As I've been on the hard daily commute to work (that 7 minute stroll past the pricipality's seat of government, a couple of cafes, a square with a statue of a chunky lass with baby and the posh theatre) the last couple of day's I've noticed a bit of activity. There have been groups of men laying cables, others building things out of scaffolding, yet more constructing a white google shed with the google map locator flags on the side. Today I saw groups of camera wielders and their assistants. One of the constructions was revealed to be a big screen, on which I saw Al Gore, Woody Allen and others saying things like 'it's an honour' and 'strewth' (okay, no one said strewth but they could have).

It was the Prince of Asturias prizegiving ceremony. They're kind of like the Nobel prizes except the Nobel committee never gave a prize to Bob Dylan (2005 Arts) or Fernando Alonso (Sport) and the world's press seems to ignore them. They do tend to pre-empt the Nobels too, although I doubt Fernando Alonso is in line to bow the the Swedish king any time soon (and I'm not sure they'll be so quick to give anything so nice to Hamilton). This year, it's Rafa Nadal, Google (Larry Page turned up), The fight against Malaria (catchy organization title), Margaret Atwood and Ingrid Betancourt among others. The Theatre Campoamore is being done up, with velvet drapes and flags out back. The lights are being placed and the royal police guard have been standing on street corners since Tuesday. The prince and his wife will be dishing out the goodies, the national TV gang will be reporting it. The ovetense will be mostly ignoring it...

And now the after action report. Except there isn't one. I was working and as I wandered home (my normal route was blocked so that the cars to carry the Royals the 400 metres from the theatre to the Hotel Reconquista can wait nice and close) I noted the prince giving a speech on the big screen... there were a few hundred still gathered, I walked on feeling all republican (on days when I'm John Irish, I feel proud to be a citizen not a subject)...
  ¶ 10:36 AM 1 comments

  Another Sunday, another walk, this time up Peña Ubiña, which is one of the higher peaks in the cordillera, at 2417m.

We started with 'gasoline', well Pompayo, Julio and I had a little loosener (an oruxo, the schnappsy local spirit) before strolling up to the top. Okay, it was a little harder than a stroll and we split into the A and B groups at the base of the peak itself.

Us A groupers continued up (think of the final approach to Pen-y-ghent, only for 300m of ascent) steep limestone, with the odd big step, before reaching the ridge leading to the peak.

The views were absolutely stunning, from the plains of León to the South to the Picos in the East and the coastal hills to the North.

The descent was quite hard, the same route as the way up but with tired legs and the view of where you'd fall if you slipped.

As we got to the bottom, I noticed that this year's been quite hard on my boots and I need to buy some new ones, this limestone is a bit rough at times.  ¶ 7:31 PM 1 comments

  "Spinach?"
I was wandering through the market, the part where local folk bring their market garden produce to sell, tying to choose just which apples, figs, onions, mushrooms and the like I wanted. "Spinach?" Repeated the woman, "For the disarmament".

Of course I'm translating, but El Desarme is what she said. Erm, I said.

"Desarme, desarme. You need spinach?"

I'd seen signs up in a few restaurants, they said El Desarme menu, spinach chickpeas and cod (the lovely bacalao, preserved in salt and then washed before cooking), followed by callao (I think) which (I think) is a tripe based stew, one of my students described it to me a few months ago, followed by rice pud.

El desarme is a tradition, rather than anything organized. It commemorates one of the battles of Oviedo in the Carlist wars, or the second Carlist wars. It's also part harvest festival food (although why they need to use the tripe I'm not sure, the rest of the pig's available no?).

So of course I bought the spinach and some bacalao and (heretically) added onions and tomato... it was lovely.  ¶ 6:51 PM 1 comments

  We went to see Woody Allen's new film (Vicky Christina Barcelona) last night, and I had forgotten that part of it was filmed in Oviedo (to be honest, not much more than a couple of scenes of Scarlett Johanssen and Javier Bardem lounging against some orange stone that could have been anywhere, and a few scenes from near the market, and a couple more from the coast. Where was the cider? Where were the bagpipes?). The eponymous Vicky and Christina are invited for a weekend to Oviedo and the initial reaction is 'where?' and the first reason given for not going was 'nobody's ever heard of Oviedo'. The packed audience chuckled at that one (it was packed becuase it was a bit dull and it was a bank holiday yesterday). The rest of the film was set in Barcelona, and it was quite good, but the characters were a bit cardboard, rich folk who don't need to worry about anything but their relationships.

Still, the description of Oviedo as small and pretty was perfectly accurate. Just how small is illustrated by how often you bump into people you know. Yesterday, walking back from film we met one of my students out walking her dog. When you do meet someone in the street you've got two options. One is to stop and chat, this is the default setting for most people here, in fact, more than stop and chat, if you see someone and they haven't seen you, you should shout, wave and generally make it impossible for them to miss you. If you truly haven't got time then you greet someone with 'goodbye' and even then you might have to exchange a couple of words before you drift apart.
  ¶ 9:26 AM 0 comments

  In a lot of the language academies there are posters advertising TOEFL (rather than tofu), this is one of the more popular English exams for foreigners, in as far as an exam can be called popular. It's the standard American requirement for non native speakers of English to get into college.

And it's just a bit tricky.

The reason for that is that you don't pass or fail, you just get a score. And if you want to do a masters in the US, the college you want to go to can set any requirement they like. A perfect TOEFL score is 120, one of my students needed a 105 to get on his course. That was because he was applying to do pilot training and you don't want to spend your time learning English when you're supposed to be learning to fly.

If you get a good score you can be sure that you'll understand the majority of lectures and college situatuins. This means that the exam proceeds at a fierce pace. Full speed lectures to listen to and answer questions on, difficult, technical texts to read and understand. A speaking section that native speakers would struggle to score perfectly on (for example, read a 200 word passage in 45 seconds, then listen to a part of a lecture on, say, the folk tradition and the song 'The Briar and the Rose', then talk about it, answering a specific question (in this case it was: What defines a folk song and what elements of The Briar and The Rose place it within this tradition).

The difficulties of the exam are compounded by some students' lateness in preparing for the exam, such as: I need a score of 85 and I have the exam in three weeks. It does mean that the lessons sort of plan themselves, and you just do a lot of practice questions, but sometimes you just know that a student is not at the right level and it's distressing to see them realise it, to see them understand that the masters they wanted to do will have to wait.
  ¶ 6:52 PM 0 comments

  There was a plan, and this was it. We were going to leave Oviedo at 6:45, Xuaco driving, pick up Jorge en route and head for Sotres. We'd leave the car there and walk up to the refugio (the hut) in the vega del Urriellu (three and a half to four hours later). We'd leave our stuff there, book a bed for the night, and head up to the south face of the Urriellu, the easy one, climb it and head back to the refugio before doing another climb on the Sunday and then heading back down.

That was the plan.

We saw the weather forecasts, and on friday they put a snow symbol on the mountains, rain everywhere else. Still, it shouldn't be much we thought, a light dusting, after all it was only the 4th of October. After the early morning mist, from the motorway, we could see the Picos, looking worryingly wintery.

At Sotres we debated what to do, should we take all the climbing gear (Jorge had a 15kg rucksack, full of metalwork, Xuaco and I had a rope each, in addition to provisions for a couple of days). We decided to take everything and give it a go.

This was revealed to be the wrong choice as we got higher. We met one of the wardens of the hut on the way up and he said the conditions weren't good, water and snow coming down all the routes. As we got closer the snow got thicker underfoot until we were in full winter conditions at about 1700m (despite that it was a beautiful day, all of the snow having fallen the day before). No point turning back, we got up to the refugio at around 12:45 (Jorge, being the fittest, reached it 20 minutes ahead of us). We had lunch and decided to go have a look at the south face without our climbing gear, there was a place where there were some (even more) stunning views.

That path hadn't been used since the snow so we were breaking trails, or rather Jorge was... which is bad news when you're in your lightweight, flexible (waterproof but inappropriate for winter) shoes, without gaiters and getting wet feet. We decided to come down, conditions wouldn't change too much overnight and we didn't have the right gear. Who expected so much snow on the 3rd of October?

It was the right decision, I think, it wasn't dangerous at the refugio, the weather was stable and clear, but we couldn't do much else but wander on a few of the bigger paths, anywhere off those would have the same knee-deep (at times) snow. So we retraced our steps. Sotres is at 1060m, and there's a river between it and the central massif of the picos, El rio duje, which I hate, beause it's at 800m so after you descend from the refugio at 1953m you have a sting in the tail... which I trudged up last, to a very welcome beer.

So on the Sunday (today) we went to a local crag near Pola de Siero for a little sports climbing. It was blazing hot, south facing, and good fun, even though I was weak... I did lead a V, which is a better lead than I've done for a while, but I also ran out of strength and took a rest while seconding a V+, so come the winter I need to hit the indoor walls, and find some bouldering to get some strength back in the arms. Still, it's going to be a fine place for James, because there's a day's worth of Vs and 6a's to play with.

Despite things not going to plan I really enjoyed it, thanks to Jorge and Xuaco, and it gave me a taster of just how spectacular the mountains are going to be in winter.
  ¶ 5:14 PM 1 comments