Bedrock

Maureen went out for an early walk this morning and met more neighbours. There are a few Brits here and all seem keen to chat. Last night we went to the “Curry Cave” – a delightful place – sat outside and had drinks in the setting sun – before polishing off a buffet Indian meal. I was quite impressed – run by an English couple but the food was very authentic. A bottle of wine (or so) and lots of food came to 32 Euros – so can’t gripe at that – and the atmosphere – priceless. Of course, none of this helps motivate us to learn the Spanish language.
Yesterday we spent putting furniture together, this morning I did some work to ensure I can access the laptop here when we get back to the UK – and making a list of things to bring over here and later registered “bedrock.es” so we have a decent address for the blog.

We decided to spend the day (over here they are very religious – I’m guessing that’s why virtually everything is shut on Sunday – a shock to shop-happy Brits) by a lake or similar and so we went off armed with satnav and maps in search of water. The first stop was a pool nearby – turned out to be an utter waste of time – more people than space. Second stop however turned out to be a winner. Ok, we paid 5 euros for the two of us – but the place is so well maintained, it was a bargain. With temperatures around 34 degrees, an hour or so in the pool felt like heaven. The picture here doesn’t really do it justice – a large out-door maintained pool which gets to deeper than 6 feet – but has adequate shallow areas for kids. Someone had a large inflatable whale, another a giant frog – but the tackiness of some resorts simply wasn’t there. Considering we picked a holiday Sunday mid-day, I’m sure if we go there first thing on a week morning we’ll have the place to ourselves. We took with us a couple of deep-frozen bottles of water which amazingly survived the trip… now if that works with Fanta Orange I’ll be happy.

Then we went off in search of grander spaces – and after several miles of countryside that looked like the deserts of Mars (with scenery and colour to match) we hit paydirt, a superb and very large lake area (I’ve always liked the IDEA of the Lake District in tehe UK – sadly it’s more often than not raining there. Quite a distance and along the way we spotted a lonely dog on his own, sunbathing – as well as an tented area in the countryside which for all the world looked like the alien breeding ground in the X-files movie… All in all it was worth the struggle for the views alone – not to mention the refreshingly cool water which as you can see in the photo is a kind of foggy blue colour – the blue is not exaggerated in the photo – that’s what it was like – brilliant blue. We stopped for a while to put out feet in the water but because it wasnt’ clear we had no idea how deep it was – and neither of us are brave…. before leaving we stopped for a coffee at a nearby restaurant (I should add that the area is generally pretty much out in the wilds)…and watched in envy as someone went off into the distance on a jetski… brings back fond memories of our ex-neighbout and friend John Patterson and his Jetski which he and I used to take along the Tyne. What a way to spend a Sunday… I’ve not put all the photos up here by any means but they’re all in the online slideshow and most are much higher quality than you see here.

A quiet night tonight, Maureen is christening the BBQ, I’ve been up drilling holes for the solar lamps which up to now were just lying around – I’m quite excited to see what they’ll look like when it gets dark.