Bedrock

Today we’re planning a shopping expedition to Baza then back, armed with sandwiches to Embalse Del Negratin for some more sun. Some of the internal patching is now done, ready for a coat of paint, I suspect external fixes might take a little longer and we’re just recovering from a quote to fix the roof – after recovering from the shock it occurred to me I could buy a car for that amount.

But for today, the important thing is to enjoy the glorious sunshine. Temperatures yesterday hit 33 degrees and I suspect will do again today – the sky is clear blue as it has been pretty much all week apart from the occasional light, puffy cloud. You just can’t beat swimming in a nice cool lake when it’s as hot as this outside.

A little more painting later today and the plan is to polish off the evening sitting outside with neighbours to enjoy the evening sun and possibly the odd glass of wine. Jonathan is taking care of the barbeque.

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.

It won’t be our first trip of the year, we were over there in February but it’ll be the first escape to the sun by the look of it…   weather here in Blighty has been nice on and off but the rain just keeps coming back to ruin things – yesterday was awful. This morning I’m looking out of the window and seeing blue skies here in the Northeast of England… hardly awe-inspiring however..

Meanwhile back in Galera…temperature ranges from 21 to 25C for the next week with NO chance of rain AT ALL. Lovely. Can’t wait…

While I have no doubt any of you who’re over in Spain with us will have already checked out Galera and surrounding places on Google Earth or Google Maps, I wonder if you’ve seen the place in 3D ??

No??? Well, pop along to Google maps (not Google Earth) – and lookup Galera….

Then under MORE – select “street view” – I had NO IDEA they’d been around with the cameras, you can go most of the way up to our place! Anyway, here we are in street view at the plaza mayor. That’s pretty impressive – but it’s nothing compared to right-clicking the street view image and turning 3D on!!

I’ve just ordered a couple of pairs of red-blue specs from Ebay….. I can’t wait…

Apparently the builder has has not paid the bill… Electricity is off at our property in Spain – which means as far as I’m concerned, any theft, damage or hot-tub corrosion is chargeable to the BUILDER. If you’re reading this and are in the same boat… we need to treat this one VERY seriously! I hope we can all agree this is TOTALLY unacceptable. Bloody good job the weather’s not bad!!

Turns out that builder’s electricity is good for 2 years – and it’s 2 years! Hard to believe they could not get proper electricity installed in that length of time – my patience is starting to wear thin on this one – I don’t fancy the summer holidays with a generator!

Update! Electricity is back on and has stayed on for some time now. I have no doubt it’s still sub-standard, sometimes dropping below 200 volts which breaks appliances and shortens the life of electronic lamps – we’re already onto our second Jacussi heater, we’ve had to replace the timer on the dishwasher – but it turns out it was the heating element. Bulbs have gone.. the builder has a lot to answer for. If you’re living there and reading this – have YOU had appliance issues yet?

Despite all that I’m looking forward to getting over there and getting some HEAT!

A fairly boring looking day today, weather wise, it’s not that cold, it’s not raining but then, it’s not summer either! Had a nice night in with neighbours last night after spending the day working on getting things working (successfully). The plan for this morning is to visit Huescar market (20 minutes down the road). We’ve only really taken notice of this weekly market in the summer when it is a SUPERB affair so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes.

It appears that there have been some developments (though not all good) on the electricity front and we’re getting a visit later on (apparently) to learn more! Those of you reading this who have caves up here might like to enquire later!  Voltage yesterday was near 200v as against a pitiful 170v the day before but it’s still not “real” mains and the heaters are acting accordingly.