Bedrock

Archive for the ‘weather’ Category

If you’ve read my previous blogs we’re here at Bedrock to get the place ready for the summer – the usual – holes appearing in walls etc. and the plan was to get some paint and cement and start the process early this week.

That was kyboshed when our Spanish-registered car packed in on the way over here. I can’t remember ever being without a car… it’s an interesting experience… not half as bad as I expected but we were beginning to wonder how to get the next set of groceries up the hill (it’s a BIG STEEP HILL) when one of our local friends who’s been talking to the garage in Caravaca De La Cruz for us informed us that it’s a wiring issue (so much for the road-side mechanic and his BATTERY theory) and we can pick it up tomorrow –AND it’s not going to break the bank. We’re so grateful for offers of help we’ve had – nice to have decent neighbours.

Meanwhile it turns out there is still an issue with some paperwork stopping us getting the electricity sorted and so we’re ok as long as we don’t go above 2-3Kw – which means no hot-tub…

On the upside the broadband is working a treat and the weather has been SUPERB – it’s 33c out there as it was yesterday also – BEAUTIFUL sun-bathing weather with a nice breeze to stop you frying.  Maureen is alternating between outside jobs and watching the royal celebrations – I on the other hand have two genes missing – one for watching sport – the other for following the royals – so instead I’m alternating between plugging holes in the walls, doing a spot of programming and buying cheap Chinese crap on Ebay – I managed 30 minutes in a deck-chair and that was it – too many things to do, too little time.

We just found out today that Lorca has a decent shopping centre with an Eroski supermarket so no doubt we’ll be taking a trip there before long. But first… a trip to the local bar for a beer and pizza.

Our last day for a short while and the weather is absolutely marvellous, accordingly Maureen and I went off to the lake so she could collect some rocks…

In the process we ended up having lunch at the excellent lakeside cafe, NOT CHEAP I hasten to add but the view is magnificent (and I skipped breakfast and so was GAGGING for something to eat).

That’s where we spent the morning. Some of you looking in here might think I’ve pulled the same trick as the holiday companies with the editor on some of these shots – but I’ve not. There are two types of photo here, panoramas and HDR (to capture the range of dark to light) and that’s about it – cropped and dumped into this blog.. Amazing what you can do with an iPhone, the right software and just a little time and effort.

If I could have stopped here for another week, this morning alone was worth the trip as you’ll see. Enjoy the photos and please do click on them to see larger versions.

And if you want more.. I’ve put the whole series up onto Google Web Albums. Enjoy.

What an interesting day! We left Galera at 9am sharp and headed off to the outskirts of Murcia for a spot of shopping. Murcia is about 2 hours drive East for us and on the way, the temperature rose from just a few degrees to around 12c or so, sunny most of the way but with a little wind – to keep that in perspective we didn’t bother with coats when shopping. First stop Ikea at the Avenida de Juan de Borbón, Murcia.

Our cave gets very dark at night, well, pitch black so I was pleased to find some little adhesive movement sensor lights for the staircase… marvellous little devices which worked out at around 2 Euros each (packs of 2) – amazing value. Maureen bought a table (which no doubt I’ll get landed with assembling today). Next stop the nearby shopping centre and the Chinese junk store and on to the centre itself, somewhat smaller than, say the Gateshead MetroCentre but respectable non-the-less.

The Spanish excel at TV stores and so we ended up in SATURN 2, a massive store with everything from TVs through cameras, PCs through electric heaters. Pride of place in the store was a 100" LCD monitor costing a mere 22,000 Euros!! Needless to say we didn’t buy it.

After lunch, a mediocre affair within the centre, we headed off down to the coast to Torrevieja, about an hour’s drive just to take a look around. The temperature continued to rise but unfortunately the clouds also set in, contrary to weather forecasts. Interesting place, with a mix of absolutely DIRE touristy places on the one hand and on the other, some very up-market hotels and housing areas, well worth a couple of hours.

We had a very interesting walk along the sea front, taking in the view, seeing some VERY expensive yachts, a black submarine and a shipwreck! There was a market but it didn’t look worth investigating. The town smacked of a British tourist dump with lots of stuff in English – which kind of ruins the experience for me.

Around teatime we set off on the 3+ hour journey back home to Galera, expecting the temperatures to drop but not expecting blisteringly cold, almost impassable SNOW – which is what came out of the blue when we got as far as BULAS on the way back… we spent the remainder of the journey following 2 trucks which we could barely see and wondering if we were going to make it back… yet amazingly when we got as far as just outside of our village – it stopped – no sign of snow, rain or… well, anything really. We popped into the local bar for a pint and a pizza to warm up before heading off home for the night.

Quite an eventful day. I’ll leave you with some more photos…

Didn’t get up until around 10am this morning (9am UK time) – with double comforters as it’s a little chilly… I could have quite comfortably stayed there all day… but – we had to go find a plumber to get some repairs done to a burst pipe and so off we went into the village, stopping by Don and Carol’s place to see their pellet heater, a very efficient modern, remote controlled beast. Next stop the village and we managed to get the contact details of a plumber who turned up within the hour to fix the pipe! Job done.

We spent the afternoon doing odd jobs and a spot of reading before heading off to Huescar, encountering a bunch of sheep on the way as you see in the photo above. First stop the Chinese junk store then some groceries before filling the car up for our trip to Murcia tomorrow (to buy a table!!) and now we’re back at the cave, armed with groceries, warm as toast… and about to select a movie from NetFlix to watch. 

I spent part of the afternoon testing the new VPN solution to let us watch the likes of the BBC iPlayer and CatchupTV over here, after a couple of false starts and some amazingly fast technical responses from the HIDEMYASS people, we’re up and running. I checked out TOP GEAR on the iPlayer to make sure it works  – no problem.

So, some travelling tomorrow… quite looking forward to it – guaranteed sunshine and blue skies though it’s unlikely to get TOO much above zero degrees C before lunchtime!

Believe it or not, after 3 years of builder’s electricity, it looks like we’re about to get "proper" electricity. The pylon is up, wired and apparently ready to go.

After some disappointing weather over the last few days, we’re set for sunshine today so we’re off to the Orce market to see what’s new there.

After bringing some new lighting technology over with me to add atmospheric lighting to the cave, I’m now onto my second Chinese soldering iron which utterly refuses to do the job and I’m convinced it’s actually the solder. The last one I bought was a 60w device and I bought solder and flux to go with it, yet after 40 years of soldering I cannot even START to tin the iron bit never mind do some sensible soldering – so the logical conclusion is that this is something ELSE the Chinese can’t get right (at least not in the stuff they sell here). So I’m off in search of good old-fashioned European-sourced solder!

Yesterday we went off to the lakes with friends – too cold to go swimming but just to show them around. We’ve also been to the Huescar fair which ended on Sunday night, not much to write about, just a standard market, the same people as usual.

I’m starting to get jaded with the smaller markets you rarely see anything new and interesting… not so bad in the summer when you can just enjoy the weather but we really could do with finding a really large and varying market.

Our Spanish-licenced car should be arriving this week, just in time to go into cold storage until our next trip – but at least this means we can kiss goodbye to extortionate car rentals once the paperwork is sorted and it gives me greater possibilities for short trips over here when there are last-minute cheap flights available, something we’ve not been able to do up to now.

I’m looking forward to some sun today so I can try out some new hi-def video capture software for the iPhone. Yes, I’ve a decent camera that can do video but I get sick of lugging a camera around. A phone on the other hand sits in your pocket – the problem being, the quality is usually rubbish. Well, I’ve already gotten around that with the HDR software on the iPhone to some extent (most of the photos here are HDR taken using the phone) and so now it’s time to turn to video.

Many problems with amateur videos taken on phones can be improved on the iPhone with a little care and the right software. Firstly clean the lens every single time you use it – and secondly use software to turn off the automatic controls. The stuff I’m playing with turns off auto-focus, exposure control, white balance and lets you take 16:9 format video – I’d prefer cinema format but the phone isn’t fast enough for that.. iPhone 4s to the rescue (if only). With these settings as seen in the phone in their normal default it really doesn’t matter what you do – your videos are always going to look home made.  Easy to say, let’s see what I can do with this – results in a later blog providing the weather holds out.

Oh yes, it’s around 20 degrees MAXIMUM here during the day, a far cry from September… and no sign of the builder!!

Not QUITE what you might expect of a Spanish morning (10am) after months of low humidity… there is a thick fog outside this morning – I’m so glad I’m not planning on driving anywhere. I’ve a ton of work to do today before spending a little holiday time over here. Hopefully by the time I get done, this will have lifted. Already there are signs off the right of the photo of the sun trying to blast through – but it’s quite a sight, standing near the top of the mountains looking down at this cotton wool stuff!

Our builder is supposed to be coming over today to fix the pergola – which looks quite sad in this weather but believe me in the summer it’s essential. Still – the fog will no doubt please the plants.