Bedrock

After a very pleasant day yesterday which saw Simon, Maureen and I travel around the back of mount Sagra (the 5th largest mountain in Spain) and then onto the sadly depleted San Clemente, today, Maureen is planning a quiet day as Simon and I head off to Castril to check out the walk along the gorge.

I’ve been to Castril many times of course but Simon hasn’t so this should be interesting for him. The weather here is settling down now, starting to get cool at night but still very pleasant at 25+ during the day.

And off we go – leaving you with a photo I took looking down at the village of Galera just a couple of nights ago near sunset.

Last year we took several trips to San Clemente – water levels already down – but we’ve had a very busy year this year and so this was our first visit visit – and something of a shocker – as the water levels have dropped markedly.

The photo above shows San Clemente last year mid-summer.

This year, the levels are notably lower and areas we would have popped in for a swim previously are now dry land. Here’s hoping there’s some snow over the winter to help replenish this excellent lake.

I’m sitting here getting side-tracked reading all about Cascamorras on the excellent One Foot in the Grave blog. Over in Baza the “Festival of Cascamorras” is an interesting fiesta – but I won’t ruin it, go check out the above blog as there’s a full description therein.

So I had this brilliant idea of using a little cheap Chinese power convertor  – to take stored solar power at 24v down to 3.5v to power a set of otherwise defunct (B&M) solar butterflies. One tends not to throw them away un-necessarily here in Spain as for reasons beyond me – despite numerous Chinese stores, solar lights of any description are more expensive here than in the UK!

Well, that didn’t go so well and resulted in 4 dead lights. I’ve since realised why but the answer is a tad technical for here! I’m spending part of my Sunday afternoon fixing this lot while Maureen gets on with various tasks around the house. The sun is out but it feels significantly cooler today.

Not a lot has happened since our mini-trip to Mojacar. We popped down to the village last night and met up with friends for a while. There was some music playing in the town square but the place was generally quiet quiet. We will soon have a friend stopping over for a week.

Meanwhile on 23rd of September there’s a Craft Fair at Velez Rubo (Velez Stores, Pologono Industrial). Looks like it might be interesting – “Indian Curry Tasters” caught my eye.

Sometime last week, Maureen spotted someone selling coal on one of the Facebook sites and though of course we don’t need it now, it seemed like it might be a good idea to get some for October just in case (our burner here, unlike many, is imported and is multi-fuel and so won’t buckle if using hot coal).

This required a trip to Albox – well, we just had to take up this offer as there are some decent stores in Albox. We decided to make a mini-holiday out of it and I remembered being told there’s a half-decent Indian restaurant in Mojacar.  Accordingly we booked an overnight stay in the old town.

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Last night we visited Restaurante Ufe for the first time in outer Huescar. It took us a little while to get the street right and I commented that it made me think of one of those streets in Mexico where you might expect your car tires to last mere moments in your absence before being replaced by bricks.

However, looks can be deceiving, we parked up and went into the restaurant – or rather to the enclosed area outside the restaurant, complete with bar which has TONS of atmosphere.

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This week we’ve had Norman and Alexis over to see us from the UK and today ended their short but welcome visit.

We started the day by travelling to Guadix. Despite (for once) abysmal weather back in Galera, it was nice and sunny and we had a good walk around not to mention stopping at several cafes throughout the day which without exception were excellent.

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