That little spire of rock on the right of the photo is the Naranjo de Bulnes (The orange of Bulnes: so named for its colour in the evening sun). It's not small, the North face, in profile, is 500 and some metres high. And it's hard climbing too, a couple of weeks ago a couple of basque climbers opened up a new route they reckon is 9a (ok, it has one pitch of 9a and the rest is an easy 8a-c)... This was covered with a two page spread in the local newspaper...

We were up there at the weekend, staying in the refuge at the base of the Naranjo, part of a weekend walk with the mountain group. We went up in the cable car from Fuente De, which meant starting at 1900m and then up to 2400m and down a cliff hanging on to some ice covered cables. Liz was a little spooked by the unexpected appearance of a sheer descent but she made it without incident (albeit a little gingerly, which is perfectly understandable). From there we walked through the high part of the central massif where there's almost no green, only patches of scrubby grass and moss, and the odd bit of lichen.

On Sunday we set off from the refuge nice and early and headed up to the Horcada de Caín, the pass to get to our descent. The descent was via the Canal de Dobresengo... 2000m of down in about 7km of path... it's steep (although not a cliff) and sustained. We started going down at 12 noon and reached the bottom at 3:30. It's a wonderful route though, you have to keep stopping so you can take in the surroundings, it's unlike any other mountain range I know.  ¶ 9:21 PM 1 comments

  So summer's over and the walking groups are at it again. A week and a half ago, we had our first outing, up Pico Jario in León. It sits to the southwest of the picos de europa and we were lucky with the weather, meaning we had clear blue skies and utterly stunning views of the western massif. I was pleased we'd done a bit of walking over the summer because I always seem to underestimate how high these hills are, thinking to myself that we're nearly at the top, only to crest a rise and be presented with a significant amount of up...

Then last weekend, we had an extra trip, thanks to Pompeyo, who had cajoled and pleaded until we had enough to make a bus load for a trip to las cuevas soplao in Cantabria. Follow the link to the cave's website because there are some rather nice photos of some very eccentric formations, and not so eccentric...

I did the adventure tour, which involved helmets, tyvek overalls and wellies, and walking well away from the paved tourist areas accompanied by a couple of guides. They gave very good explanations of how the different forms arise and some of the geological processes that go on in cave formation. The stalactites range from the 'macaroni' tubes to the massive elephant ears and columns, there's even one which has formed as a helix, it looks just like a corkscrew. The scrambling down cracks in the ground really adds a lot to the normal cave visit experience, and, although it's not cheap (€25 for the two and a half hour trip), as we emerged, blinking, into the light I thought it was well worth it.  ¶ 4:49 PM 0 comments

  The end of the Summer here coincides with San Mateo, the fiesta in Oviedo. It also seems to bring  schadenfreude-inducing thunderstorms to the rest of Spain and a brief window where the temperatures in Asturias are not too dissimilar to the south.

San Mateo began on Friday 11th and runs through to the end of Monday 21st (which is a bank holiday in Oviedo). It begins with the pregón, the address to the town hall square by a notable person (notable to the Ovetense, not to me) and the big puppets parading through the streets...

Then it falls into a routine, which goes like this:

First, check the programmme, if there's a group you want to see, go see them (Ojos de Brujo, Chambao for example).

If not, wander the streets from chiringuito to chiringuito (thats what the temporary stalls selling beer and butties are called) having beer and butties (bocatas, big sarnies).

Have a mojito at the cuban chiringuito and marvel at how the Spanish pack into a very small space very very tightly.

Have a second mojito (if it's not a school night) and marvel at how the Spanish seem to actually enjoy Europop.

Think about a third mojito, or a beer, another sandwich...

Repeat until tired or the stalls close at five.

Last night there was an extra surprise. Youssou N'Dour was in Asturias doing some stuff for a cultural centre in Avilés and was persuaded to do a gig in the Cathedral square. I think all of the Senegalese in Asturias turned up, it certainly changed the normal ethnic mix in the city.  ¶ 7:04 PM 0 comments

  I was sitting on the bench, minding my own business, reading New Scientist (on my ebook reader, I'm so 21st century) and waiting for the Renault F1 roadshow to start, or, as it should be called, the we-love-Fernando show. The streets had been fenced off, and the crowd along the circuit was five or six deep so I had decided to head to the park and the big screen.

A big chap with a comb-over was on the next bench and after a few minutes silence, where his breathing became louder and louder as the big screen showed Fernando accepting the adulation of the city in 2007, he suddenly burst into a massive (and hard to follow) rant about how much it was costing and what a waste of money it was. I was the only person nearby and I mildly mentioned that I had read that Renault was doing it for free and that the only thing the city was paying for was the police. He ignored me completely and continued to call the mayor all kinds of very bad things.

Then he left and we were able to listen to the F1 car utterly destroying the speed limit.

Then on Sunday, a different sort of day. Julio and Liz (not Liz Evans, a different Liz (hmmm, need some sort of Liz notation, Liz₂ perhaps...) and I went up a hill. It's called Pico La Hoya, it's fairly close to the city and, as usual, we were the only people on it.

I was the guide, that is, I had the guide book and the blame if we went wrong. It's pretty easy to go wrong too, because the guide book had helpful guidance like:- take the goat track. Paths in the hills here are prone to disappear under vigorous fern growth and sometimes trusting that the faint crushed grass is a path is the only way forward.

The ascent was steep up to a saddle and then along a ridge. The guidebook warned about not taking the paths leading down, so I kept high, although I was following little more than a path that could have been made by a particularly heavy rabbit. Julio decided that the lower path was better and, thanks to an understandable unwillingness to cross a scree slope, Liz₂ followed him. I arrived at the summit with no problems, and 20 minutes later, so did they, after a bit of extreme grass scrambling (or as Liz₂ said, I've just done my first bit of rock climbing but there was no rock). But the views from the top were more than sufficient reward. The hill is isolated, giving great views in every direction, and it's nice to have walked over many of them, and to get a good feeling for which valley links to which and which mountains are where.

Then the descent. Turn left at the rock shaped like a chicken's head, said the guide, and there it was. So we did. Down a steep channel, then a left turn to avoid the cliff, then down down down.
We made it just in time to have a cider shandy before catching the bus back. We were sitting outside the bar, and an old dear on the next table was asking where we'd been. Julio said the descent was jodida (hard, knackered, but literally fucked). Liz₂ and I smirked... you can't talk to a granny that way!  ¶ 8:02 PM 1 comments

  I was waiting at the bus stop today, on my way to the pool (it's cloudy but still warm enough to brave the outdoor pool) and after a while I thought 'the bus is a bit late, that's unusual.' Then I noticed that attached to the bus stop on a scratty bit of paper, there was a notification that today and tomorrow a number of changes would take place to the bus schedules. So I walked.

En route, I saw why. Tomorrow, Fernando Alonso and the Renault F1 roadshow is in town. Well they're in town now, putting blocks of concrete (on the radio they called them New Jersey Blocks, which I quite liked) and fencing around the 2km circuit. So no cars, no busses.

They're expecting 100,000 people tomorrow. Alonso is from Oviedo, he'll be driving last year's F1 car. I have my earplugs...  ¶ 11:26 AM 0 comments