If you were a solar powered watch would you prefer sunny Switzerland or sunny Spain? Luckily my watch has now tried both. The watch likes that you walk with your watch wrist facing the sun and the wrist without a watch to be on the shady side.
I know this is not an ordinary thing to think about but it is key to having a watch charge as you wear it. So are your sleeves. If your sleeves cover the watch then it will not charge either. There is even a sleeve mode for these watches. It tries to save power.
I tried strapping the watch to my bag but like a baby trying to sit up it falls flat on it’s face and does not charge. If you want to strap it to a bag find a way to keep it solar panel side up.
In the end I just held it in my hand on the sunny side, and tried to keep it facing the sun. I think that I managed to preserve the charge, but not to generate more power than I used.
The weather is still not summer weather. It is December weather in the north. On a summer day keeping the watch in the sun would be easy. I still managed to get 100 percent from the panel even just for short bursts at a time. I will keep playing and see how best to use it.
Have you walked by the Mediterranean recently? I walked by it today. It was blue and Green, turquoise and red. The sea was calm and a sailing boat or two set off to sail from one place to another.
For many people walking without masks during a pandemic is normal. This is confusing. We have known for months, or even seasons that the virus is airborne and that masks are a simple way to keep safe. Despite this people walk by the seaside without masks. It’s not just that they walk without wearing masks, but that they do not seem to be visible.
I can’t imagine walking without a mask. Even when I’m walking across fields with little chance of crossing paths with people my mask is at hand, ready to be worn. I actually go out of my way not to walk within two meters of people, especially people without masks. I always have a mask with me, and recently I started to favour an FFP2 mask, over ffp1 masks, because I feel safer. I am still likely to wear masks whenever I am within four meters of people.
It takes one second to put on a mask, and to remove it. Today I wore it while walking about eight kilometres. It doesn’t bother me to walk with a mask. It is progress, for me to be within towns and cities, during this pandemic. I prefer the countryside, empty roads, empty agriculutal roads, empty trails.
View of the Mediterranean Sea
I went for a bike ride in the evening. 30 kilometres in one and a half hours. Nothing to challenge me, but the bike couldn’t cope. It kept skipping chain links and gears. That is distracting. I reached my goal, and then returned to the start point.
The octopus fell from my mouth during a dive and I watched as the regulator freeflowed air. I tried to grab it but didn’t get it on the first try. I didn’t panic. I went back to take hold of the regulator attached to the tank on my back but that wasn’t needed. I was able to get hold once more of the other regulator and waited for the water to be gone from my mouth before breathing in again. This happened about 45 minutes into a dive.
That had been the fourth and final dive in Spain. I had visited three different divesites on two different dives. The last time I had dived was by Portland harbour in Dorset England and this was in June of 2001. The biggest change was the visibility. In the Mediterranean you see quite a bit further and rather than doing wreck dives you explore the geology of the waters around where the cliffs were. You see quite a few boulders covered in sea grass, a few patches of sand and several schools of fish.
What makes diving around Moraira, Spain different from England is that visibility is much better, and you’re wearing a wet suit. The water is a comfortable 17 degrees. You get an opportunity to swim through rock arches and dive over and around other boulders. You change depth varying from 14 meters in some places to 7 or 8 in other places. For the first two dives the water was calm but you could still feel the surge as waves came in and out from the rocks. Occasionally we would arrive to underwater caverns and caves. Swim into the cave low and then swim out higher. As you rotate your body and look up you see urchins, sea anonemes and the occasional antennas sticking out from a single crustacean. In one case a fishing net was draped around a rock.
For the second day of diving the waters were rougher and the water was filled with sediment so visibility was not as good as on the first day. When you swam in certain areas you would feel a stronger surge. When the surge was against you it’d be an opportunity to stop. When the surge went the way we wanted to go we swam forward. As we took on the second dive the surge was strong. It meant we were using a little more air. We did see schools of fish on this dive, swimming up to them and crossing through. I was now looking around more because I was feeling more comfortable. I was trying to move my arms less, to control my buoyancy better and to glide more. This was only my fourteenth dive in four years.
On the last dive between the surge, the duration of the dive and the cooler waters I was down to fifty bars and quite quickly I was down to 20 bars. That’s when the instructor provided me with the octopus. That’s the backup regulator. I breathed from that one for the rest of the dive. It was a new sensation for me. On all my other dives I had always had enough air to reach the surface with air to spare in the tank. That’s when I found myself without the regulator to breath from for a few seconds. No panic though. It was just a matter of being methodical, knowing exactly what to do.
By the time I arrived to the surface from that last dive though I was tired. I inflated the BCD and swam back to the boat. Once there I took off the weight belt and rested holding onto the rope of the Rigid inflatable boat (RIB). Once I was back on board the boat I was tired. Finally I had the opportunity to dive, having waited years for this chance.
A few years ago when studying in the South West of England I had worked on an underwater documentary for Dorset as part of my HND and as a result had established some friendships with two of the scuba centers based there. In fact a friend was going to lend me a dry suit and all the equipment I would need to dive. If it hadn’t been for a change of plan I would have spent the summer diving around that area.
Now all these years later my parents bought a house close to Moraira and diving is affordable once more so I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity. I am in the process of purchasing all the equipment I need to go diving more frequently. It’s an activity I enjoy and the only thing that had been holding me back was the price of accommodation. As I grow more comfortable underwater I will purchase an underwater housing for my camera and start taking some underwater video.
This walk takes you from the Port of Javea up to the lighthouse near San Antonio before continuing along the top towards Los Molinos. These are old grain mills. They used wind power to grind grain for several centuries before being taken out of action as modernisation arrived.
The walk takes you along the port before you start to climb. As you walk along the port you will see a number of cats, either being lazy, or playing. You will then start to climb. The first few metres require some bigger steps but after that you will find that it gets easier. There is a good view over the port at several moments. You also get a good view of the sea.
Where a stair used to beHiking paths and durationThe Mediterranean sea and boatsA plantMediterranean viewView of the port of JaveaView of Javea and the MontgoThe Casio trackView of the Mediterranean sea
On this walk I could hear the bees and other insects buzzing. You can also see that many young trees are coming up. Many of them were destroyed by a fire a few years ago. In a few more years this will be a walk in the shade, once more.
A year or two ago, we did this walk. We came across the old kiln. Due to rain and nature recovering though, the kiln is hidden once again. I don’t remember if I have the GPS coordinates for the kiln. Nature will help keep it hidden and safe.
I tracked this walk with the CASIO GBD-200 and the Apple watch with the Steps app. The casio gave a good track although it did not track altitude and heart rate. The Steps app, with an outdoor walk, was crap. It didn’t track heart rate for some reason which makes it crap. The Apple Fitness app says that I didn’t burn my daily calorie goal today, as a result.
And Finally
This walk is quite easy, for those used to walking over rough terrain but it does come with seasonal difficulty variability. As soon as the weather gets warmer walking with enough water is important. You are exposed for at least an hour or three, dependent on how fast you walk. In 35°c heat you will cook. In 19°c you will feel comfortable. Consider this, before trying the walk.
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