Caves and TV

With caves becoming more and more popular it seems inevitable that these unique dwellings would attract some media attention in some shape or form. There have been many articles written by both Spanish and English newspapers and magazines, all informative and doing a good job promoting cave life in Andalucia. Today though while looking through some of the links on this page I stumbled across something a bit different.....

The guys at "Cueva Pedro" are doing a fantastic job building their website and one of a few recent down to earth and informative additions they have made is a link to the original broadcast of "Dream Holiday Home". You can see the now famous "channel 5 " cave in Galera getting a touch of the media along with some interviews and brief details of building work.

You will need a media player to view the programme, see it here www.cuevapedro.co.uk click on "as seen on tv" and follow the links. Enjoy

And a couple of rainbows from a recent storm...

More Digging...

The third bedroom in our cave was for the first 10 months used as storage with some quickly knocked up shelving to help organise tools, files, books etc etc. Eventualy the time came when a decision had to made - the room was quite small and not quite large enough for a bedroom so we decided to dig back and create more space. The photo below shows the progress after about 4 hours. The rock was quite soft so no need for a SDS hammer drill.



We approached the job with enthusiasm, however although being a non technical task the sheer amont of physical work was tremendous. We found that around 3 hours a day was enough for two people - one digging and shovelling and the other carrying out the loose rock in the wheel barrow. Time from start to finish to extend the room by 8m2 was a total of 27 hours. Then we set about rendering the bare rock by flicking "sloppy cement" to bind the rock, after that it was a case of rustic plastering with our hands and then paint. The floor was dropped by around 4 inches and filled with concrete levelled ready for floor tiles.
At the time of digging we had no electricity at the rear of the cave so the whole task was carried out by candle light. Having done this it still amazes us how the Spanish all those years ago dug out whole caves (some of them of considerable size) with no electricity and using only conventional hand tools.

The photo details the job nearly done, conduit was plastered in place ready for the electric wires to be pulled through and a roof tile at either end of the room typical of caves in the area. The finishing touch was 3 dug out shelves on the rear wall, carved out at random and faced off with some varnished pine wood.

End result: A larger room now suitable as a guest bedroom, maintaining an average temperature of 17 degrees and feeling as cosy as cosy can be!

Timescale: Digging 27 hours, Finishing 9 hours (floor tiles not included)

Cost: 36 euros and 30 cents

Here comes the snow again...

Our road...

On the roof

Next door

and the valley

A beutifull sight to wake up to in the morning, we have also had a visit from the Gaurdia Civil this morning checking if we needed anything and asking if we had snow chains for the car. Fire is on and brandy coffee is the drink of day.....

Renovation - Machines

When we first arrived and parked up outside of our new home we had a feeling of "well this is it" and "where on earth do we start?" The task ahead of us was a daunting prospect to say the least, had we undertaken such a project back in the UK it would not have been as bad mainly because in the UK you know exactly where to go, who to phone and what to expect.

Spain is different. The best thing to do is gain as much local knowledge as possible and quickly, your local builders merchant will have many of the contacts you need for JCB,s etc and you will no doubt be visiting this outlet several times weekly so its good to build a good relationship with the owner.



Expect to pay around 30 euros an hour for heavy machinery, the pic above shows our friend the "sandman" (because he delivered our sand!) filling in the trench dug to accomodate the armoured conduit for electricity. The pic below is his brother digging up the road at the other end. * Notice that the electricity connection is via a manhole. The JCB operator was an absolute expert - very very quick with a huge amount of skill, the tractor was brought to location on a flatbed truck also.

It was quite interesting to see huge trenches being dug and roads demolished, afterwards though you could hardly tell they had been there. Looking back at some photos like these even makes us realise how huge the project was but taken a step at a time it all fell into place. The pictures detail a trench 37 metres long and 4 feet deep, the electrician was on site to lay the cables and the whole job was done from start to finish in under 4 hours.

It allways looks worse than it is!

The Local Village

During the writing of this weblog I have made no secret of the fact that I am a big fan of my local village. I think that it is tremendously important to become part of the community and immerse yourself in the culture otherwise why are we here? Us brits do tend to stand out like sore thumbs and this will allways be the case! however integration into the community goes a long way for those of us here permanently to create the feeling of "home".

Orce market

A good book titled "Gone to Spain" written by Tom Proven details some basic facts that I regularly enjoy whilst visiting my village..... firstly he compares his local Spanish village to his village in England, to those who may have read the book and live in the area I am sure you can relate to this.. (in my own words) - Orce has a population of just over 1400 people yet it boasts 2 fish mongers, 2 butchers, several green grocers, 2 banks, a restaurant, 7 tapas bars, a supermarket, 3 bread vans, a school, a post office, its own policeman, mayor and a street cleaner. By comparison my old village of similar size has only 1 pub and a post office (now closed) what there does seem to be a lot of is yellow lines, parking zones and light pollution all of which Orce village seems to manage without.

Orce church August Fiesta

A person once said "Andalucia is 40 years behind the UK but it wont take 40 years to catch up" Our cosy white washed Andalucian villages will I think allways remain true to their traditions, its all about culture and its the people who make it what it is.

In conclusion, I love it here, the quality of life is better and not just from a finacial point of view but from a health aspect, less stress/slower pace and accepting a challenge if you like, its enjoyable learning the language and consequently making new friends and being accepted. Spanish hospitality is as such that this is an easy thing to achieve but at the same time requires effort which in my opinion is just simply polite.


Nearly forgot, Orce even has its own website... www.altipla.com/orce/