Scargill

Archive for the ‘Spain’ Category

Something I just discovered… a new way to show your pictures…. here’s some shots I took in the dark last night at the local festival in Galera. For more info on the festival etc head over to www.bedrock.es

Where would you expect to find the best old Western town? Somewhere in the States? Well, apparently not! Instead you might look at Southern Spain!  What better way to spend a 40 degrees C afternoon than plodding around in the desert and that’s how we spent our day today at mini-hollywood near Almeria.

For more information on what was one a film-set but which is now an altogether excellent theme-park called  Mini-Hollywood, see my brief write-up at our sister website or if you’re travelling in Spain – Carretera Nacional 340 – Km. 4,64, Desierto de Tabernas, Tabernas, Almeria in Spain. Here’s a short series of slides/video scenes I put together… “A trip to Mini-Hollywood”. Click the centre arrow to start the ball rolling.

Check out also the Spanish site for our trip to the excellent Monasterio De Santa Eulalia in Aledo, Totano – great place to visit and stay!

Solar power in Lorca
When last heading back to the airport after a trip to Spain in April 2009, I took the opportunity to visit LORCA  – a rather large city part way between Galera and Murcia airport. One of the benefits of carrying a sat-nav is that you don’t have to worry about getting lost – so I took a diversion off the motorway and found myself in an industrial estate behind which appeared to be a rather large solar farm…. just how large wasn’t apparent until I found myself wandering along a dirt road that would be well placed in a desert somewhere.

The “farm” turned out to be the largest collection of solar arrays I’ve ever see and after ditching the car in favour of an on-foot reconnoitre I have to say…. MOST impressed – the Spanish really DO take solar power seriously – this is a VAST collection of massive photovoltiac solar panels though no-where near as impressive as this 20MW solar collector in Sevilla, however – if you look in the photo, the panels go almost as far as you can see. According to the blurb it chucks out 2,000,000 KWH annually or put another way about enough to run maybe 100 homes as long as they don’t all run the kettle at once. I’m sure anyone sufficiently interested can Google Lorca and get some more information – suffice it to say it’s well worth 5 minutes out of your journey to take a look. 

Apologies for the obvious photo glitch on the large panel – my camera could not cope with this scene so I had to panorama it from 4 photos.

We set off from the rainy UK in the early hours of Monday morning for Spain and what a ride it’s been since then. We arrived in Spain lunchtime to less than exciting weather. Granted it was MUCH warmer than the UK but there was a light rain. Non-the-less we set off from Malaga airport for the long trip to the small inland town of GALERA in a rented SEAT.

What could have been an otherwise quite boring ride turned into a major affair when, half an hour into the trip, as we were minding our own business on the motorway, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a truck coming up on my left. It wasn’t so much the fact that it was a truck, it was the fact that he was jack-knifing at the time – and before I could as much as turn around, the truck slammed into the side of our car HARD. Within what seemed like a second or less, we found ourselves driving up the motorway BACKWARDS.

Having taken out the rear left side of the car, our new friend proceeded to slam again onto the driver’s side – and at some point I’ve yet to determine, a Merc was involved and that hit the front. Happy to say no-one was seriously hurt but the vehicle was a write-off.

Several hours later we set of AGAIN from the Airport armed with a brand new Peugeot and we’re currently looking at cave-houses with a view to buying one as a second home! No, seriously, take a cave, dig a deep hole, line it with concrete, put a front on it and you have handy home – it’s a big thing out here and they’re really neat.

Next…  a trip to the Mezquita in Cordoba (a temple first built in the Visigoth era) via a wonderful castle called Castillo de Almondovar del Rio and then on to Sunny Galera, a mere 100 miles northeast of Granada, at the top of a mountain, and overlooking the valley etc…. our new summer home.. and although it looks like a small house, of course most of it is buried in the hill itself, so this small house actually contains 2 bedrooms, large study, laundry room and is spread over 3 floors in total – and more importantly – it’s ours!