#Blog Alert Carry On Abroad

 I've just spent two weeks in a small, sleepy village that nestles in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain about thirty minutes from Granada and the mighty Alhambra Palaces.

So what has me bragging about my holiday got to do with Podcasting?  Well I thought I would set myself a challenge and try and record and publish a podcast whilst away.

My first challenge was to find a WiFi spot with some decent bandwidth.  My plan was to use a local restaurant but unfortunately their Telefonica - Movistar service wasn't working.  Internet providers have been the most complained about companies in Spain for three years running.  Telefonica Movistar offers a blistering 'UP TO' 4 mega byte download service, and 1 mega byte upload -  but today a fat nothing.

It's worth mentioning that if you are planning to continue to Podcast when you are away from base in most European cities you should be able to find reasonable internet services.  Places like Granada have fibre optic cable companies but out in the rural areas certainly Spain falls well behind even the paltry service found in the UK.

No worry I can use 4G - I looked at the local map and discovered that the nearest town - Motril offered 4G.  Mmmm well, I not quite sure where because all I could find was 3G or nothing.

Never mind let's forget about the task of uploading my audio - I thought I would get down to the business of recording.  I just need somewhere quiet and with a reasonable acoustic sound.

Well if you have ever stayed in a Mediterranean house, you will know that marble floors and wooden or metal shutters at the window make recording a challenging process.  What I needed was a quiet small place with carpet and soft furnishings.  The solution was obvious.

I took a trip to the underground car park and got in the passenger seat of the hire car, waited for a neighbour to burn rubber driving up the ramp out of the garage and with my trusty new iRig Pro with digital interface and iRig Recorder App for iPhone I made a recording,  Horrible to edit and a lack of an undo button was very frustrating. But I think it sounded pretty good technically.

CLIP

Now all I have to do is upload on 3G and I am published, well I tried for more than three hours to upload a small - just over a minute file and failed miserably - so consoled myself with a Vodka that at £4.20 a litre softens the misery that most Spanish face using Movistar.

 *Facua