot-tub fixing didn’t quite go as planned – it’s too cold! Saturday night we ended up in a local pub/restaurant. Yesterday was very quiet and so being a Sunday I basically sat and did nothing – nice for a change. Got the new sign up above the door as you can see, however.  The neighbours popped in last night to borrow our hosepipe. Apparently the builders were having an off-day when they built their house, as the mantle above their wood-burning fire was actually built into the chimney, the result being that as the chimney heated up while they were warming their new cave, the wooden mantle set on fire!!! Spanish building regs are obviously not quite as striktly observed as ours!

Buying batteries: Anyway it was a good opportunity to meet new neighbours. Today we’re off to Baza to get some provisions and a new battery for the UPS – Maureen seems to think there’s a new DIY place so I’m hopeful.  It’s cloudy outside and around 7 degrees C. The fire’s running at full steam ahead and only just keeping the place warm. The electrician has been over to doctor the main fusebox at the top of the hilll so we’re now sharing 40amps between us and the one neighbour who’s in situ right now – as against an impossibly low 20amps. Problem is the wiring is still temporary out there – and so the voltage drops significantly when you start turning heaters on – I’m trying not to think of how much of our electricity is heating up the mountainside!  The WIMAX on the other hand is working a treat and so at least we can keep up with what’s going on in the outside world.

Panasonic pocket cameras: A quiet day ahead I think – not much chance of any Kodak moments – but I am researching a new camera. We bought Maureen a new Panasonic Lumix, the DMC-LZ8  and I’ve been looking at the range – I’m coming to the conclusion I’m getting little benefit out of lugging my unweidly SLR around as the top of the range of the Panasonics – which still fits in a shirt pocket, has 10* optical zoom AND HD video capability.  More on that elsewhere.

Snowing in Spain – the bit they don’t tell you in the brochures: WELL – this wasn’t quite all we’d hoped for – after a lovely Boxing Day in which we got off the plane at Malaga to brilliant sunshine and had lunch in the sun (in the same mall as my favourite shop – Carrefour), we arrived 3 hours later in Galera to find that they’ve clearly had a bad winter! Bits of snow are still lying around and some of my lovely white external paintwork had just simply dropped off (easy to fix) and the cold water was stone, cold dead. Worse, we got into the house, turned every electrical heater on we could find and BANG – off went the electricity, not just ours – but the supply for the area. Turns out that our cheapo Spanish builders still haven’t put a proper supply in!!

Thankfully the electrical fellow came out and pressed a button somewhere and so our first night was spent hovering in front of a not inconsiderable wood fire. At least this time we remembered the Sky card. Oh and we now have a bath.

On the remote webcam front, it turns out the misfunctional webcam was my fault, in the summer I put in a relay for the WIFI, sending the signal up the mains to a router upstairs. I turns that off when we left I turned off the mains relay but left the router on – giving the computer downstairs a choice of 2 similar routers, one of which had no Internet supply. It’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did!

Saturday morning we got off to an early start, getting the fire going again. It’s now 10am and the living room is just starting to warm up. Turns out the water wasn’t really broken – just the plumber being over-cautious when fitting the bath so we went around and turned everything off. All up and running and electricity permitting we should soon have hot water, to boot.

Our new sign: I’ve just been up on the steps fitting the new “Bedrock” slate sign kindly donated by friends Bob and Margaret. Weather outside is, well, better than the Northeast of Britain but only just. There’s a vague hint of sunshine and its 7 degrees out there. Forcast is not good but then they are invariably wrong. Maureen is upstairs on a vacuum frenzy.

Power’s gone off again!

Apologies to anyone who’s wondering why some of the titles of these blogs have changed. After a nice chat with my pal David Overton this whole search engine optimisation thing is finally sinking in.

Another Trip to Andalucia for Peter and Maureen Scargill: Today we’re off to our holiday home in Galera, Spain again to go warm the house up. From Christmas to New Year we’ll be  in Galera. I have the long-awaited replacement heater unit for the hot tub, comprising electronics and the heater itself – I only hope that there are valves on either side in the Jacussi itself – I don’t fancy draining the unit in icy winter! Looks like it’s going to rain there over the weekend! Still, I get to try out Maureen’s new camera with a bit of luck.

A trip around the lakes: Thanks to the increasing availability of WIFI and 3G connections I can most of time take my work with me and so this gives us the opportunity to travel and still let me get on with the job. We’ve done a fair bit of weekend travel in the last month or so, 3 weeks weeks ago we spend a weekend in the lake district – which would have been nice but for the fog which restricted vision to around 50 ft for most of the time (hence no pictures)! We started the trip at Barrow-in-furness which is a great place but almost impossible to get out of if you’ve never been there before. We then headed off up to Grasmere and on the way stopped at a town, I think it was Dalton who had the most fabulous Victorian street market. All of the town traders – at least all the ones we saw, dressed up in Victorian gear and despite the freezing weather and fog they set up the most fabulous markets and created an atmosphere I don’t think I recall seeing anywhere else. Old-fashioned mechanical music makers played all day and there was a procession of people on the streets dressed in the most amazing clothes. Grasmere is as I remember it – a wonderful atmosphere and some great shops. One we went into which faced onto the mountains had a little sign inside which said “Jigsaws upstairs” – so off we went to be greeted by a staggering array of floor-to-ceiling jigsaws – hundreds if not thousands of them. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it – I’m not really into Jigsaws (too time-consuming with too little reward) but we bought one which the cats are currently demolishing. Another shop had some of the best wall signs I’ve seen – including one which said “Mercedes parking only”.  I have to say, I had great difficulty not buying it as the neighbours here in the UK keep insisting in parking in front of our house.

Freezing in Aberdeen: Last weekend we spent the weekend in Aberdeen – cold but sunny! The only item of note on that trip was the outward journey. The plane had capacity for maybe 60+ people and there were 11 of us – so Maureen and I took a front row each – THAT’s the way to fly!!  As for the city?  Nice during the day but at night drink very noisy and more smokers than I recall seeing in the UK for a long time.  Marking time now before we’re back on a plane to Spain (where they also smoke a lot), and with that, it’s back to the grind…

Photos taken from Hartside Cafe on the A686 in November 2008 – the entire valley was shrowded in fog but as we came to the top (1900ft above sea level) it all magically disappeared to reveal….. a super sunny day!