Bedrock

Yesterday we went off to check out alternative lakes in the area. WHAT alternative lakes you might ask? We normally visit Embalse De Negratin – so for a change we thought we’d go visit Embalse La Bolera.

So, the first disappointment of the day though not ENTIRELY unexpected – you can’t SWIM in it – apparently it’s restricted for fishing though we did note one small group in there naked! No, I didn’t take pictures. Nice looking lake but if you can’t go in it when it’s 40c outside,  I’m not sure I see the relevance – so we skipped that and continued our trip to the little town of Pozo Alcon.

We got to Pozo Alcon around 2pm and of course nearly everything was closed. One of the Chinese supermarkets was open so we had a look in there and decided then to have a pizza for lunch. There were a number of pizza restaurants in town but recalled seeing a decent-looking one on the way in – so we headed back up just Northeast of Pozo-Alcon to the Restaurant Montealegre.

Bad mistake – firstly despite the big sign that says PIZZA, they don’t do them during the day, just at night – so while Maureen chose a Carbonara, I had my favourite – Carne Con Tomate, a simple dish of small meat cubes in a tomato-based sauce.  Second bad mistake – it was like chewing string. First time I’ve ever had a bad eating experience in Spain other than an over-greasy salmon in Velez Blanco.

Still, you can’t win them all, so we headed off to our normal haunt of Embalse De Negratin and spent the rest of the afternoon in the lake – with temperatures approaching 40c it was WONDERFUL.

We finished the day with a trip to BAZA for some supplies and a lazy evening.

Today I was back to my usual grind, fathoming out some coding issues and continuing to learn about Facebook Apps. It’s amazing how many hours you can sink into something so apparently simple – Facebook’s atrocious documentation doesn’t help. We finished the evening with a trip down to Galera village – lots going on until way past midnight…then caught up with the excellent “Superman- the early years” series and now giving up for the night, ready for a day of meetings tomorrow.

I’ve been sitting here programming since 7am tonight – it’s been one of the laziest days I can remember – Simon from across the road came over to offer suggestions as to how to fix our wobbly Pergola – then Adrian came over to get me to look at his laptop – and that was it for the day.

Tomorrow we’re off to explore new territory! I’ll be taking the camera.

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We had to drop Maureen’s sister Elizabeth off at Granada airport first thing this morning so we took the opportunity to visit the Alhambra by travelling down first thing on Wednesday morning and stopping overnight in the city.

Don’t forget to click on any image if you want a larger version.

First thing in the morning (7.30am) the views of the mountains were spectacular with low-lying clouds hovering above or in the mountains themselves.

We arrived around 9.30am and had to wait a while for the British guide to turn up to take us around the famous Alhambra. It’s not my first visit but you always see something new. The guide was superb, sadly the audio technology he was carrying was rubbish so we ended up missing some of what he said. Non-the-less a thoroughly enjoyable if hot way to spend the day.

Looking every bit the tourist with my hat and “I love Alhambra” badge, I set about taking photos – I’ll put the lot into a Google Album and include the link rather than filling this page up with pics. There are a couple I need to show you… these two in particular – spectacular panoramic views from the top of the city…

Maureen and Elizabeth thoroughly enjoyed the trip – sorry the latter had to leave so soon. Afterwards as I took a nap back at the hotel they went off for the bus tour and we all caught up later on for a drink.

Thursday morning we dropped Elizabeth off at the airport and headed back to the Alhambra car park so we could park up (now I know how to get there from the motorway instead of weaving across half of Granada) and continue the bus tour. HOT does not begin to describe it but we found ourselves at the science centre – WELL recommended…  The roof of the science centre below has photocells over the roof (out of site here) generating – wait for it 200kw of electricity! Again more photos to come – on the way back up home from Granada I took a wrong turn off to Almeria and though it only took around 10 minutes to twig I’d got it wrong, I was glad I did as we found the largest alternative power plant I’ve ever seen, firstly a massive solar plant (heat pump type) and photovoltaic but also a massive wind farm all in the same location – how to do the job properly!

Unfortunately the photos just don’t do it – I forgot my large camera and what looked really impressive in real life just doesn’t cut it here. What you are looking at below – is part of an image with hundreds of huge arrays of curved, reflective solar panels. To the left off-image was a fairly large photovoltaic array and to the right out of shot, hundreds of windmills… unbelievable.

The BEST way to see these and many more photos of the trip is to go to the relevant Google Album. Click here to visit Scargill’s Google Album of Granada, 2011 – if you prefer to see this stuff in Facebook – checkout our Facebook Bedrock page here

What a scorcher, after a pleasant if uneventful trip to the village last night which ended early despite the band starting up in the town square, this morning we headed off to the ORCE market… fairly average – it’s now fairly obvious that the traders travel from area to area as you see the same faces at each market…. but pleasant.

A quick trip to BAZA where I found a battery-operated pump for the new boat  (and a new GREEN laser) and off we went to the lake where we spent the afternoon relaxing in the water and testing out the new blow-up boat.

I’m now sitting at the computer catching up with emails – and I’m roasting – head’s red, legs are red – I reckon I’ll be suffering soon. Still – keeps me occupied instead of stewing about being embarrassed to be British (see riots on TV)

A special mention here for the company providing many of us in Galera and surrounding areas with WIFI.  For the first 3 years of being here we dealt with a very expensive company called Iberbanda for our broadband. This is a WIMAX-type service with an antenna in the village which is then used by anyone with line-of-site access and a suitable small dish and account. Iberbanda were prohibitively expensive for many and in our case, being here only part of the time, one of our largest outlays. I could not find any help in English and they were never very responsive. When we started we had a 512K connection – which by modern standards is awful – and we only had that increased to 1 Mbps when I noted that this is the minimum standard acceptable in Spain and wrote to the company accordingly – our speed went up but not voluntarily.

Earlier this year a company called Habland came on the scene and we immediately moved to them on recommendation – they offer 1Mbps (in both directions) as standard, a dramatically reduced monthly outlay (as little as 14 euros a month) and when we first had this installed I had some issues as my requirements are somewhat more involved than simply reading email.  I was initially disappointed by the issues but I have to say that I’ve had support including weekends and strange hours from a fellow called Antonio who manages perfect English and clearly knows his stuff, technically.  This is so very different from our previous experience (and indeed my experience with many tech companies).

The standard offering even includes a speed increase for those merely browsing the web rather than downloading – and the promise of more flexible offerings in the future for those of us who need higher speeds for part of the year.

The first test results below are a little biased because I’m doing this at 8am in the morning and also the speeds reflect the fact that the test takes only a moment to run… continuous speeds would be lower and the SECOND set of figures is more typical of results…

The bar below shows how the speed drops dramatically after a matter of seconds… but this does work well for simple web browsing.

Ok, it’s not broadband as most Brits know it – but it works and works well considering we’re half way up the side of a mountain. You must be able to get line of sight to the village for this to work – and while 1 Mbps may sound poor – consider that for Skype usage, it is your upload, not your download speed that matters – and the upload speed here is faster than my 8 meg broadband upload speed back in the UK (typically 600k/second).

What would be great now would be the ability to bump that speed up to say 8 meg for short periods, say on a daily or weekly basis…. whether or not that happens remains to be seen.

With temperatures as high as 38 degrees, yesterday when we finally got out and about – we spent our Sunday in the water, once again at our favourite lake, followed by a quiet night in and I spent the night, after watching “Top Gear” and the EXCELLENT new “Hawaii 5-O”, getting annoyed at trivial connectivity problems. I’m currently sporting quite sore upper-arms and chest due to over-doing the sun a little. This morning the girls are off to the post office and the “Negropolis” in Galera, I’ve finished off re-cementing the entrance to the driveway (after our original builder used PLASTER for a ramp on the path!!) I’m hopefully going to get some programming work done on my new APP. If I could find a piece of flat road I’d give my new solar car a run (see right)

Incidentally, Facebook fans, if you want to see what I’m up to there, checkout the Bedrock Facebook Page…