No post yesterday. The internet connection’s been a bit sporadic and extremely slow.

I’ll write a bit about it.

Living on the top of a mountain, 705 metres above sea level but also surrounded by mountains, getting the internet can be a bit tricky. I must have tried everything over the years. Broadband doesn’t get to us although frequent calls selling it do! I’ve tried internet beamed on radio waves to a special dish, which has to be pointed exactly at the transmitter in one of the local villages across the valley. It is connected to a router which transmits wifi throughout the house from the outside. This worked well up to a point but failed if it was to cloudy or if it rained. The internet package included call outs from the maintenance team and free replacements which, strangely, after two router replacements, became not free and I was asked to pay 150 euro for the next one which also started to fail. Time to move on to another provider.

The next one was a return to the phone line. I know it sounds silly but I get exited at the prospect of a new anything and so I was really hopeful that internet down the phone line would work. It did seem more reliable than the radio wave method but, and very quickly, it became fairly useless. Every time it rained, the internet stopped altogether and I had to call out the repair man. I had a succession of free routers but in the end I realised that water must have been getting into the village exchange box and nothing was being done about it, in spite of the fact that I was mentioning it to the repair men. We all got so desperate that I knew I had to find another solution. Internet access is vital for us as we work online.

The next and most recent was just doing it myself! I didn’t go to a company for a package, I just bought myself a router that takes sim cards and a couple of sim cards which give us limited gigs but we get 300 a month at 9.99 euro each and they allow us to stream tv, and films as well as work. When combined with our own mobile phone hot spots we covered very well. It isn’t ideal but it’s the best we’ve had so far. It doesn’t transmit into the old wing of the house because of the thick stone walls but, I use my phone hot spot in there and I’m thinking about getting a signal booster to see if it can extend our range.

There you have our internet access saga. I know people who have satellite internet but they tell me that it fails in bad weather and another negative is that it is very costly.

I don’t have much to report about what I did today. After work I was back to putting up the insulating panels in my room. I’ve done two thirds now but as each piece of panel is measured and cut to size and I’m up and down the ladders, I get very tired. This evening we also went to a local house where we keep it in good order and clean for the owners who have some friends arriving tomorrow. That took over an hour but it was fun.

This evening I though I’d try and relax with one of my craft projects. I’m knitting a top in a soft, fluffy yarn. It’s quite fine and so doesn’t grow particularly fast but I’m happy to plod. I did some spinning yesterday as I have quite a bit of un spun yarn to spin up to start new projects. I just wish I could get the panels finished then I’d have more time for the fun, relaxing things but, they’ll come. I’m nearly there!