Bedrock

Archive for the ‘tourism’ Category

For those of you who’re in the area on holiday or staying here I’ve created a twitter feed you can follow if you’re interested. I’ll put in updates about what’s going on – if you know of anything in the area I don’t – please do comment.

www.twitter.com/cavehome

We started our epic trip to Spain on 22nd of July with the long and wet car voyage from Wark on Tyne down to Portsmouth – specifically Hayling Island to visit our pals Clare and husband Craig. After atrocious weather all the way we arrived late at night to pretty decent weather and a warm welcome. After an excellent meal, rather too much wine and superb company we went off to bed to build up our energy for the European trip to come.

Saturday morning we set off first thing from Hayling Island for the Portsmouth ferry to Caen, France. We spent most of the ferry trip sleeping but I can tell you that the food on the Brittany ferry was really good and the room, though rather small, was comfortable.

Mid-Saturday afternoon we departed from Caen to head off to see our friends Carol and Graham who live in a small town called St Martin de Sanzay in the middle of France. A typical small French village, the area has a square and bags of personality. We spent the night and as you can see on the right – they have a pretty spectacular garden though you can only see part it it here.

Sunday morning after a typical and superb French breakfast with Carol’s home-made jam and croissants, we set off on our trip down to Spain, suffering at times pretty awful rain (though the temperature never dropped below 18c) and stopping on the way at a couple of French gas stations (where folk like to live the old-fashioned way – see toilet), to arrive late afternoon at our destination of San Sebastian in the very northern tip of Spain where, guess what – it was raining.

Our first hotel in Spain was the Hotel “Pension Ametzagana” in San Sebastian. I’ll save most of my wrath for Trip Adviser and Booking.Com but suffice it to say neither the iPad nor iPhone would even recognise the existence of the well-advertised WIFI and after being told by two staff that the restaurant would open at between 8pm and 9pm, we had a couple of drinks (hence ensuring we could not drive elsewhere) only to discover at 9.15pm that the restaurant does not open on Sundays. The best they could offer was warmed-over Carrefour pizzas (and Carrefour pizzas are awful).

The bedroom at Ametzagana was small to say the least, with a corner bathroom so amazingly tiny, there wasn’t enough room to swing a mouse never mind actually have a bath. The place left me with the distinct impression I’d just visited a Russian jail. NOT recommended. We left early morning accompanied by fog, rain and the promise that our next stopover, Valencia, is super-sunny! The plan is to stop-over mid-day at Zaragoza.

Incidentally to answer any questions about the cost of fuel in France – Diesel there is typically 1.53 Euros or more and up to now it looks like Spain is somewhat better at 1.28 to 1.34 Euros – but no more cheap fuel, to be sure. This must be crippling the less-well-off, especially in Spain with 40% youth unemployment. Still – given what we’re spending on travel this trip, 1.28 is better than nothing. That works out at around 1.13 a lire in British money…

Another sunny day today, warmer than the forecast. After a late start then doing some jobs around the house, putting up the postbox and our “welcome” sign on our new wall, we went off for a late and leisurely lunch at the Monte Carlo restaurant in Cullar – my favourite “Magra Con Tomate” in my case… then we went for a drive around the back of Cullar for no particular reason and discovered the municipal pool!

The pool isn’t in the best of condition but then it is the end of season – and it’s closed – it will be interesting to see what it looks like next summer. There’s a nice bar and restaurant there as well and what looks like a smaller pool for the kids.

From there we went off to Huescar for the “SpongeBob SquarePants” 3-day Fair – which turned out to be just a bunch of migrant types selling cheap Chinese goods – and a fair with rides in the middle of the town square…  when we got there the sun was going down and it looked a bit cheesy – lots of plastic goods and handbags – but to be fair we didn’t see it in full swing.

Personally I think Huescar does a lot better in it’s weekly market on Thursdays than this.

All in all not a bad way to spend a day – but wait for the next blog!

As promised in a previous blog, first thing on Friday morning, Maureen and I set off on the just-under-3-hour journey to Capileira, the most northerly of the 3 villages in the gorge of the Poqueira river in the Las Alpujaras district of the province of Granada.

The whole journey is interesting as, once you get past Granada you go through Lanjaron and other villages each with their own unique character and then start up the steep incline up the mountains to Capileira. Note in the map it LOOKS like Orgiva is on-route but actually you have to take a turnoff so that’ll have to wait for another day.

With temperatures rapidly approaching 40 degrees C we only briefly stopped off on the way at a restaurant in Calle de Eras Del Seleco in Lanjaron – you’ll see it in the new built-in street view in Google maps – simply says “restaurant” which we dubbed the “cafe for noisy people” as we couldn’t hear ourselves thing for most of the otherwise excellent lunch.

Once you get past Lanjaron you spend far more time going up and down mountains than travelling in a straight line so that part of the journey takes longer than it might at first seem. We encountered a road-slide where the entire right side of the road had simply dropped off into the valley – fortunately the road-crews had sorted out the mess before we got there.

Heading off it took us the best part of an hour to get up the mountains. Capileira is around 5000ft up but our hotel was even higher and about 1 km above Capileira. 

As we were in no rush we kept on going as I wanted to see just how high up we could go – but in the end, we gave up as the road went from superb to, well, something you might find on the moon perhaps – used only by logging trucks and insane cyclists but even then by the time Maureen finally insisted we turn around (the road at many points is on the edge of the mountain with very little between you and death) we were well in excess of 6,500ft above sea level – and it LOOKED that high. You have to do it once but take good tires with you.

The town is just superb and at multiple levels (as it’s up a mountain!) with lots of shops and restaurants to keep one busy and the whole feel of the place is very clean and of high quality (which is more than can be said of construction you might see elsewhere). One shop we went into had a very old wooden weaving loom in the back room and drink is cheap enough as you can see from the photo on the right. Maureen bought lots of bits and bobs and I bought a new t-shirt… well, you have to, don’t you.

The thing I can’t figure out is the snow on the mountains – we had temperatures of around 40 degrees C and going up to 6,000ft had no effect on that whatsoever – and yet – here’s the photographic evidence – snow – I just don’t see that peak being more than 8,000ft and yet…. there it is. I DID think it was just some kind of calcium but winter shots of the area show that peak being completely white.  If anyone knows the answer to this please do let us know.

The hotel – well, I’ll not say much here as we’ve already displayed our displeasure on the relevant travel website but when we got there after travelling up the only access path which was an assault course, all looked perfect – the pool overlooks the valley, it was wonderfully cool, scenery was great but the pool could have been cleaner and better maintained. A Spanish gentleman guy showed us to our room without giving any other information away.

The room was nice enough but FAR too hot and within seconds of opening the door we had a bunch of flies in there…

We headed off back down to the town and found in a small square a nice pizzeria simply called “La Pizzeria” and had a very pleasant pepperoni pizza – the Spanish aren’t that good generally at making pizza bases so this was most welcome. We spent the evening simply taking in the mountain air and enjoying a nice bottle of rose.

Back at the hotel after an enjoyable evening we got off to a bad start as one of the guests had far too much to drink and kept trying to sing – like us he probably had a room that was too hot and so with his door open we could hear him loud and clear.  After a very unsatisfactory sleeping night which included listening to presumably the same person throwing up in the morning… we got up at 8.30am only to see the very modern, efficient looking dining room empty and devoid of staff with last night’s dinner plates still scattered around, We simply left, vowing next time to go elsewhere – which given the potential is a great shame – maybe they’ll change in the future. We’ve been in touch to pay the bill but they’ve yet to come back to us.

The reason we came here on a Friday night was so we could travel back up through Guadix market which is held on a Saturday and that we did, arriving at Guadix around 11am.  Great market and large but a little short on food options (fried chicken or nothing) – as we’d had no breakfast this was important so we only stayed for an hour before heading off home, but not before Maureen bought a new quilt for the bed.

Note the spelling of “Lennon”….. just because someone CAN print on t-shirts doesn’t mean they SHOULD

and finally just outside of Guadix on the way back… a nice church…

After taking it easy yesterday, mainly due to having no concrete to finish off the road repair that neighbour Richard and I started the day before, Maureen and I spent the evening at home with new friends Angela and Dennis, sitting under the pergola enjoying some tapas and Maureen’s latest trick: elongated burgers to fit in the finger buns normally reserved for hot dogs – good idea! I think we lasted out till somewhat after midnight, not because of the air cooling off but probably more to do with alcohol I should guess.

None of which stopped me getting up at 6am this morning and installing a brand new module into my new “hobby” the next set of online forums for the FSB…  I’m learning about this system at a great rate of knots – which is handy as the minute I get back to the UK I’ve promised a PowerPoint on the subject.  I think I lasted a couple of hours before retiring until 11am at which point we’d promised our friends we’d go see their cave and drop off their laptop which I’d been updating. That was great – every cave in the area is unique and so it’s always nice to see what others have done. Next stop we popped into see “Galera Phil” and his wife to see their cave, also for the first time, collecting even more ideas on the way.

After a brief stop-off back at our place we headed off to Cullar. There’s a church up in the hills – you can see it as you’re coming into Cullar from the Huescar end… and for some time I’ve been promising myself to go take a look. After a couple of false starts we found the (patently obvious) entrance to the long and windy path up the hill to the church – with a sign “torreon arabe”, a quite magnificent affair with an equally magnificent view of (the rather lacklustre) Cullar. The very welcome breeze at the top of the hill made up for the 39 degrees C summer heat.

Culture out of the way we popped into Cullar for a coffee and a little relaxation before heading off back to Galera, but not before a trip to “Restaurante Montecarlo” in Cullar for a late Sunday lunch (4pm) comprising lasagne as a starter and Magra con Tomate which I have to say was superb. The restaurant is very popular and quite reasonably priced, I think we spend 32 euros between the two of us and that’s only because Maureen ordered a steak!!!

Before the sun set we headed off home and I had a quick dip in the (rather cool) Jacuzzi which gave me enough energy to write this blog… but it’s fading fast – I can see a very lazy evening coming along.

If only every day could be as nice… tomorrow – I’ve promised Richard we’ll do a spot of concreting!

A lovely day for tiling? Well, actually it’s VERY hot out there but I gave it my best shot, bearing in mind it’s Sunday and if I run out of materials, well, tough. Today’s job was to tile the BBQ area which started off looking beautiful a couple of years ago when first built but which is looking a little ill now since the winter took it’s toll on the stone surface.

I gave up – the BBQ is no-where near square so I’m seeking advice. Meanwhile we went off to a local ancient market…

and ended up at the bar in Galera for drinks… I recall ordering a glass of wine and receiving an ice-bucket with a full bottle… what service… we came back to the cave and spent a little while star-gazing as it’s an incredibly clear night in which the edge of our galaxy is VERY clear indeed…. and once you grab the binoculars, what looks like a thin cloud… is actually jam-packed full of stars… super.

Tomorrow the girls are off shopping in BATHA, I plan to stop in bed as long as is humanly possible and then do some more work on my new hobby, the FSB FORUMS… so much to do, so few resources…

Other than that, all seems well today, no walls falling apart, no dire emergency calls from the UK (but then, it is Sunday).  Strangely I’m missing my cat – how sad is that… hoping he’s happy with whatever cats do… but not missing him enough to pay the horrendous cost of bringing animals over here…