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This is Peter and Maureen Scargill's Spanish website. We live in Galera in Andalusia (for clarity, that is the English spelling - Mid-Spain they spell it Andalucia and pronounce it "And-a-loo-thee-a").

We've had a home in Spain for more than 14 years and it is now our permanent base though we retain a small home in the UK.

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Archive

Archive for the ‘weather’ Category

Slowly but surely

Sadly, we know where this is heading after such a marvelous summer… still – I’d rather this than British weather. The blue line is the external (outside – shielded from the sun hence accurate) temperature at the top of the hills around Galera – the green line is the internal humidity in our cave which will be lower than the outside. Still peaking 25c mid-day which is marvellous… it’ll be down to 20c before long as the change is fairly consistent over the month.  Just ordered a moisture sensor – the idea being to put it in one of the plant-pots to monitor the watering system. I have to say, despite the variability of Spanish electricity, this has performed flawlessly all month. That hike in humidity levels around the start of the month never did go away.

Weather in Galera

Another day, another tube of No Mas Clavas

(That’s No More Nails in case you were wondering). Popped down to the Galera market (every Wednesday) today for coffee and after a little work on lighting, I’ve just put a cloths tube into the cupboard upstairs for Maureen. Can’t do much with that now until the glue sets so I can see a trip to Orce pool coming on.

late evening in Galera[7]

Despite the spectacular weather yesterday, there was a mist coming in last night and I noted some condensation on the hub-tub this morning – whether it was a one-off or a sign of things to come we’ll soon know but right now it’s 33c out there and clear skies so we’re going to make the best of it.

The G8

A very pleasant evening out with friends last night, down in the town – the famous “G8” which basically means a bunch of us out on a Thursday night for drinks. We started at the Galera Hotel and ended up at La Posa.

A favourite Spanish trick about this time of the year to terrify the wits out of the British – is to set off an explosive every time the church bell has finished ringing – which it does quite a lot. Yesterday I was reversing the car when it happened and I’m sure the thing had to be within feet of me because I was convinced I’d blown the exhaust pipe up. Talk about heart-stopping.  From a distance you at least have a chance to save on heart attacks because you see the puff of smoke before the sound reaches you – but close up you don’t have a chance.

jumpAfter a couple of beers last night we were convinced someone had heard enough and decided to commit suicide. If you look at the front of the church here – the rightmost window, at first glance it looks like someone ready to jump.

Thankfully I had my camera with me and a quick zoom made it clear that’s the bell!!! I thought it was someone’s leg.

So much for the evening’s entertainment. We ended up at La Posa for drinks and Maureen and I shared a pizza.

GaleraThis morning I went down to the village to meet Antonio from Habland who supply our Internet here in Spain – to get a new router as mine’s been acting up – he was extremely helpful and now I’m up and running hopefully reliably – we even have the iPlayer running without having to go through hoops. We do have a little issue that my cameras will no longer talk to me since fitting the new router but I’m sure I’ll resolve that in the next day or so.

Late morning after Antonio left, Maureen and I went off to the village for some ZUM – which is a powerful spray to kill insects – particularly those who like to eat your wooden beams. On the way back we stopped in the centre for a coke.  We’d popped up to the house of some friends who can’t be here right now armed with water to sort out their plants – but it turns out a friendly Spanish neighbour has taken on the job.

The village is being set up for the forthcoming August festivities in which we have bands playing and all sorts of family entertainment throughout the month.  Funny old day, it started off with a spot of rain which immediately disappeared in favour of stunning sunshine – by lunchtime it was up to an amazing 38c though the car even after driving for a while said 41c and I’m inclined to believe it…. then by mid-afternoon it was back to a little rain and lots of cloud – still hot of course. 

As I look outside – it’s sunny again. Apparently this will all have cleared up by tomorrow – I think it’s the first spot of water the weeds will have seen for a couple of months judging by the colour of most of them (a kind of dead orange-brown colour).

festivitiesProbably tomorrow we’ll wrap our heads in towels before spraying the place with ZUM and backing out of the door for a few hours to make sure only the insects die and not us along with them. We’ve been warned – and the can looks pretty ominous – though being in Spanish I can’t follow a word of it.

If you don’t see any more entries here you’ll know what happened.

The sun is here at last

 

Huescar Thursday marketIt’s Thursday, time for the Huescar market. After a late start, due in no small part to overdoing the alcohol on Wednesday night, I set off for the market in brilliant sunshine. Hardly a cloud in the sky.

Not as many people as usual out today but it’s early summer so I guess most of the summer home folks won’t be here yet, though I did stop and chat with three sets of friends while walking through the market. I picked up essentials for lunch and headed off, determined not to mHuescar town centreiss the opportunity for a spot of sunbathing and still struggling to get used to the sandals having worn thick soled boots for the last several months.

It’s still a little cool inside but outside at lunchtime the temperature was up to 26c.  Came in to check the mail to find that Dell have at last put up my first blog entry – and interview. Here’s the Dell blog. Put down a little more weedkiller as some of the larger weeds that I’d failed to pull out by hand were sitting looking stubborn – let’s see how they manage against concentrated Pathclear!

And that’s that, really, can’t do much until Maureen turns up with the bits I need for my remote temperature monitoring project… which I’m hoping to leave here, working. All that’s left to do this afternoon is a little more sun-collecting! As usual, click on any photo to enlarge.

Warmer in Britain?

Can’t be…. but it is….. we’re level pegging AND have more sun than Huescar – never thought I’d see the day.

 

Weather

The Last Stand

Changeable weather in Galera - disappearing mountainsYesterday morning we headed off to the coast – to Alicante to be precise. The entire album of our trip including yesterday is here for those interested.

From Galera it’s somewhat under a 3-hour trip – and Maureen and I watched as the weather went from partially sunny, through heavy rain and back to full, glorious sunshine.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend any amount of time in Alicante in the summer when it’s heaving with tourists but we had a very pleasant few hours there yesterday including stopping right at the coast for a late lunch at Rudy’s Pizzeria. REALLY nice pizza.

Maureen outside of Rudy'sWe made the sensible move, given the choice of small, medium or large, of sharing the medium – I’m convinced we could not have managed the large version – the waiter was kind enough to warn us beforehand.

This is the first time we’ve done any more than touch the surface of Alicante and while much of it seems to have been put together in the 60’s it certainly beats the hell out of watching the snow fall in the Northeast of England this time of year.

The beach was superb – almost no-one there due to it being the end of the UK school holiday week and the temperatures were no more than 18c but the sun was blasting and that made up for everything.

The beach at Alicante - February - Saturday afternoonWe took a good walk around to minimise the effects of lunch before heading off to the airport. A pretty eventless flight. Last night in Edinburgh was AWFUL, after some confusion over the name of the bus company taking us to our car which meant we spent half an hour standing outside waiting, the trip back down the A68 took place in blizzards. This morning – it’s snow here in Wark.

I’m sure there is some saving grace to being back here, but I can’t think of anything off-hand apart from the ready availability of half-decent bread for my bacon sandwich.

Don’t forget – you can click on any of these photos to see a larger version.

Marvelous beach for the time of year