Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Even a quiet place like Galera has it’s share of Feral children – apparently two of them took a dip in our pool today in our absence.  I’ve yet to check the stills stored on the web to see if we’ve caught them on film – shouldn’t take long to track them down via Facebook etc – but thanks to Tom our neighbour at least we know that everything is ok.  An iron bar and locks will be appearing as soon as we can contact a builder.

If anyone does happen to spot something like this in future if we’re not at home, we’d really appreciate photos.

If you’re in Spain and wondering, yes, it’s raining back in Blighty – again. Can’t wait to get back…. for a little more sun before the winter sets in for good.

They say it’s all over… it is now.

Our last night in Galera saw the most amazing weather as for the first time, just as Maureen and I were settling down to dinner in a restaurant in Huescar,  the heavens opened up – not only did we get the first rain in many weeks but for a few minutes the most amazing pea-size hailstones – solid ice. Of course within the hour it had all gone.

I was convinced the top of our car would be shot but amazingly thanks to being parked under a tree, we got away with it. Typically it was all over in a matter of an hour and after enjoying our meal in fresh air you only ever come across after a good storm, we ended up back in the bar in Galera to say our farewells.

Monday: Early on Monday morning we started our long journey up from Southern Spain. The atmosphere in Galera was fantastic with a thin layer of mist over most of the village which quickly lifted for yet another day of excellent weather. After a full day’s pleasant drive, though thanks to TomTom not the most straightforward drive, on Monday night we stopped over at Zaragoza – and boy, was it worth the trip.

The hotel we stopped at wasn’t that exciting, mainly due to road works in progress and the fact that they’d demolished the adjoining building,  but the area was right next to an excellent restaurant district and some superb architecture. We had a couple of drinks before walking around the corner… the photos say it all….though you’ll have to head off to Google Web Albums to get the full picture – this is an area well worth a visit.

We sat outside near the statue of Goya and enjoyed very nice pizza. The beer looked as if it had been used once already – but the view made it all worthwhile.

Tuesday: From Zaragoza we drove to San Sebastian so that Maureen could find a Carrefour – and it’s the funniest place – the road-signs looked far more German than Spanish – despite France being the nearest country. Nice looking place, of course being at the Northern tip of Spain it has lots of green – a bit like England really but without the rain. It’s around 26c here, much cooler than we’ve been used to but still very pleasant and clear blue skies. The difference in Carrefour is obvious – larger store, more choice, French-speaking staff and Basque-looking signs.

Even the HOUSES look German (based on our last trip which encompassed the Black Forest and saw us stopping for a few days in Pfaffenhofen – and drinking a lot of Dinkel Acker beer).

Next stop Poitiers… After figuring out how the diesel pump worked at Carrefour we headed off up to France – getting notably poorer fuel consumption (36mpg) than we did using Repsol diesel (45 mpg). About the only thing you can say about the long journey is that the greedy French take every opportunity to rob you on the peage roads, their fuel is preposterously expensive (marginally worse than ours) and their roads are crap – the A63 being a prime example – it’s like the A1 used to be before they improved it. Weather freshened up throughout the day, hitting 30c late afternoon. Bergerac – is a place to avoid, like much of our journey the road appears in permanent gridlock with the most aggressive offenders being as you might expect those driving cars manufactured by the Bavarian Motor Works.

Wishing I was back in Spain already, no doubt tonight we’ll end up eating something stomach-upsetting washed down with Freedom Fries. Perhaps we’ll be able to grab some cases of Kronenbourg to bring back – as I recall the stuff they sell in France is much nicer than the clone we get in the UK.

The A10 is a long and featureless PEAGE road – unlike the beautiful alternating white and pink flowers prevalent on the roads in Spain, this one has weeds along the middle along with the odd green bush. That’s how boring it is when you start looking at weeds.

By 7.30pm we arrived at out destination in Poitiers, the “Hotel Central” in Place du Marechal Leclerc. The hotel has a small entrance and no dining room but the bedrooms are clean and efficient and they bring you breakfast to your rooms. We spent our evening in the square which though pleasant enough, was starting to chill by 9pm and we ended up in-doors. Weather on Wednesday morning is cool and there’s little sign of the sun yet – a FAR cry from only 24 hours ago. The plan was an early start to our destination for today of Caen where we’d stop the night before heading off on the ferry back to wet and cold Britain.

Wednesday: One of the most noticeable differences between the generally free motorways of Spain and the generally expensive motorways of southern France – is that the views from the latter

are relatively boring. The best thing we did all day was to ditch the PEAGE and go on the older roads – a slight drop in miles but increase in time was handsomely repaid by the fact that the free, older roads take you either by or straight through some really interesting towns including, in our case a trip through the town of SEES – wherein we found an excellent if expensive café and a great church for taking photos. Whereas in Spain we’d be paying 1 Euro for a café-con-leche, here it was more like 2.5 Euros!  Evening came and we arrived in Caen to our destination hotel, an absolute dump called Hotel Avenida. With just about enough room to swing a cat, we dropped off our bags and enjoyed a quiet meal in town.

Thursday: After an early start, we were on the ferry (a very pleasant trip except for the worst burger in living memory which looked like one of the soles of my shoes and tasted as I imagine the same to taste) and on our way back to cold and rainy Blighty – except – it was, briefly, warm! after several hours drive we arrived at our destination, Cranage Hall in Cheshire – and the thermometer had still not dropped below 20c. As we arrived at teatime it was 23C and sunny – not a bad start… and it got better… alas this was just a brief blip… back home days later it is now drizzling as usual.

Until our next trip…

Sunday August 28th 2011: Apart from a few seconds in the morning, for just about the time since we arrived in Southern Spain this summer, not only did it rain…  and suddenly at that, but as we sat having our dinner in Huescar (thankfully inside a restaurant) we saw hailstones the size of peas (click on the photo to enlarge and see the hailstones on the road), for just a short while and then it was all over. In the process I captured one of the best sunsets yet (see next blog item).

Monday: On our last morning, the love affair with the puppy ended as he ripped one of our plants to pieces. We started our long journey back to the UK at 8am, went off into Galera for coffee followed by a trip to the bank and then we started our long journey to our next stop, Zaragoza.

The weather cooled off a tad first thing this morning (I think it got as low as 25c) and for a moment it even rained… and so Maureen was sitting inside reading a book when she complained of a crackling sound. Bearing in mind we had broadband issues yesterday I thought I’d better check. Sure enough, one of the cameras which had refused to start up has a power supply which was making cracking noises.  To cut a long story short, the Chinese camera is now a pile of scrap metal (due to it’s power supply, not the camera) and in the bin. The sparks must’ve been affecting the broadband as well so my only spare has now been called into operation. All done and ready to guard the place while we’re off on our long trip up North tomorrow. No doubt once again this will be part rubbish power, part rubbish Chinese power supplies.

Our neighbours Karen and Dave turned up this afternoon so we spent half of the afternoon sitting outside chatting – great use for a Sunday afternoon.. everything is working and first thing tomorrow morning we have to take an early trip to the bank to set up Internet banking before heading up to Northern Spain – but not before one last trip out tonight to see everyone. It’s now 8pm, we’ve had a massive storm – how all gone and it’s drying up already – the puppy has been doing his best to emulate a maniac in the garden with his new toys (plastic milk bottle and a plant-pot). We’ll miss him.

Sky is clearing – could be yet another nice night…

After recovering from this morning’s efforts, Maureen and I headed off Zujar in search of a “park natural”. Well, as often happens we got sidetracked.

See the mountain in the image above? That is the view from a “kodak moment” stop in Zujar, just outside of Baza (if you’re still not sure, upper Granada area).  You can’t see it in this image but right at the top of that mountain – there is a set of dishes…… a blow-up might help – see right.

The top of that mountain is just under a mile above sea level – and it’s BIG. So as we were driving through Zujar, for no particular reason we took a side-road – which looked like it was heading to the mountain… and kept going and going and getting narrower and narrower. About half way up the drive up the mountain, my ears started popping but by then our interest was up – we were going to take this through to conclusion…..

And so we did.. approaching the top the scenery was stunning not to mention the distance DOWN – but as always photos fail to capture this – here are some attempts however – including pics at the very top with the towers… Feel free to click these images to see larger versions.  I should add that these have not been touched, enhanced or colour-corrected in any way. It’s a great trip but if you are of a nervous disposition – don’t try it – some parts of the road which winds it’s way up the mountainside is – well, interestingly narrow with a sheer drop on at least one side!

Oh and take a good look around Zujar if you’re in the area, lots of excellent houses and buildings – quite an interesting town in general. See more photos on Google.

Thanks to a converted neighbourly effort… a sparkly clean roundabout! a couple of tons of stone, large amounts of black plastic and a lot of hard work.

Of course, it didn’t take a Spanish delivery truck more than 5 minutes to drive over the edge and give it a nice new black bootprint – but once again there we were with the paint-pots – and it’s still as good as new.  Richard is also having some work done – and in standard fashion the builders have been in – carved a load of material out and simply thrown it over the wall… it’s a different world here!