Bedrock

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…