Getting plugged in and online

First things first. Although we have invested in a great phone and laptop, without electricity to charge them and a fast, reliable internet connection, they're just useless toys. So given that I had committed myself to teaching a live Zoom class every day from almost day one, we had to get this sorted pretty quickly.

We had previously "imported" a caravan full of solar kit to France prior to the end of the Brexit transition period and had left it parked in a barn in Normandy. It was there rather longer than we intended due to Covid travel restrictions, but Alex drove in March and hitched it up and made his way with caravan number two, Bessie, to our land.

By the time I arrived with the cats in April, he had already installed it and it was nicely providing 12V power so that we had light and could charge our phones, but charging the laptop was slow and we had to resort to our petrol back-up generator once or twice. The 12V system just wasn't going to be enough so we agreed that we had better invest in something more powerful so that we could have the equivalent of mains electricity, and since we will need a robust solar system to power the house and the communal building for the retreat, it seemed like a plan.

By good fortune, almost as soon as we had made that decision, one of our neighbours, an elderly Dutch gentleman who has been here several years, offered us his system second-hand as he was upgrading his to cope with the demands of air-conditioning. So we leapt at the chance. Alex disassembled it, packed it carefully in the back of his truck, and then began to assemble it here. The batteries are expensive to replace and extremely heavy, each one weighs nearly as much as I do, and they had been left outside for months unused to needed restoring. Bless him, he read all 47 pages of the "How to restore your batteries" section of the manual and, after building a small brick house for them, they were installed and connected to the panels. Fortunately, he's a clever chap and a bit of a nerd so after a very short time, they panels were providing us with enough power to run a fridge, small twin tub washing machine and charge our numerous devices with ease.

The internet issue was even easier to resolve. From our land we have a clear view of the transmitter tower in our neighbouring village Calaceite, and being off-grid doesn't phase broadband suppliers in this neck of the woods. With a week of a phone call, two lads turned up with a dish and a router and about half an hour later we were online. So now we have WiFi with a range of 50 metres from the dish attached to Bessie which allows me to Zoom from my makeshift studio.

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