Internet speeds in Nairn

I've noticed over the past few weeks that the responsiveness of the internet in Nairn has grown very patchy, particularly during peak 'business hours' between Monday and Friday - certainly between 9am and midday and between about 2pm and 5pm. We are being promised 'high speed interet' fairly soon in Nairn and I can only surmise that business usage of the internet in and around Nairn has grown steadily in recent times, or perhaps the data links between this part of Scotland and the wider world have become saturated. My rated internet speed here is the ubiquitous "upto 8mB", whereas at my home in Spain it is rated at only "upto 2mB", but I have to say it seems better and more reliable in Spain - perhaps because my internet connection there is via an optical-fibre network, whereas I think in Nairn we are still reliant on good old copper wires so far as I am aware.

I did think at one point it may be my own internet connection that was faulty, or that my own PCs (I have a few which I use regularly) were somehow at fault, but I think I have established this is not the reason. However, I would still be interested to know if anyone else in the Inverness - Nairn - Forres - Elgin area is having similar experiences of late.

A change of scene ...

The long winter in the Highlands of Scotland may not be quite over yet, but for me it will be so on Thursday, when I start the journey south to my home in Spain for a few months. The first part of the trip will take me beyond the 'snow fields' of the Grampians (with a bit of luck) and on down to the southern Lake District, where I will be spending a night on my way to Portsmouth to catch the Friday evening ferry for Bilbao.

After two nights of hopefully not too rough weather crossing the Channel and the Bay of Biscay the vessel is scheduled to arrive on Sunday morning and then it will be on to the motorway to make my way to a south-eastern suburb of Madrid where I shall be spending Sunday night, before continuing in the direction of Valencia, then Murcia, en route to the house which, with a bit of luck, I shall reach mid-late afternoon on Monday, with pleanty of time to do such mundane things as get to the supermarket to do a little food-shopping for a few basics for the first day at least.

I've just heard that the weather in the Mazarrón area, close to where my home is, continues cold, windy and wet. Ah well, we'll just have to hope that Spring will soon be on its way there too and of course the average temperatures are somewhat higher than here, so that is always something to look forward to. Meantime I thought it would be pleasant to open a bottle of champagne this evening to celebrate my imminent departure as obviously alcohol will be off-limits for me tomorrow evening, ahead of my fairly early start on Thursday morning. Eagle-eyed readers may notice that I have anticipated my arrival in the Murcia Region of Spain by amending the sub-heading of this blog a few days 'before the event'. Hasta luego!

A belated "Happy Second Birthday" to my [Spanish] blog ...

Last Thursday was the second birthday of casabill - the blog. However, I haven't been blogging much of late, largely because I had a guest staying with me here at MCC for a week until Tuesday last and a preoccupation with recent events here at the 'Country Club'. As with the first year of blogging here, it's been another eventful (turbulent?) year for people in Spain and around the world and not least at 'Mazarron Country Club'.

The continuing drought in the south-eastern part of Spain is likely to see further 'adjustments' having to be made in the lives of people in the area and the spheres of economic activity which are practicable here... (For those interested in reading the rest of this article, which covers in some detail the current water situation and the 'politics' of water resources in Spain, please click here.)

The reversal of the natural order of things?

Is the world turning upside down?

Just a few moments ago I took screen-shots from my embedded weather data 'gizmo' which reveal the stark truth - today at 12.58 BST the temperature was 25 degrees Celsius at Inverness airport (about 7 miles from my home in Nairn, Scotland), whereas at 13.00 CEST today the temperature was 22 degrees Celsius at Murcia-St Javier airport, roughly 70Km from my Spanish 'casa de vacaciones' near Mazarrón.

Accordingly it's shorts and deck-shoe weather up here in Nairn today!

Weather reversal - 30 May 2009 Inverness airport - 12.58 BST - 25 degC Murcia-St Javier airport - 13.00 CEST - 22 degC

- to be quite frank, such an occurrence [a happy one for me] is such a rare event, it's well worth blogging about!

A safe and pleasant journey to Spain

I arrived in Spain Wednesday evening after a pleasant and completely trouble-free two-leg flight from Inverness; the flight down to Bristol left on time and we landed about 10 minutes early. I'd never been to Bristol airport before; it is busier than Inverness, but not bigger. Check-in for the Murcia flight was done within 10 minutes of me collecting my baggage (half an hour before check-in for the MJV flight was due to open officially) and I then proceeded straight through immigration and customs. Although it has many more cafes and restaurants than Inverness (most places do) it is still quite a small airport and was not at all busy so I had a relaxing lunch in one of the upper eating areas. The flight took off on time, or shortly ahead of time and we touched down in San Javier 15-20 minutes early. I was able to pick up the key for the hire car about five minutes after entering the terminal, well before I collected my luggage and that only took a further 10-15 minutes, too, so within about 20 minutes of entering the terminal I was heading for the car. I now know the routes from San Javier to Mazarrón pretty well so did not bother with SatNav (I still feel more comfortable using it to/from Alicante airport though) and used the 'toll-free' route described in my website here. It barely took the 55 minutes I mention as the estimated time for this journey as the roads were not at all busy.

The only 'excitement' on the trip was that coming off the A30 (Cartagena-Murcia) autovia to join the RM-2 heading for Alhama de Murcia, there was a big police presence before the exit ramp warning people to slow down and at the 'glorieta' (roundabout) over the A30 all cars were being slowed down almost to a standstill with torches shone into every car. Obviously the police were looking for one or more specific individuals - however, I was not one of them quite obviously (I can only assume I was the 'wrong colour') so I was waved on.

Oh yes, the next morning (Thursday) I did the usual grocery shop - Mercadona (Puerto de Mazarrón) - and on the sail-boat roundabout most cars were being stopped and asked to show driving licences. All very polite and once he had taken a look at mine I was waved on. Moral of that story - car your driving licence and ID/Passport at all times (I wasn't asked for the latter though, as my licence already has a photo of course).

Now to the really important stuff! The lady who looks after my house (holds keys, etc) had kindly visited earlier in the evening before my arrival to switch on a light, the heating and plug in the immersion heater - so I had hot water to take a wash and of course for a shower the following morning. Life always looks better after a hot shower! The electricity problems here at MCC are not over yet, of course, but for the moment it works. Let's see what happens next week when we go over to direct funding (through the CoO) of diesel for the generators - fingers crossed!

24-hour countdown begins for my departure for Spain

I have just updated the header message at the top of my blog in anticipation of my departure tomorrow, almost exactly 24 hours from now, for about three months in Spain, to escape the tail end of the British winter and enjoy the early Spring-like weather in Murcia over coming weeks.

I'll be blogging here as usual during my time in Spain of course, at least after the next few days when I get myself settled in to the house there (stock the refrigerator, put out garden furniture, etc).

Then it'll be back to the splendid long daylight hours in the north of Scotland in mid-May for the summer.

¡Hasta Luego!

Flags flying in the Netherlands

Well, I am now safely ensconced in my house in Spain, arriving here in the middle of Monday-night/Tuesday-morning; the flight into Alicante (from Maastricht-Aachen) arrived bang on schedule at 11.30pm and my luggage was delivered fairly rapidly. However, I then had to stand in the queue to get my rental car and whilst there were two counter-staff on duty at the company I am using, one had to leave the office on a couple of occasions to sort out problems for previous renters. In any case, by about 1am I was on my way, arriving here at about 2.30am (ouch!) - the sensible thing would have been to get off to bed more or less immediately, but I was too 'hyper' to do that, so ended up unpacking my suitcases and getting some other things out of boxes and storing it all away, then I read for a while in bed before finally putting the light off at at 4.10am . Oh, did I mention there was no water when I arrived? There was power, though, so I was able to put the air-conditioning on as it was still very warm, probably about 26 degC outside and several degrees higher inside. Up again at about 7.30am, surprisingly refreshed and apart from a brief nap in the afternoon, made it through the day and evening more or less normally. However, I had a good sleep on Tuesday night!

My journey from Scotland began last Wednesday morning (6th August) with a flight down to London Luton from Inverness, with a delayed departure of about 90 minutes, but as I had such a long time to wait for my Amsterdam flight at Luton, it made no difference to my connecting flight, which left on schedule. After a lengthy walk through Amsterdam airport (and a scrum waiting to get through passport control), I got a train (clean and, of course it being the Netherlands, absolutely bang on schedule) for Sittard in the Limburg region in the far south of the country, not far from Maastricht and by just after 10pm was sitting in my brother and sister-in-law's house. The next five days were given over to entertaining and parties, with an excursion onto the water on my brother's boat, mainly to celebrate his 60th birthday and their fifth wedding anniversary, as well as her birthday, which all fall withing about a month of each other. Today 14th August is in fact his actual birthday, although the celebrations were held last weekend so as many as possible could be there (roughly 80 people attended the main party in the village hall last Saturday evening) and as it's the custom in the Netherlands to fly flags outside homes to mark significant events in the lives of the families who live there, my brother and sister-in-law followed this very nice tradition, as the photograph taken of the front of their house last weekend shows:

To celebrate a 60th birthday, a 5th wedding anniversary and a birthday

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a supporter of Scottish independence/separation from the UK so I would of course have flown the Union Flag, rather than the Scottish 'Saltire', although I am just as proud of my 'Scottishness' as I am of my 'Britishness', just as I expect most English, Welsh and Northern Irish people are proud of their respective heritages too. However, my brother used to live in the Westminister constituency of Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP and currently First Minister of Scotland and there is no doubt that his voting history is one of the reasons for the handsome majorities that Mr Salmond has achieved both as an MP in Westminster and latterly as an MSP in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, even though like Sean Connery he has chosen not to live in the country whose political separation from its current arrangements he supports; this is just a friendly brotherly 'dig', of course - and shows that within families there are healthily differing viewpoints on many matters without affecting the basic friendliness of our relationship. Happy Birthday!

Extreme summer heat in southern Spain takes its toll

A 34-year old farmer in the Murcian town of Alhama de Murcia died last week in hospital after having been affected by heat-stroke; so far 38 people have been affected by sun-stroke in Murcia province, of whom 3 have required hospitalisation. Alhama is less than 15 miles from where my Spanish home is located.

Yesterday afternoon the temperature in Cordoba (further south in Andalucia) reached an oven-like level - 49 degrees C! The good news is that cooler temperatures are expected next week, also that public campaigns about the dangers of prolonged exposure to high temperatures and the need for proper hydration seem to have lowered casualties from last year's levels.

This is not a problem we suffer from in Scotland, generally speaking,