Bedrock

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

As if there was such a thing as an ordinary day.. I started my day yesterday experimenting.. the night before I’d been on a hunt of the web for new photo toys for my iPhone and I hit pay dirt. Remember the ad for the Sony camera I think it is where they simply scan the camera across the landscape – and it captures a panorama – as against the more normal nightmare of taking individual shots and either manually or automatically stitching them together?  Well, now this is on the iPhone and I’ve been having great fun ever since. Above is a sweep across the front of the cave. Anyway, that was the start of my day, the rest was a series of comedy errors- but still fun and interesting along the way.

The plan was to head off to St Javier to pick up our friend Alison who’s staying with us for a few days and we figured we’d perhaps go spend some time on the beach down there as she wasn’t coming in till 9pm.

We set off at lunchtime and along the way we happened to go by a small town where some solar cells caught my eye. If you’ve read my blogs, most of the time in Spain the photovoltaic (electricity-generating) cells are rectangular and motorized and each one is no more than, say 6ft square of thereabouts…. just lots of them.

WELL!! This lot blew me away. It’s difficult to see here as there was an alarmed fence in the way but to the left you’re looking at rows of cells, perhaps 8ft high (at a guess) and I would not like to guess how long but you can see if you look carefully each array is MASSIVE in length, following the curve of the land. These are fixed in place.

I would not be surprised it this lot were intended to supply electricity for the entire nearby town.If anyone wants to pursue this further the factory was called CERO GRADOS SUR (Energia Solar) and it’s maybe half way between Puebla De Don Fadrique and Murcia though I could be miles out.

That was a good start to the day which then went downhill – the sat-nav insisted on taking us on a back-route to St Javier and we noticed we were going past a sign that said in Spanish “no access, residents only” – well, we ignored that and went sailing down a partially completed road until miles later as we approached a motorway, the road came to a grinding halt and we realised there was no way to actually GET to the road! That ended that.

After much backtracking we arrived at the airport around teatime and decided to play safe and visit Los Alcazarez – which is just down from the airport and is a British holiday trap. Non-the-less we had a pleasant pizza and beer and then headed off to the airport. Alison’s plane was late and by now the sun was going down. I took the opportunity to try another of the new toys for my phone, an App that combines two successive shots taken at different exposures, to produce photos that are normally impossible. You’ll know that most of the time, photos are a compromise as the lens can’t be selective like our eyes, so often either the sky gets bleached or dark areas have no detail due to the fact that the camera sensors simply cannot handle the “dynamic range”. iPhone to the rescue… 2 shots and a bit of processing later… night-time photos of the airport complete with street lighting AND the night-time sky – and these really do capture the atmosphere at “Murcia Airport” though in fact it’s no-where near Murcia.

And so around 9.30pm we picked up our friend and headed off home to Galera. Sadly that didn’t work either… we tried telling our Sat-Navs to head off to Puebla De Don Fadrique  so we could take advantage of the shortcut straight across the country… nope, neither the iPhone nor Android Sat-Navs were having it and the iPhone kept insisting as we sped along the wrong motorway that we were in a field!!

Eventually we ended up cutting straight through the centre of Murcia, never a good idea on a Saturday night… and off we went home. We figured as we were now going the long way we’d take Alison through Velez Rubio and Velez Blanco to show her the sights. There’s a castle at Velez Blanco that’s really nice during the day and so off we headed through the town of Velez Blanco – BAD mistake. At or near MIDNIGHT there was a wedding still going on and cars and drunks were littered all over the place. At one point we ended up at the end of a narrow street with road works blocking further access, barely able to turn around as another car came up behind us. “Pissed as a newt” as we used to say, the driver simply could not handle the fact that he’d have to back up all the way up a narrow street and promptly switched off like a Stepford Wife. You’d think his batteries had run out – he simply sat there in the middle of the road, not looking at anyone, not doing anything. We had one HELL of a time squeezing past him and I’ve yet to look at the bodywork on the car as we heard some strange squealing noises while trying to get between him and a steel fencing panel!

We eventually arrived home well after midnight and I recall giving up around 4am this morning. It’s now mid-day and I’ve been up long enough to do this blog – well, it is Sunday after all.

After spending the day in virtual meetings while Maureen painted, I polished off the day by doing repairs to our bedroom ceiling and testing out some (blue) tiles for our soon-to-be-wonderful tiled BBQ….  and then we took a trip to Huescar to get some odds and ends before returning to the local “Galera Hotel” which has a balcony outside where you can drink and enjoy the scenery.

To the left is the view from the balcony of the Galera pool  – this is in no way recoloured or enhanced, it’s straight off the iPhone. Lovely colour. Might take a dip in there soon..

We finished the night at the local pizzeria, sitting outside talking to people we’ve already met and people we met for the first time which was nice. Interesting conversation about the weather here, it’s currently just under 40C mid-afternoon so very hot indeed yet less than an hour down the road, there are easily-accessible mountains with snow on the tops. Now we know you can get to them I can see a trip out with the camera in the coming weeks.

We must’ve had a good time as I have a startlingly bad head this morning, not the ideal way to start a day of constant meetings and some tile-cutting but there you are. I’ve an hour left before planting myself in front of a video camera for 6 hours! At least this is the last of the meetings for a while and we can get on enjoying the break.

It’s wonderful out here… we’ve been out since Saturday with friends and the weather has been exemplary – topping 33 degrees in the afternoon and a nice 25 degrees in the evening.

It’s been busier than we expected as we’ve had damp problems – a learning exercise and some shoddy Spanish workmanship combined to give some of the furniture gangrene (a Geordie joke I think, it’s “gan green”) and so we’ve had some stuff outside drying out and quite a bit of PVA is currently on the walls awaiting a coat of paint…. but we’re getting there.

Today is a lazy day, I’ve been cleaning the shed and PVA’ing but that’s about it apart from a trip to the post office to fail to pick up a notice that someone sent a month ago when we were not here, but oh, while I think on,  we have put up some new solar lights, I’ll try to remember to take a picture tonight. Very impressive.

While there can be no doubt that the weather in Spain is a major driver for Brits to clear off to the sun, there are a lot of problems in this country that not everyone is aware of.

I’ll give you an example – today we went off shopping to Granada. As usual, shoppers in front of us using credit cards were asked for identification (they don’t seem to use chip and pin here) but for once we were paying cash – at Carrefour and MediaMarkt.  It may be we’ve always used credit cards in the past or just not taken too much notice, but not only did the operator at MediaMarkt open up the goods we were purchasing (presumably to ensure we could not claim that bits were missing – not that they’d know the difference on anything really technical) but EVERY Euro note we gave them was checked through a machine.

This is either the height of paranoia or they have some SERIOUS fraud issues – I can’t remember the last time in the UK I saw anyone run notes through a scanner. Apart from the time wasted while this process occurs it does not exactly give you confidence in the people around you in the shop – the assumption being we’re all a bunch of crooks!!??

Another issue I’m becoming aware of is that no-one seems to know how to mix concrete – and if they do they’re not letting on – all around us we see severe winter damage despite the weather here CERTAINLY being no-where near the disastrous weather we had in the UK this year. Concrete simply falling apart because of ice getting into it!

On electricity – well, there’s a fight we’re just starting. Voltages in our area as low as 170 volts not only causes heaters to run at less than 50% efficiency it also damages motors which stall due to insufficient power and damages electronic lighting already blighted by the unfortunate fact that retailers here seem to buy in the cheapest Chinese junk they can get their hands on. I plan on next visit to bring in plenty of electrical equipment from the UK where at least we have some standards! Meanwhile we’re planning to take on whoever is necessary to get something remotely like normal electricity. Anyone local reading this – please note we need your input.

More on this later and you can’t get away from the fact that it was WARM this afternoon while back in the UK no doubt folks are freezing…

For our latest adventure we set off from home mid-morning for our flight to Spain – weather forecast said rain all week.

We arrived at the airport in time to discover the plane being delayed for 3 hours during which my stomach gave me more grief than  I can ever remember.  We decided to play safe and book a hotel in Cartagena – very nice indeed – Hotel Los Hombreras – nice view. The bar like many over here was full of smokers, not exactly what you want when you’re feeling ill but we had a good evening totally ruined by me being utterly ill overnight.

Next morning we set off for Galera and watched the weather degrade by the mile. It’s snowing on and off in Galera, very pretty of course but we’ve a slight problem – the amateur-night-out electricity over here, supplied by the builders is running extremely low voltage, around 170 instead of the normal 220-240v.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math and discover that this means heaters putting out around HALF of their rated output (not make sense? See below) and so keeping warm is the current priority. I’m terrified of leaving the premises until my guts are in better order and right now Maureen is putting together some porridge to test the waters!

The broken broadband turned out to be nothing more than a corroded wire and so at least I can check my emails and run the iPhone without a massive bill.  Those of you who follow this blog will know that I use Vodafone when roaming as they offer(ed) a flat rate overseas – well, looks like they’ve changed their minds – I’m having it checked right now but according to the text message from them, they want £9.99 for 50 meg and then £9.99 for every 50 meg after that – can you imagine it – bunch of THIEVES.  Anyway, that might’ve been a standard message and someone in the office is checking for me – more later.

All out of newspapers and magazines to read… it’s a tough life….

Thanks to Peter and Ann who look after our place when we’re away, it appears we’re back in action, electricity works and it’s all locked up – meanwhile I’ve been back to Costco to throw their rubbish solar lights at them and I’ve just fitted a new type to the wall here in rainy Wark. If it can handle the winter here, next time we’re over in Spain I’ll take several with me and light the place up properly!