Posts Tagged ‘weather’

So the last week has been all about storms here. Lots of wind, waves and rain. The UK press even reported a bit of it (thanks to the tragic collapse of a sports centre which killed 4 children near Barcelona). Despite all that, and despite a forecast which said rain, almost a full coachload of walkers assembled on Sunday with resigned smiles and shrugs and ‘we must be mad’ comments. The walk was close to Oviedo, and amazingly, as we left the city on the coach, the rain stopped, the clouds fled and the sun came out.

The walk was a horseshoe, so once we were up we had fantastic views of the snow covered cordillera cantabrica. The clouds built to the west but kept slipping past us to the South. It was a bit breezy (Lakeland breezy, like a cool spring day on the fells) and we walked and chatted (one guy told me all about buying LPs from England in the Franco years… his first album was Bob Dylan, which I didn’t understand because he pronounced it Vov-dye-lan). In a hamlet we stopped for a coffee de pote (brewed in a pot, old style) fortified with orujo and the owner of the bar opened up his ‘museum’ for us. It was his old bar, unchanged from the fifties (except for the addition of dust, pigeon droppings and mould). It was very rustic, both bar and grocers, with broken old radios, dusty empty bottles and stacks of folded old newspapers. On the wall was the then-obligatory photo of Franco.

Two kilometres from the end the route went past a restaurant. The group had booked places for those who wanted to eat. I had been told about this restaurant before, it’s got a limited menu but it’s famous for what it does cook. We arrived at 4:30 and the place was packed. We slotted into the limited space and set to eating the bread and sipping the cold red wine. What they do in this place is Pote or Fabada to start… but really good pote and really good fabada. Then chicken (pitu in Asturian) or lamb, then flan or rice pudding (the cold stuff they do here which is rather good). I should say and rather than or because they just bring everything and you eat what you want… if you run out, you ask for more. Ignacio, the president of the group said afterwards that he’d just had two plates of pote and two of fabada and a tiny amount of rice pudding. He’s very fond of his Asturian food and always asks us if we’ve tried something and whether we enjoyed it. The noise level was pretty high too… a roomful of Spaniards eating is like a pub full of English folk drinking…

Sometime while we were eating, the rain caught up with us and we did the last 2k in a torrent of rain. That’s okay though, we all had umbrellas, it wasn’t too windy, and the coach ride back was 15 minutes.

Badabum Originally uploaded by Chin Chinau.

All this week the wind has been a bit gusty, and the coast has been battered by waves which were averaging 5 to 8 metres… averaging!

We haven’t been to the coast to see, thanks to work and stuff, it’s apparently a bit dangerous, a photographer was washed away from the beach in Gijon last Sunday, they still haven’t found him.

Yesterday was another day with the mountain group, this time it was their Belén de cumbre. A belén is (apart from being a fairly common girl’s name) a nativity scene. The group head up to their little cave on the Naranco (it’s got a plaque and everything), place a new nativity scene and then sing a few carols (which is a bit like playing ‘one song to the tune of another’ for us, with the exception of the one about how much the fish in the river are drinking, no idea about that one). As the nativity scene is being placed, a few cakes are passed around, casadiellas, fizzy cider (pommagne really, but nice).

We had every type of weather too, from warm sun to hailstones and lightning, oh and snow on the top.

After the walk we headed to Casa Gervasio for what the president of the group had called ‘comida seria’ (serious food). It was too: fabada followed by carne gobernada (which is like carne guisada (stewed meat) only with the addition of red peppers) and puddings, which kept coming. The folks we were sitting with were very keen that we tried everything, and there was much refusal citing ‘I’m full’, ‘I can’t eat any more’.

And of course there was sidra, wine and orujo… Then trophys for all those who had done 80% or more of last year’s walks (so not me then)… then dancing.

This was all finished off with us all in a circle, holding hands and stepping forward and back, raising hands and (those who knew the words) singing along to a tune of Asturian pride.

“There will be pinchos up to here” Julio said, gesturing up to his chin. This sounded pretty good because pinchos are the bar-top sandwiches we normally have for breakfast on the walks. However this was after our breakfast stop (in which a coach load of hungry Spaniards descend on a solitary barman and demanded coffees and pinchos) so perhaps pinchos had another meaning.

Gorse.

It’s another word for gorse and there was a lot of it. We waded through pathless gorse for at least three hours, maybe more. With thin trousers it was quite painful after the first hour.

The walk this weekend was supposed to have great views but it was pretty much cloud and drizzle all day. And the path we followed (a low level alternative in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the cloud) was a little overgrown. Julio and Pompayo had hoces (sickles on long sticks) and spent a long time hacking away at trees and bushes while we queued behind.

It wasn’t the best walk we’ve ever done but the small glimpses of the oak filled mountains of the Muniellos nature reserve suggest that it’ll be definitely worth a return visit

We had baths when we got back… the gorse exfoliation made Liz yelp when she got in… gaiters are on the list for tomorrow’s shopping.

Winter has arrived. The forecasters seemed relieved that, after weeks of talking about storms in the South, they can get on and talk about proper weather, or, as they say with a gleam in their eyes, rain in the north. The cold front that came down from the UK earlier in the week brought rain and snow here too. Snow down to 800m, which is enough to close a good few roads and let TV reporters do their standing in front of weather stuff.

Although, it does seem to go to far. They spent ten minutes interviewing people the other day, all of whom basically said ‘it’s bloomin’ freezing’ in that surprised tone of voice I used to think was particularly British (Snow! who knew, I mean we had some last year and the year before that but I thought it would be different this time around… ).

The market stalls have added scarves to their massive selections of umbrellas, and Liz is knitting like a woman posessed (admittedly like a woman possessed by a knitting demon, possibly named Ethel). Still, the rain isn’t accompanied by much wind, which makes umbrellas less of challenge than they’d be in the UK, and they say the temperatures will be going up next week too.

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.

We’ll meet by the lake. Wait… you call that a lake? Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

The weathermen are looking a lot more relaxed these days. They don’t have as much to do, just point at the little sun icons and smile and say ‘hace calor’. In the last two weeks the weather map has gone from ‘covered in clouds and maximum of 20C in the south, 15C in the interior and the north’ to ‘maybe a little shower in Galicia, sun everywhere else and temperatures from 25C (here in the chilly north) to 35C in Andalucia’.

It’s like someone threw the switch marked ‘summer’. The cafes have each sprouted a couple more tables outside, the men seem to be wearing pink and orange a bit more, the girls are all in halter tops and the streets are much more crowded than before. People have even stopped carrying umbrellas. On the big satellite overview of Europe you can see all the cloud heading north of Spain (smack bang into the British Isles) as the jetstream does it’s annual migration. So barring thunderstorms and the odd bad day, I reckon the weathermen will be on short hours, kicking back with a cold beer on the roof of the Spanish equivalent of the Met Office building and watching Fast Show reruns (Scorchio, scorchio).

Asturian weather options (late spring) Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

It’s been a very wet month here. In Cantabria there are floods and the news has had plenty of pictures of kids being rescued in inflatable boats. People have said that it’s been a strange Spring. No rain between Christmas and Easter and then nothing but. It made the walk we did on Sunday less than spectacular. The plan was to go to Fuente De, where there’s a cable car. There’s not much else, Fuente De is really a meadow below an 800m wall of limestone, it’s fantastically impressive and it’s dotted with the odd old mine entrance. In summer, apparently, it’s usually packed. Last Sunday, less so. We could see the rock, and at the top it was obvious that there was a fair bit of cloud. Once we left the upper cable car station we were in cloud for the next two hours, with people saying that there should be unforgettable views. Instead we formed a long line of umbrella carriers. The type of rain that seems so common here is the ‘heavy mist’ they call orbayu. That’s not a Spanish word, it’s Asturian (and often orbayu means that the cloud and rain will stop above 1500m so you should set out anyway and hope for the best), and the Asturian word for their own language: bable (pronounced bab-ley). So when I ask what they call this or that I often get Spanish, Bable, Galician and Catalan translations… figuring out which one you have to remember is a challenge.

When we finished the walk (in a bar, see, I like this walking group) a few of us ate our butties outside on an old dark wood chair in the porch of the bar. The chair raised some comments because it was like a church pew but with a table that swung down from above the seat back like an ancient version of a fairground ride safety bar. People said they hadn’t seen one since their grandparents had one (and bear in mind lots of these folk are in their sixties). Unfortunately, the barrage of different names for it means I can’t remember any of them.