How many holes left to dig?

Having finished the fencing round the paddock....

(not bad for amateurs!)

.... this weekend saw us start on the less steep hill down the track to the double gate. Of course, the slope is not an even slope and so we are having to dig some holes 2 feet deep and are having to build others up because the ground is already too low.

We decided we would dig all the holes on Saturday ready for concreting on Sunday.What we hadn't accounted for was just how tough the hole digging would be.

The holes around the paddock were relatively easy to dig, the area hasn't been used as a pathway and although there were plenty of rocks to move, it wasn't too difficult.

If we thought the edge of the track down to the Rambla would be the same, we were sadly misled.

The house we live in is built on the original footprint of an older house that fell into ruin. This was bulldozed and the area cleared for our house to be built.

What we now know is where they bulldozed the rubble to - over the edge and on to the track below. Then they ran a tractor over it to settle it and this....

is what we were digging up! The double gates at the bottom also needed digging out so they would open and the rubble from the hillside we cleared used to level the lower section of the track.

After 3 hours of digging my lower back started to complain, but as you do, I ignored it and carried on to get the job done.

Later that night, I could hardly move. If I sat down, I couldn't get up, picking the dog bowls up to feed them was a task in itself and getting comfortable sitting, standing or laying down anywhere was an impossibility.

When we awoke on Sunday morning, Neil was worse then me. He could hardly move and in a lot of pain. We had overdone it and the cementing would not be getting done.

A soak in the hot tub, a number of ice packs and a quiet day (we watched all 3 DVD's of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which I haven't seen for some time). ...seems to have been a great help, I can at least move with relatively little pain. Neil is less comfortable but has gone to golf on the basis it will either help loosen his back OR, he'll not be able to move for the rest of the week!

So, we are 'hopefully' going to be fit enough to do the cementing tomorrow BUT we do have to take the wheel barrow full of cement up and down 3 slopes and that may prove to be one slope too many!

I always knew this was going to be a big job, but it's getting bigger every time we do a bit.

But, it is looking really good!

Quick update on the 'bang on the head'.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has shown such concern over my little misfortune with the lump hammer, I am pleased to report the lump hammer is fine and has been back at work today.

As for my head, well, I do consider myself to have got off very lightly. After a couple of days rest I have been able to resume fencing duties. Apart from localised pain if I touch the top of my head, which I try not to do, I have no apparent after effects at all. I am still unable to brush my hair properly and I will probably have to deal with a twin crown from now on, but overall I count myself incredibly lucky to have had such little discomfort from what could have been quite a nasty accident.

The real casualty in all of this are my work gloves, they have not recovered from being washed to remove the blood and are, sadly, destined for the bin.

I consider it a small price to pay!

Hard Hat Required.

Any ex-pat living in Spain will tell you that the 'Health & Safety' measures in the UK are seriously missing here in Spain. The more rural you get, the further they get from any H&S manual.

And so, H&S on a home building site is pretty much non-existent and it's easy to fall into the same mind set.

We're doing fencing. We're not up ladders. We're not using sharp tools. We're just doing fencing.

So why am I typing this whilst wearing some very fetching new head gear?

Well,

Before we totally enclose the paddock (as I refer to it) we needed to shift about 50 large plastic drainage pipes which have been left here since the house was built, someone really over-ordered! The plan was to put 2 large metal posts at the bottom of the next hill and stack these pipes between the hill and the posts. If we moved them now, we could just roll them down the hill, in another couple of days we would be man-handling 4 metres of drainpipe through a single gate while balancing on a steep slope. Moving them today seemed like a good idea.

The pipes haven't moved for almost 2 years so we knew there would be 'things' living in them and we would be about to evict some very cross little animals, especially as we would be working through the day and many of them could be nocturnal.

Once we had donned big boots and large gloves we set about making as much noise on the drainpipes as we could with a big stick to try and scare whatever was in them, out.

Then we began moving them. There was trails of debris falling out of the pipes as they were dragged across the lumps and bumps of the paddock, left from previous years ploughing. Bits of old straw nests, empty almond nut shells and the occasional signs of animal droppings.

After we were about halfway through moving them, I suddenly saw my first evictee, a lovely little bunny. He scampered out of the end of one of the pipes and up the hill into the overgrown Cacti near the ruined 'Nave'. I left him to settle and carried on moving the pipes when suddenly, Neil called to say we needed a longer post at one end, the stack of pipes had reached the top. As I walked over to see, I suddenly saw the whole pile of drainpipes break free from their restraints and cascade down the hill, thankfully to be trapped on the trunks of Almond trees growing on the lower level.

I shall not repeat the words that came forth from my husband's mouth, but it was clear that he was not happy!

That was the start of a day, destined to get worse.

We climbed back up to the house where all the building 'stuff' is stored and chose some longer metal posts to use for storing the drainpipes. Posts and hammer in hand, we set off to repeat the mornings work.

As these posts were 2 metres long, Neil had to climb up the hill to be able to hammer them in, so he asked me to hold the posts in place while he clambered up a near vertical slope, bits of loose rock, plant debris and the remnants of last years fallen almonds showering down on top of me. It should have been a warning.

He started to hammer in the first post with the lump hammer, and I could see the line on the post where we had marked how deep it needed to go, getting nearer and nearer to the ground, when all of a sudden.............

....... my hands left the post and flew to hold the top of my head. Wow, it hurt. I clung on to my head, screaming in pain. Neil flew down the hillside to me, shouting for me to keep still.

He reached me in seconds and threw his arms round me. He lifted my hands and uttered a few words, ' Keep your hands pressed on hard, back to the house, quick. It's bleeding'. The head of the lump hammer had come off the handle and hit me on the head!

Of course it was bleeding!

He almost had to push me up the 2 steep slopes to the house. The dogs had heard my screams and come down to see what was wrong, but I didn't have time to stop. By the time I got halfway up I couldn't breath. It appears I cannot scream, sob and breath ALL at the same time.

Eventually, we got back to the house and Neil went into action mode. Towels, ice pack and a glass of water with painkiller were brought and I allowed him to remove my hands to review the damage. Practical thoughts ran through my head. We have no phone at the house because of the satellite mess up and the mobile phones don't work here. Our neighbour was in the UK so we had no-one nearby to call. Our health cover ran out last month and I haven't sorted anything out yet because in 2 years neither if us has needed a doctor. Meanwhile Neil was sorting out my new headgear. A damp cloth, an ice pack and a pretty scarf to hold it all in place.

Gradually, I calmed down. Although the hammer head was heavy (1kg of steel) I knew it had only caught me a glancing blow, it could have been a lot worse. Neil asked if I wanted to go to hospital but I said not, I wanted to wait a little while to see if the bleeding would stop and we could see how bad the cut was. I wanted to be left to sit quietly for a while.

Neil was shaken up by what had happened, even though it was an accident, he felt responsible. Now I was sat quietly, he didn't have anything to do, the panic set in. I told him I was fine and just needed a few minutes.

10 minutes later we removed the ice pack and could see that I had been very lucky, if such a phrase could be applied to being hit on the head with a lump hammer! It hadn't cut my head, more grazed it and the bleeding had almost stopped although by now, my hair was thick and matted with blood. I put the ice and towel back on my head and rested my head back against the chair while Neil removed my boots - there would be no more work today.

Several hours later, I am perfectly fine. I managed to hang my head upside down in the shower and run lots of warm water over my hair to remove the blood. I doubt I will be able to brush my hair properly for a few days as the top of my head is very sore to touch, but otherwise is fine. The lump hammer will be repaired for future use and I have added 'Hard Hat' to my shopping list. I know I had a very lucky escape and it could have been so much worse.

I am now hoping that when I go back to the paddock today, the fairies have been and stacked all the drainpipes away, but somehow I think my luck will fall short of that happening.

Satellite Panic.

Very often Neil phone's me when he reaches the golf course before he starts to play so last Wednesday I thought it rather odd that I hadn't heard from him. I picked the phone up to dial him, and found out why - we had no phone! I did the usual unplugging and re-plugging that normally works if the signal has dropped but nothing. I checked the internet and that wouldn't connect either. The skies were blue and cloud free so I couldn't believe it was weather related and so began a day of stress.

All the lights on the 2 modems were showing that connections were there but I couldn't get anything to work. I was due at my Spanish class at 10am so had to leave it all and hoped that it would be working OK when I got back.

When I reached the tarmac road my mobile beeped to say I has a message and it was Neil to say he had tried to ring the house and couldn't get through!

A couple of hours later I was back infront of the computer trying to work out what to do when I suddenly got a page open informing me that the company we had the internet through had had their licence to provide the service terminated! By now I had lost the light on the modem that told me I had a phone connection.

Great!

When I has been researching what was available to us for the internet and phone I had the choice of 2 companies that used the Astra satellite, that I wanted to use. One of these was better at responding to queries than the other and there was little difference in price so I went with Net2. Wrong choice.

The message was telling me that I could transfer my contract to the other company and they would have us up and running within 24 hours. With visions of being back to travelling to the tarmac road 2 or 3 times a day to pick up phone messages I decided that I would go for he transfer and hope for the best.

I popped up to our neighbours to ask if I could use their computer to sort it all out only to find I needed some code numbers off the back of our modems. After a quick trip back to the house I had all the information I needed and completed the transfer. All I coould do then was wait.

We were scheduled to go out that night and when we got back about 11.30pm I looked into the study just to see what lights were lit, when I realised the telephone light was back on. I pressed the handsfree button on the phone and sure enough, we had a dial tone again. A quick check on the computer confirmed we also had the internet link back.

12 hours from completing the transfer and we were operational again.

What a relief.

One more room, done.

It started as 4 white walls and a tiled floor.

It became a storage room for all the flat pack furniture for the kitchen and the bedrooms for a few weeks until we had built it all.

It became a storage room for all the golf gear and tool boxes for a few months until we had finished transforming the garage into a utility and store room.

Finally it has become the room it was always intended to be.

The Study.

I have a wonderful room with all my books around me. A room where I can listen to my music. A room where I can work on my Spanish homework. A room where I can spend time on the internet. I no longer have to sit amongst tool boxes, storage boxes or any other kind of boxes.

I have space.

There is a space chair so that if Neil wants to come and look at things on the internet with me, he can. More often than not there is one of the dogs on the spare chair, not Neil. Brandy loves to come and sit with me as I type away on the computer.

I look out of the window over the hot tub and down the valley. With the window open I can hear the various birds calling to each other.

It is a dream of a room in which to work.

It is another room - done.

There are no flies on us!

On the long list we made of things to do to the house when we first saw it, fly screens were a must.

Neil will not tolerate flies in the house and gets very annoyed with them outside. In Terreros we also had problems with the Mossies twice a year, although we are led to understand it is less of a problem here. Although we are not close to any of the pig farms and don’t suffer from the smell, there are still plenty of flies to annoy us if we are outside and this can spoil a laze in the hot tub or a meal in the sun. So, as well as screens at the windows, we decided we would screen in the front porch.

Neil can see how things will look in his minds eye but I can’t and so I just thought it would be like sitting in a cage – but at least it would be a fly-free cage.

The screens were fitted to the windows before Christmas as these were a standard item but we have been waiting for the porch screens to be specially made and last week, they finally arrived to fit them. It was another of the ‘mujer de Nil’ phone calls.

They took a couple of days to fit them but within the first hour I could tell they were actually going to look a whole lot better than I thought. The window man & Neil had done a good job in the design and they look as if they should be there.

Of course it did leave us with a problem as far as the dogs were concerned, as normally we just left the door open for them during the day and hoped the door curtain would keep most of the flies out but we have taken the door curtain down as the screens will do a better job, but not if we leave the door open.

SO, we have had a dog flap put in, at the left side, and now we have the Old Dog, New Tricks scenario. Trust me, although this photo makes it look as if the doggie door isn't big enough for them to get through, it is and they can.

It would probably be easier to train one dog than two. At the moment, as soon as one of the dogs has gone through it (with me holding it open a little to give them a start) the other tries to follow immediately behind and instead of getting through without a problem, finds the flap swinging back into their face – so it puts them off trying again. One step forward, two backwards.

A lot of Choccie buttons and we are almost there with Brinkley. Brandy is going to take a little longer, I think he has just twigged that the longer it takes to learn how to do it himself, the more doggie chocs he gets!

26 holes dug, still a lot to do!

We haven’t been down to any more of the parades this weekend as we have been getting on with digging our holes and filling them in again, with cement. Unfortunately, after a day digging holes or lugging wheel barrows of cement down an incredibly steep slope we are too tired to get dressed for a night out.

This week we have managed to get both gates cemented in place and to get all the corner posts set with the supports. We have dug 26 holes, mixed several batches of cement and walked up and down the slopes more times than I care to remember. All I can say is my calf muscles are screaming at me and my bum should look good this summer!

This is the slope down to the double gate on the bottom level

And this gives you some idea how far below the level of the house, and the cement mixer, the gate is – but no, this isn’t the slope we carried it down, there is a longer but easier way down – honest. However, we are putting a 6 foot fence all the way down this slope to the gate – now, that should be REAL fun! A rope and a bucket of cement – now that conjures up the perfect scenario for something to go wrong. Needless to say, we are leaving that to the end of the fencing job.

This is the paddock area we are fencing in to keep the dogs safe, this is one level below the house and up at the far end is where the vegetable patch will be.

As we are working it’s difficult not to notice the lovely wild flowers that are starting to come through in the warm Spring sunshine. These are just a few photos I took while I was out walking the dogs around our land yesterday. I don’t know what any of them are, but they are really pretty.

It was getting late in the afternoon, about 7ish, when we walked and we seemed to be in Bunny rush hour as we walked through our Dingley Dell. Every step seemed to send another bunny scurrying from the undergrowth to its home.

I’m sure this is one of the Bunny entrances

Down here in Dingley Dell,

And here is one of the occupants, still on its way home but staying very still so as not to attract the attention of the dogs.

Oh, how love my dog walks!

Holiday over, back to work!

I cannot believe we have been back from our trip to the UK for a week already. Since getting back Spring really seems to have arrived and we have had some lovely warm days although the nights are still quite chilly outside. The house, though, does seem to be taking the warmth from the day and hanging onto it as, for the last couple of nights we have not had to turn up the heating from its daily setting of 16c.

I know to some of you 16c will seem a low temperature to have the heating set at, but as we spend most of our days outside with the door open for the dogs to come and go as they please, there is little point having the heating set higher as all we would be doing is trying to heat the rest of Spain, and believe me, the rest of Spain can pay their own heating bills.

Neil finally got the tiling on the patio area outside the utility room finished last week. This has seemed a long job since we first put the shuttering up for the concrete pad, but the weather had really not been good for working outside since Christmas. We’ve been able to snatch the odd day but nothing more, and you cannot work with concrete and tile cement if the weather is too cold. This patio area is for storage and for drying the washing. It is a good corner that gets a lot of the wind so hopefully the towels and bedding will dry much quicker than they do at the moment. The front of the house is so well sheltered from the wind, which normally blows from some northerly direction, that unless the sun is out the washing just hangs there limp and wet. The utility has been great as a drying room this winter but it has been frustrating when there has been a good drying breeze and I’ve not been able to make use of it.

Our next ‘job’ is the fence. We are not going to try anything so ridiculous as to fence in all our land, trying to fence in 7 acres would be a task similar to that of painting the Forth road bridge. So, we have decided to fence in the immediate area around the front and side of the house. This will mean we have safety from any roaming animals getting near the house or the dogs, it means at night Brandy & Brinkley are close to the house and I know where to find them, and it means I can start to plant out my vegetable patch without becoming a, ‘All you can Eat Buffet’ for the rabbits, of which we have many.

On Friday, when I was down in town I received a phone call. ‘Estás la mujer de Nil?’ Now, this has been asked of me many times since moving to this house and it always make me smile. I no longer have my own identity, I am simply the ‘wife of Neil’. ‘Sí, claro’ I responded and then waited until I managed to hear enough words I recognised from the following rapid fire conversation to work out who was ringing.

It didn’t take me long to realise it was the ‘Metal Man’. All the stuff for our fencing was ready. I was only a hundred yards away so I said I would call into the office as it is so much easier talking face to face. They wanted to deliver everything that afternoon and wanted to know if someone would be at home. Apparently, even the ‘wife of Nil’ would do. All the Spanish call Neil, Nil which I find quite amusing for a language which generally pronounces every letter – we now have a redundant ‘e’.

And so, we are now the proud owners of a pile of fence posts, rolls of chain link fencing and more brackets and bolts than I’ve ever seen outside of B&Q.

Hopefully the weather will remain warm and dry for the next few weeks while we are digging holes, concreting posts and unravelling a heck of a lot of chain link fence.

Our new gadget.

Bad weather in Spain has consequences not normally experienced in the UK. It doesn't have to be extreme weather - just a heavy downpour, high winds or even heavy cloud which is low enough to cover us. As well as the direct effect of the weather, a lot of rain or a howling gal, the main indirect effect is thay we can lose our TV signal, and the bad weather doesn't even have to be over us, it can be anywhere between us and the UK, and we don't regain the signal until the weather passes. The other indirect effect is loss of power. This happens more often with heavy rain or snow and normally there will be a series of very short power cuts but can often last several hours.



It was always our intention to buy a generator as a back up power supply and with this in mind Neil and the electrician had installed a socket in the utility room where we could simply plug the generator in to run the lights and sockets in the house if we had a power cut for any length of time. This would make sure that we didn't have to worry about the freezers defrosting (we have 2, one in the kitchen and a second in the utility for when we are snowed in), so that we have heating through the winter and also lights for night time power cuts and of course, power to the sockets also means we continue to have the phone, internet and TV.



Neil had calculated that we needed a 3kw genny and we started to look around for one just last week. There is the usual concerns about where to buy them. We could get them cheaper from the UK than in Spain but that raises issues over the warranty, should anything go wrong. We can buy them from the internet in Spain but again, should anything go wrong it is more difficult to get it sorted dealing with companies over the phone. I know this from personal experience as I am still trying to get the phone we bought replaced because the slave handset doesn't work. This has been going on for 6 weeks and we still haven't got the replacement.



We then managed to find one in a local hardware store that fitted the bill and the budget, so after a couple of days thinking about it, last Thursday we finally decided to bite the bullet and buy it. The owner of the store asked us to call back the following day so that he had time to test that it worked ok and we finally went back on Saturday to collect it.



One of the things I still find amazing here is that they never seem to want to take your money. Having called at the store he told us we needed to drive to the other side of the Poligono to his warehouse where he had been testing it. I expected we would have to pay before we collected it - but no, they wouldn't take my money until after we had checked that it worked ok. After loading it into the back of the car we drove back to the shop so we could pay for it but it did make me wonder whether such a system would work in the UK without having to leave proof of your name, address, phone number and car details.

Anyway, genny paid for we called at the petrol station for a can of petrol and brought it home. Neil sorted it out with a cable and plug and started it up and it chugged away nicely. As our electric supply is from the little casita on the hill, about 400m over muddy, hilly terrain, we decided we would try plugging it into the house on Sunday morning so that if it tripped the fuse we could walk up to the casita to reset it in daylight.

Of course, Sunday morning dawned and we completely forgot to test the genny into the house supply...........

until 3.30pm..............

when the power went off and didn't come back on!

There was nothing to lose. We turned off the main fuse and all the individual fuses to the lights, sockets, cooker, hot tub and went and plugged in genny. Then we fired her up and turned on the fuse to the lights. In excited anticipation we turned on the hall light switch.........

and there was light.

We turned on the fuse to the sockets and all the lights on the computer servers lit up. We had power. Now we just had one problem, how would we know when the mains power was back on?

The only way is to turn the genny off every half hour and see. We don't overlook any other houses, we cannot see the town and there are no street lights in view so there is no way of knowing when the power is back on other than to try it.

Looks like we need a contraption to tell us when we have power again, but at least future powercuts will be less stressful, if a little noisier.

El tanque es lleno finalmente!!!!!

A recap.


We decided to live in a house in the countryside 1,000 metres up a mountain. It gets cold in the winter, there is snow in the winter which is deep enough to stop us getting the car out for days at a time. We decided we would put gas central heating in running on propane from a tank as we are way too far away from any mains supply of gas. Natural piped gas is not common in this part of Spain although highly populated areas are beginning to get piped supply.


We only knew of one supplier of bottled gas, Repsol, and so spoke with them about the supply. Their tanks were massive so we would need to run off the tall bottles and were recommended to have 8 bottles and run 4 on/4 off. We weren't keen as this would look unattractive at the back of the house but, any less would mean the bottles needed changing too often and if the track was difficult to access because of snow we could run out of gas and have no heating or cooking.


In conversation with Manolo at the plumbers merchant he told us about another supplier Cespa, who did a smaller tank than Repsol, suitable for domestic use. 1,000 litres which should last for months and certainly see us through the winter months without difficulty. The tank is quite cute, if a fuel tank can be cute and it seemed perfect for our needs. Refills would be 3-4 days from order, which is a simple phone call. While we were waiting for the tank we could run the system with 4 small bottles, 2 on/2 off.


We started the process in mid-November and we received the signed contract from Cespa dated 26th November. We were given a timescale of 3 weeks for the tank to be delivered and a further 3-4 days for it to be filled up. With any luck it would all be set-up by Christmas and we wouldn't have to worry about fuel throughout the winter.


But, this is Spain. Timescales can stretch out quite a while.


The timescale for our tank has stetched way beyond expectations. In Spain you learn to be patient but this has certanly tested our patience to the limit.


The tank is manufactured in Portugal as it is cheaper than if it was made in Spain. At Christmas when we asked,it was only just in production, should be shipped early January. We had one fall of snow where we were snowed in for 3 days and on day 4 we had no choice but to dig our way out as our bottles were empty. The bottles only lasted for 4 days in really cold weather when we needed the heating on 24/7. When you run on LPG there is always a residual amount left in the bottles, normally 10% but in cold weather it can be as much as 15% - this means when you need the most get you get the least! The outside temperature affects the amount of usable gas. It also means you are paying for gas you can't actually use. Each change of bottle was costing us €10 so it is not a cost effective way of running a heating system, but it was meant to only be for a 4-5 weeks!


But this is Spain. Finally, after almost 10 weeks the tank arrived. We were told it would take about a week for the first fill and after that it would be 3-4 days for a refill from when we telephoned an order through. We were so excited.

The excitement didn't last long.

We waited for it to be filled. In the meantime we had more snow, we couldn't get out for 3 days. This time we ran out of gas on day 4, but we stayed warm through the snow. A week passed and then a second. We started calling into the shop every week for an update. Every week was the same, the paperwork is stuck in the system. We cannot get the tank filled until the paperwork is sorted.

Last Friday we finally had a call to say the tanker was coming to fill us up. We knew better than to get excited this time.

It didn't arrive.

I rang to ask why and it seems they sent the big tanker (like you see deliver fuel to petrol stations) and he was worried that the slope on our track was too much and, having got down to the house, he wouldn't be able to get back up to the tarmac road.

They needed to send the smaller tanker which has to come from further away, so doesn't come to the area every day. It would be here Tuesday or Wednesday.

It didn't come.

This morning we got a phone call. The little tanker was coming.

AND IT DID!!!!!!!!!

We now have a full tank of LPG,well 85% full - that's the maximum they can fill it. It should last us several months. We don't have to change bottles anymore.

Now, we are very excited. We're going out to celebrate tonight.

We're going to town for a PIzza!

After 4 months, our kitchen is finally finished.

When Neil got home from golf yesterday, I told him we needed to drive down to Almeria, again, to swap the handle for the right one.

As we would (hopefully) only be on the store for 10 minutes, we decided to take the dogs with us so, we settled them on the back seat as normal, made sure we had the wrong handle and the receipt and started out on yet another trip to Almeria.

The store was relatively quiet when we arrived and I managed to speak to someone at Customer Services straight away. I explained what was wrong and she told me to go to the kitchen section and she would send someone over. 10 minutes later, I was back at Customer Services as we hadn't seen anyone to speak to. Neil by this stage was ready to help himself to a handle and leave, but I tend to be a little more patient and want to do things right - my days of running out of stores and across carparks are well and truly behind me (not that I used to, but I couldn't if I wanted to now - oh, you know what I mean!)

Eventually, after another 10 minutes, the guy we saw on Saturday, that was so pleased to be able to give us our final doors, walked towards us - looking anything but happy.

I explained the problem and he kept telling me the door's were all correct. It took me a while to make him understand that the doors WERE all correct, but one of them had the wrong handle, which I had in my hand! Doh, my spanish isn't that bad!

After a few more minutes, he seemed to finally grasp the problem and told me he would check if they had any spare handles to our kitchen and climbed up to a display on the higher level and started rooting through a drawer. It would seem they have a drawer full of orphaned handles - one of which was for our kitchen. Success.

He told us to take the right handle and the wrong handle back to Customer Services to make the exchange. When we did, Customer Services couldn't have looked less interested and so we left, quickly. We had our handle. If the paperwork wasn't correct for them, it certainly wasn't our problem.

So, an hour and 15 mins later, back at home and the new handle was in place. Finally, the kitchen was complete.

We accept that we have fitted a lot of units and that it was unlikely that Brico Depot would have enough in for us on our first visit. We accept that a 2nd visit was not unreasonable to collect the missing items that had been ordered for us.

What we find frustrating is that on the 2nd trip, they only had the cupboards and none of the doors.

On the 3rd trip we only collected half of the doors because they had ordered 10 doors expecting them to come in pairs, and they didn't. We actually needed 20 doors.

We then needed a 4th trip because the doors didn't come wth hinges, we needed to buy them seperately! (But nobody had mentioned it).

The 5th trip was to collect more doors, but they still hadn't all come in.

So, Saturday was the 6th trip closely followed by a 7th for the handle.

Each trip takes half a tank of deisel at €50 per tank.

Each trip takes an hour and 15 minutes - each way.

I reckon we have done 5 trips more than should have been necessary so that's 12.5 hours of driving and €250 in fuel. Plus it's taken 4 months to finally get a finished kitchen.

People keep telling me things take time in Spain - but I think this is taking it to extremes.

Will our kitchen ever be complete?

I love the kitchen we have chosen, I love the handles.

It took us a long time to find the kitchen with the right look, and eventually we did - in Brico Depot in Almeria. This is a flat pack kitchen you fit yourself but it was exactly what I wanted so we were prepared for the hard work.

In October we got half the cabinets and a few of the doors. We had to order the rest.

In November we got the remaining cabinets and half of the remaining doors

And finally, on Saturday we were able to collect the last 8 doors we needed to complete our kitchen. 7 doors went on beatifully but the last door let us down. Right door - wrong handle!

Now, it's over an hour drive each way to the store so this morning I rang them in the hope they would post the right handle out to us and I could post this one back to them, but no, we have to go to the store to exchange them. So, it looks like we have another trip tonight as I don't want to leave it too long and find they've sold out of the doors and we have another month to wait, although Neil has said if necessary he'll take a screwdriver with him and take a handle off the display kitchen.

So, in the meantime our kitchen looks really good ...........

...........except for this temporary 'handle'.

Hey, ho!

What a Saga!

It should have been a good day, a day of celebration! Finally, the gas tank had arrived!

But that was only the start of the problems!

We had been told we needed to construct a cage for the tank to be housed in, for safety reasons. This was built at the back of the house by us back in November to the size we had in a diagram drawn by the installer. Guess what - HE GAVE US THE WRONG SIZE!!!!!

On one side, he's written down the size of the tank - not the size the cage needed to be. OK, it's only 30cms to short (about 12 inches for those of you that still work in 'old money') but it means more concreting, we have to take down the side of the cage with the door in, extend both sides, which means more posts with more fencing. So frustrating. It turns out that he had given us 2 diagrams. When he first spoke to Neil he drew one on the back of the promotional leaflet with the right dimensions. Then when we went into the shop to say we would go ahead, he drew us another diagram for us to take to the fencing place to order the posts, door, fencing etc - and that one had the wrong measuerment on - but that's the one we worked to.

So, OK - we can sort that. The next problem was actually getting the tank into the cage (it will fit, there's just supposed to be more room around it (30cms more!). We had been told to construct the cage, and the tank would be lifted in from the top. Only,the wagon with the crane is too big to bring down our dirt track and so it couldn't go in over the top. Step 2 - remove one side of the cage - well, it saves us some work when we have to rebuild it next week. We nearly put double doors in and were told it wasn't necessary - in future we'll go with our own instincts.

Finally, the tank was in place and they began piping it up. In the meantime Manolo wanted to check the cooker as he is doing all the paperwork for our gas installation. Again he had been at the house before we fitted anything and told Neil what was needed. Now, it needed doing differently. The gas pipe came through the utility wall to the back of the cooker, but here we need a regulator that can be turned off accessible in the kitchen so, they had to re-pipe along the back of the house, bring the pipe in through the wall and run it through the back of a cupboard. Actually, they have done a really good job, because they fitted it inside the cupboard that has drawers, and the drawers still work perfectly but the not so pretty regulator is out of sight, yet still very accessible.

At this point they left for lunch leaving us with no heating and no hot water and hoping they would be returning later. We felt it was a strong probability as they had left quite a bit of their gear here.

Sure enough, a couple of hours later they were back on site and carried on with installing the tank. Once installed, we have to wait for the paperwork to be completed (i.e. after the cage is corrected) and then it will take about 7 days to get the tank filled - presumably this is to allow Cespa time to request the money for filling from our bank before giving us €400 worth of gas, but at least we can see an end to the twice weekly trips to town to get our bottles changed.

Finally, they had finished the installation and just needed to reconnect the system to run off the bottles until the tank is filled. By now it was starting to cool down as the sun was rapidly disappearing over the hill. It would be dark in about half an hour.

All done, they checked we had gas to the cooker - and yes, the rings burst into flame instantly. But the cooker's gas supply doesn't come through the boiler, so when they ran the hot water tap - oh dear, absolutley cold, cold, cold!

That was the start of an hour of head scratching and re-checking. We knew it couldn't be the boiler as they hadn't actually done anything to the boiler and it worked wonderfully before they arrived. Eventually they tracked it down to a faulty regulator they had installed on one of the pipes in the utility. Did they have another? No, but they could get one from town. By now it was dark, cold and getting late. I told the engineer we would need to go home with him for the night as it would be too cold here. Now, I'm not sure whether he though 'this crazy english woman means it' but he told me he would go and fetch a replacement and return straight away, that he would not leave us without heating and hot water. And just to prove he was coming back - he left his mate here!

Half an hour later he was back and within 10 minutes the replacement regulator was in place - and still, no hot water, no heating. Now it was seriously testing everyone's patience. We got the manual out for the boiler and Neil started to look through what he could check on the boiler - the manual is all in english so the engineers couldn't really get any help from it. The gas pressure was tested, the flow was tested - all was fine.

Eventually one of the engineers phoned his boss and had a chat. I couldn't make out much of the conversation but I could tell he was really puzzled why it didn't work. After a few minutes he came off the phone and marched outside saying 'un momento, un momento'.

And sure enough, un momento later we had hot water and we had heating. It turns out the regulator on the tank has to be a single, but because we have 2 pipes coming into the house they had put 2 on and it was restricting the flow of gas through the boiler to an extent that there wasn't enough to light it. It had been a long day for them but they had made sure they didn't leave us without heating and hot water.

So, finally we have a tank. This weekend we will re-do the cage and hopefully before too long we will have a full tank of gas which should last us several months, and that will be another job to tick off the long list of things'To-Do!'

One-way phone calls!

After 7 weeks in the house we finally had a phone with a dial tone. We can make phone calls but we can’t receive them. Why not?

Because, at the moment, we don’t know our number, so we can’t tell anyone what to dial to call us back. If we ring them, the number just shows up as ‘Privado’ – private.

Along with the satellite dish and modem which has given us access to the internet, we have also bought a router which allows us to plug a normal telephone into it and make calls via the satellite dish. It’s really quite remarkable.

The whole system has not been cheap but it is our only option for a phone and internet where our house is located. Life in the mountains away from civilisation means peace, tranquillity & beauty but also leads to a few challenges.

We have our satellite TV from the Astra satellite and get a very strong signal so I looked for an internet via satellite solution using the Astra satellite as well.

Net2.com seemed to fit what we were looking for. It used the Astra satellite, the initial outlay for the equipment wasn’t excessive, the monthly payments were less than we pay now for the Vodaphone USB system and it meant we were back in touch with the rest of the world.

They are allocating us a phone number with the correct local area number and once that is done people will be able to ring us. It will make life so much easier and now I don’t have anymore need to drive to the roadside to pick up our missed calls and even better, no more waiting at the roadside for deliveries.

The technology is way above my understanding BUT I don’t need to know how it works, just that it does!

Thank you Net2.com!

Finally, we are connected to the outside world.

It took 3 visits and all I could get out of them was that it was a configuration problem BUT we finally have access to the internet from home and I no longer have to sit in the car at the end of the road.

Now all I have to do is work out how to get the phone working and we'll feel as if we have re-join the human race in the 21st century.

How frustrated am I?

Yesterday we finally received the long awaited call from the internet installer, they would be at the house this morning. Finally, we were to be connected to the outside world.

They were due at 11am and I was duly sat by the roadside by half past 10 incase they were early, as I knew they were travelling down from Murcia. Within a minute of parking the car my mobile phone rang and it was the installer asking for directions. I explained where to drive and 15 minutes later they arrived at Km 8. Surely, my next blog entry would be sent from the comfort of my own home.

But No!

The dish is on the roof, the cable is through the wall. They had my laptop on the roof while they started the set up process.

And then all progress seemed to stop.

Half an hour later they brought my laptop back telling me it was now raining so they couldn’t do anymore today and would be back another day, they will call me!

Oh, the frustration. It should have been all sorted today and now I have to wait – again.

I do have a sneaky feeling that they couldn’t actually finish it because I did overhear a conversation between them which suggested that something that should be in the back of the van couldn’t be found!

So, I’m off to the roadside yet again.

We have a wall.

We decided we needed a couple of days rest after almost seizing up the day after we had laid the floor in the garage. We have pottered around the house doing bits, but nothing too strenuous, we even found time to go to the market on Saturday morning and have a wander around. It’s a good size market and we will be able to get most of the market shopping we need from there. It’s along the streets in the centre of town and as we wandered along, we bumped into our neighbours and their visitors, who we had previously met, so we all decided to stop in one of the bars for a coffee before going our separate ways for the rest of the day. It was a welcome interlude to all the work we have been doing in the house and I thoroughly enjoyed meandering through the stalls.

Sunday saw us back in our work clothes and mixing more concrete to finish off the front section of the garage floor. This was only 6 loads of cement and we had finished in about 3 hours.

Monday should have been a golf day but Neil woke to find he had tweaked his back and he was a little wary of doing any serious damage. As the weather had turned really windy he decided he would give golf a miss and rest his back as we had planned another heavy work day on Tuesday.

Tuesday saw us up early as today we were going to build the wall in the front of the garage ready for the door and window to go in. Now, neither Neil or I have ever built a wall before and we were quite pleased we would be using blocks rather than bricks. There were a lot less of them and it would grow really quickly. It was a slow process as every block had to be set with the spirit level to make sure it was all straight but we took our time and we managed to finish it before it got dark.

As we stood back admiring our handiwork, I have to confess, I did feel rather pleased with our days work knowing that today would be a rest day because…..

We’ve run out of cement!

So, today we have been into town shopping, trying out another coffee bar and generally enjoying the glorious weather we are having. Check the photo – gorgeous blue skies and temperatures still in double figures. I checked last night and it went as low as 8c during the night but once the sun rose this morning we were back to it being warm enough to walk around without our coats.

One disappointment this week, they were supposed to be coming to install the satellite link for the internet and phone yesterday but they rang me on Monday to say that the equipment hadn’t arrived at the installers so they had to cancel and will re-arrange when they have all the bits. I’m hoping to get a call later this week because it really is difficult without them.

Hey Ho, remember those days of phone boxes and letters – how did we all cope before mobiles and broadband?

I really hope my next post will be from the house – but I’m not holding my breath!

Our next big task is to tile the floor in the garage and we pick up the tiles tomorrow so I guess that will be started fairly soon. We’re trying to get all this work done before the winter sets in and we have seen our first signs this morning.

Over on the mountains far in the distance we have seen our first snow of the winter.