Bedrock

And here we are, all settled in. Very little work to do when we got here just over a week ago. A great welcome by our closest neighbours when we arrived late at night and the following night, after a day largely composed of unpacking, we went for dinner with friends down the road – so a great start to what hopefully will be a great summer and thanks to those involved for making us once again feel so welcome.

It has taken me this long to do an update largely because of unpacking, blogging work, minor fixes around the house and unfeasibly nice weather but today, as well and truly predicted by the weather people – it is raining (on and off). Their forecast has been accurate for days and we’re hoping this will continue as they’re predicting clear blue skies and 26c for Monday – I can see a trip to the spa coming along.

Sent off my EOS camera to a friend abroad recently. That was an interesting trip – we went off to the post office in the nearby town of Huescar to post the parcel and when it came to my turn I did my usual pathetic attempt to explain to the postmaster that I needed to send a package overseas. He doesn’t speak a word of English and I speak only a few words of Spanish but we usually manage. In this case an English lady standing behind me decided to step in and help which was nice, but then completely ruined the whole thing by asking me if I spoke Spanish and when I said no, stuck her nose in the air and made a “tut” noise.  I can’t tell you now annoying that was but I was too busy concentrating at the job at hand to give her the sharp, witty response she really deserved. It seems no matter where you go there is always someone ready to have an ego trip at your cost.

We have our three cats with us, the latest of which, Cloe is adapting well but definitely needs a course of carbon pills shoving somewhere. Hopefully her stomach will adapt soon.

The place is looking good and I’m looking forward to a summer of photography with my soon-to-arrive new camera. We’re planning trips to various places along the coast as the weather picks up, so many nice places to visit going south and during my recent Spanish trip in January (see this blog) I realise there are lots more as you go north. Lametlla De Mar was nice for walking around.

It seems like months ago that I was last in Spain (on business with a little pleasure mixed in) – but in reality – it is only a couple of months. I came back to what should have been a relatively easy time, some catching up to do, a little work and get ready for our summer in Galera.

Of course life never quite works out that way and one day, returning from shopping, we came back to a flooded house. Nothing to do with the pretty awful weather we’ve been having on and off in the Northeast of England and more to do with an utterly incompetent plumber who had managed to miss off a retaining ring on a plastic pipe feeding mains pressure water upstairs as you’ll see in the little photo below.

As regular readers know, in the summer months, Hollyberry Cottage becomes a beautiful holiday rental cottage and in the winter, that’s where we live. Makes a lot of sense as British summers have been a disappointment for some years now, meanwhile the winters in Spain inland, regardless of the utterly misguided views of those government ministers responsible for the winter allowance, are NOT a lot better than those in the UK.

Anyway, the end result of our Monday-morning plumber’s work resulted in the utter devastation of the bedroom at Hollyberry Cottage. As it happens, the builder with overall responsibility for the project stepped up to the mark and the restoration work is now nearing an end.

Meanwhile we’ve acquired a new cat – she’s called Chloe (on the left) and she’s really very nice indeed aside from a tummy bug which seems to be going away which had me making derisory comments about her bum for a couple of weeks.

She’s had kittens – and very nice ones – we’ve had a great couple of weeks with them – well, great if you ignore the pong that a house full of kittens make – and they’re now all gone – sold and there’s just her and our two boys Simba (right, below) and Ruffy (left, below) are all now getting on famously (though they won’t be making a contribution as they’ve both been chipped and chopped).

We’ll miss the kittens as they were a lot of fun.

The two boys and Chloe are coming with us for the summer, the two boys have done this before and behaved excellently throughout the entire trip. How Chloe handles the very long trip is another matter.

We head off very shortly and it will take us a couple of days to reach our destination. Despite the horrors above, the cottage is now taking shape and by the time it is finished it will look better than ever.

Painting is now all done, carpet comes tomorrow, we took the opportunity to make considerable improvements to the bedroom lighting and the cottage is pretty much well and truly booked up so no worries about empty buildings.

Just a little issue of dodgy broadband to resolve and lots of packing – and we’re ready to take in the sun.

It has been a heavy week here, the first of two on a short but interesting contract just outside of El Perello – in turn just south of Tarragona on the east coast of Spain (and the weather has been quite cool – well that’s all relative of course – boiling compared to the UK), but today the sun came back with a vengeance and so it was that I headed off for a Billy-No-Mates day along the coast.

Armed with both phone and tablets with the Villa out here in the middle of no-where set as “home” so there was NO chance of getting lost (a good idea as my phone has no signal anywhere here) I headed off down to L’Ametlla De Mar.

I had of course already visited the town at night but that’s not much fun and you can’t do much with photography – especially with a phone no matter how good it is.  So today was a treat. After a cracking bacon sandwich to start the day, I got in the car and headed off down to the coast. Having studied the area extensively on Google Maps I really had no problem and rarely had to resort to the sat-nav.

The waterfront at L’Ametlla De Mar is wonderful. I parked the car up and went up into the town. Ir took me 5 minutes to find my favourite pastime – a large Chinese store.

I spent about half an hour in there wishing I was not flying home (with the car you can just fill it full of junk) – anyway I ended up spending up at a really nice little Italian restaurant for lunch and quite predictably had a wonderful hot pizza and of course, “cafe con leche”. Staff were friendly and the food was great at La Cantoniera Da Mario (Sol, 1, L’Ametlla De Mar, Catalonia).

After lunch I went in search of beachfront – and spent a good deal of the afternoon wandering around taking pictures and just enjoying the scenery before heading off to the next town a few miles up the coast. After that I headed in the opposite direction to El Perello and down to a secluded beach there…  all in all not a bad way to spend a day.

By then the sun was getting low in the sky and fearful of coming home in the dark I made this second adventure a tad shorter and headed off back.

Tonight is anyone’s guess – I’m here on my own in the villa – but with plenty to do. If tomorrow is anything like today I’m going to have a more ambitious trip – maybe up to Tarragona.

The first week of my two week trip is done.  It has been really sunny here just south of Barcelona but no doubt about it – cold. We’ve been beavering away on a cryptology-related project – lots of fun and lots of wine but also hard work. But this weekend that all goes away for a couple of days as I hope to get out and about – it is all down to the weather however.

Today was a tad chilly and the sun was in – so much so that the villa we’ve taken over is relying on generator instead of solar power! They have something like a 4Kw system and with washing to be done – and no sun – the generator kicked in early this morning.

But Spain being Spain there’s a good chance the sun will return tomorrow in which case I’m off to the coast. The original plan was to have Maureen come over this weekend but the flights have been getting more expensive by the day so we decided to give it a miss.

Expect more pics soon – next post in this 3-post series is here.

Still some time to go before we get back to our home in the sun but meanwhile, I’m “Up North” inland from L’Ametlla De Mar, just south of Tarragona working with a fellow in my age group called Peter Mounsey and some guys including a very helpful French fellow, on an ESP8266-related tech project.

Currently on day three of my journey, the sun is out most of the day but it is quite cool now and won’t be getting warmer any time soon. It is actually warmer outside during the day than it is inside!!

From my perspective, it’s a largely software project so I’m heads down at the computer for much of the time – learning some good new stuff actually as the project takes me slightly out of my comfort zone, surrounded by 2 very needy dogs who can’t stand being ignored.

Arrived Sunday very late due to not having any phone signal anywhere near the area but managed to get out for a pint last night – very nice dark beer at the next town called El Perello. So right now the sun has gone down, fire is on… it’s a nice evening if a tad cool. Everyone is out for now and I have the whole villa to myself, the dogs and two sleepy cats. The next post in this series of four posts is here.

A happy new year to everyone looking in. It has been a quiet holiday, I have done a LOT of writing on the technical blog and I have quite a few samples of various kinds of equipment on the way to review as the blog goes from strength to strength.

We’ve been  in the UK in some of the worst weather on record though in Bellingham we’ve missed the worst of it by some way. Looking forward later this month to meeting friends from Spain who are over in the UK right now and generally getting the house ready for our return to the sun in April. All my kit is working in Spain so we’re able to keep an eye on the place which is also regularly visited. Maureen has had flu over the last week and so we’ve not been anywhere other than visits to friends.  I’m taking the opportunity to learn – in particular to get stuck into the technology surrounding the “Raspberry Pi” and more advanced computers such as the Radxa Rock Pro – but that is all detailed on the blog.