Scargill

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Maureen and I are back in the UK for a few days for a wedding and to see friends and relatives. Last night, we went to the local Indian restaurant in Hexham and were rather shocked at the prices, which have shot up again. We both had only starters, not main courses. I had two pints of Cobra, Maureen had one and a half pints, and that was about it. A grand total of £70. Of course, by now, people who live here full-time will just take this in its course. But to me, that’s a horrendous amount of money.

Today we went to the Metro Centre for a spot of shopping. Maureen had to do some stuff at Marks and Spencer’s, and so as Marks and Spencer’s is not my thing, I thought I’d go into their cafe for a quick cup of coffee. A simple milky white coffee was around £4 so I gave that a miss and headed off down to McDonald’s. It never ceases to amaze me how McDonald’s manages to keep reasonable pricing while others just go up and up. For less than £4, about £3.20, I got a nice cup of coffee and a cheeseburger. Not exactly fine dining, but good enough for breakfast. Just to keep this in perspective: normally when we’re in our local cafes in Spain, I would expect to pay between 1.20€ and 1.50€ for a cup of coffee. I can’t really compare cheeseburgers because that’s not what we have in local cafes. Typically a toast with olive oil and tomato, or as it’s called, “tostada con tomate” would be again between €1.20 and €1.50 so McDonald’s is doing reasonably well, but Marks and Spencers – no.

We have to travel down south in a few days for a wedding. We’ll be stopping a couple of nights and then coming back up before heading back off to Spain, where in fact we are about to move house. I certainly won’t miss the drizzle here and general cold. It’s not much warmer in Spain, but at least it’s dry most of the time where we are.

The weather has been that miserable in fact that I’ve not gotten around to taking any photographs in the UK. So here is a photograph I took just before we left Spain a few days ago.

A lot has happened since this original post in December a year ago but I’ll update it rather than start a new post which no doubt will happen before the end of 2025.

Over Christmas 2024, we were back in Bellingham for a while – lots going on around the turn of the year 2024-2025 – eye operations – simple enough (cataracts, both of us – now resolved) but with attendant healing delays before any travel.

Back then we were having visits from relatives and visiting friends, watching the ever-present drizzle and waiting as usual for Internet providers…

Maureen and I are both well, but not unusually we’re continuing the struggle to get broadband here in Bellingham. Having managed on a 4G connection for some time, just, we’ve been keeping up to date with broadband promises and disapointments in the area. Recently I’ve noticed ads for a company called B4RN (that’s not a spelling mistake) and back in the summer they started pushing their service down our postal throat, I contacted them and to cut a long story short, they are making inexpensive fibre a reality in Bellingham – but only if you live in the right place.

After a few emails they owned up that they have no plans to kit out our side of the Bellingham bridge… how they get away with that is beyond me – so as has been my long-term experience in rural parts of Northumberland, we’re stuck with the lack-lustre 4G option (poor signal) or something based on Openreach landlines.

Earlier in December 2024 we decided to go with a company called OneStream who it seemed could finally offer a medium speed broadband option at sub-£20 – handy if you’re not here all the time.

The service was to go live on December 24, 2024 – and we’re told it did – however we were also supposed to receive a modem mid-December – which we didn’t despite numerous “chats” with the company. December 28, 2024 – still no modem. By now I was beginning to think this was going to be another waste of time. Thankfully the 4G held up well enough to get our fair share of christmas TV, always handy when the weather is poor.

Update August 2025

In the end, the OneStream connection as proven reliable since installed – with only one outage. Speed is however painfully slow as it is based on the soon-to-be-abandoned-for-good BT landlines. Remember, just under £20 UK pounds a month for slow broadband in Bellingham. Meanwhile back in Spain, we’re enjoying fast 5G – faster by some way than even Starlink. The 5G SIM from Digimobil curently costs around 15 euros a month all in.

I’m hoping that by the end of 2025 we can get some decent fibre or 5G in the tech-abandoned-end of Bellingham. Stranger things have happened. For more on our current activities including our recent trip to the USA, see the spanish site.

Update December 2025

But now it’s becoming increasingly obvious my earlier prediction for fibre was wildly optimistic, and I think we’ll be on the old BT line for a little while longer in Bellingham. Meanwhile, it’s 4 a.m. in the morning on December 5th. I commented higher up on the price of 5G in Spain – again a lot has changed – my bill now comes to around 16 euros a month there and that includes totally unlimited use of both my phone and router – a far cry from the situation in the UK. It’s 5am in the morning on December 6th, 2025 and I suddenly got the urge to update this blog. We are returning to the UK later this month, and we’ll be there over the Christmas period.

I don’t update this blog that often as mentioned in the previous entry – but I’m here in Bellingham and the weather is surprisingly nice at the end of July.

Maureen has been working on the garden and I’ve been upgrading our home automation and working on heating system issues with some success. We’ve also had friends visit and been out visiting others. All in a busy few days.

Coming back to the UK has been an eye-opener – prices have rocketed far more I guess than permanent residents will likely see. Popped into the Cheviot local pub for dinner with friends – the meals were not cheap but more’s the point, the house wine was £22 a bottle and if that doesn’t stand out – you’re part of the problem, dear reader. That is ridiculous for a common-or-garden wine at a common-or-garden local rural pub in Northeast England.

Even the nearest Indian takeaway is at it, based in a nearby trading estate to keep costs down yet charging £80 for Chicken Tikka + rice takeaway * 4 + poppodums. I nearly collapsed as we’re used back in Southern Spain to half-decent wine at 3 Euros a bottle in the supermarket, maybe 10-12 Euros in a rural restaurant – less in a bar. None of this has done anything to change my view that we made the right decision moving to Spain after a lifetime of very fairly contributing to Britain tax-wise – something I now put down to my own ignorance.

I have to hand it to Northumberland – the weather is quite reasonable right now whereas much of Europe is having record high temperatures in July – but that’s nature, not rip-off retailers and pub-owners some of whom should be hung, drawn and quartered IMHO. You can tell I’m annoyed, the new UK labour government have just announced scrapping the winter heat allowance except for some disabled folk and a whole raft of people who’ve spent their lives NOT contributing to the system.

As some of you already know, we’re pretty much settled in Spain with the odd trip to the UK – and I maintain a pair of blogs – one for friends and others to se what we’re up to in our daily lives – I also maintain my very active tech-blog which is aimed at technical folk – between the two – they take up much of my spare time – so this blog which has in the past focussed on our UK experiences is becoming less relevant.

To save effort can I ask readers and friends to look into the Spanish blog for regular updates and the tech blog for anything geekish – thanks for looking in – historical info in this blog remains intact.

Not sure how but we seem to have missed out on the heatwave over in Northumberland. I was there for Christmas 2022 and New Year to help get our new place in Bellingham in shape. I manage to capture what little sun we’ve had in photos of the nearby church and equally dead local baker.

Closed until January 9, 2023 it seemed hardly the best way to recover from pandemic/recession. Anyway, our house is in good order and being checked on regularly by friends.

July 2023 update

In July 2023 we were back in Bellingham for a short while – it seems that there was a dire situation at the bakers over the new year but checking now all seems as normal at least for now – and CONSIDERABLY better value than Greggs (rip off) bakers. Weather in July as you’d expect – some sunshine and lots of drizzle.

Although we got off to the above bad start, on July 30 we had clear skies at night while visiting our friends up at Lemmington Hall near Alnwick (Northumberland).

For more regular updates on our general lives, check our Bedrock site https://spain.scargill.net and for REALLY regular updates our friends can catch us on Facebook etc.

I tend to use this site now just for UK-specific stuff. Maureen is back in the UK for a while, late August and part of September so no doubt we’ll have some updates in here.

Nothing in the way of outdoor photos I’m afraid as the weather here is abysmal.. I’ve spend much of the season (since arriving late December 17) working on broadband and bust PC issues while Maureen does her painting etc..

I was just thinking how the conversation of TV over broadband goes… for years I and others have been reeling off what kind of speed you need for decent TV.

Well, over the hols I’ve been struggling with the usual provider issues, I spent more time today messaging Lyca BOTS and getting nowhere, meanwhile we’ve been managing for TV on a SKY (O2) 4G signal that is particularly slow thanks, as it turns out, entirely due to the crappy 4G roof mounted modem we fitted months ago when we moved in.

Here’s the thing… the TV picture quality is just fine.. easily 1080p and often higher on our 4K 50″ TV. As an example in one sitting this week we watched 5 episodes end to end of the new Jack Ryan series… perfect and yet the speed never went above 4.6Mbps download. Crystal clear imagery at speeds I’d have said were too slow.

Once I can get someone to bring some scaffolding to pull the modem off the roof it will be much faster… I brought another router with me from Spain (TP-Link) that, sitting in the downstairs window easily achieves 30Mbps+ on O2. But it turns out that’s only needed for my PC, not the TV.

Next time I take a Boxing night photo I’ll use a tripod and NOT capture the telephone line. Still – lots of stars out… too cold to have another attempt and dinner’s ready…

Hmm. Took a trip to the MetroCentre on Christmas Eve to see the new Avatar 2 movie – looks like they’ve made some changes to some stores since I was last there…

Well, happy new year everyone, thanks for looking in..

December and Maureen is at our new(ish) place in Bellingham and by the look of it has been frantically unpacking and working on the place.

Hard to believe but here it is, December 3, 2022 and it’s sunny in Bellingham, UK with hardly any trace of the usual damp clouds.

Meamwhile the kitchen is looking absolutely spiffy.

And that’s all I have for now as I’m here in Southern Spain where it is even clearer! I was beginning to think after yesterday that the sun had shrivelled up – but no, it’s back. Good day for a festival.

But as most of them are happening over in Spain – I’ll direct you to the Spanish blog – meanwhile we expect to spend time over Christmas in our new UK base – I’ll update this blog at the time. Thanks for looking in.

It’s not the first time we’ve owned property in Bellingham (we’ve owned two cottages here in the past – Groom’s Bothy and Hollyberry Cottage) but the first time out of town – and really can’t gripe about the view. It’ll be some time before we’re ready for inside photography – so much to do, so little time – but here’s a quick view of the outside – front and back…

That’s the view from the back (Day of the Dead comes to mind but at least it’s peaceful and unlikely to end up as a housing estate for a long time!) and coming up, the view from the front..

Maureen has put lots of work into making this a reality and hopefully before the end of the year it’ll have a functioning workshop – right now everything is a bit dis-ordered – but we have a functioning living room and bedrooms – that’s important. Obviously, none of this would have been possible without the help of our friends.

More later.

It’s been quiet in here as we now spend far more time in Spain than the UK.

I’ve recently taken the somewhat unusual step of putting a MARGINALLY technical blog entry over at our Bedrock site (recently address-changed to https://spain.scargill.net) – because it seems that at long last we have better broadband in Galera, no thanks to the local broadband provider but a great opportunity to learn something new about 4G.

Do check out the link above if you’re interested in what we’re up to right now. Not much to write about on the English side of things other than our forthcoming visit to our new UK base.

More on that later as we’ll be replicating the Spanish broadband setup in the UK during our forthcoming visit.

Meanwhile we’ve had friends and relatives over to visit – over to the Spanish site for more on that.