Juan Carlos

Today was out Biogeograpfía fieldtrip to the Valle de Nansa, which we'd been told about on the first lecture, but that I'd managed to forget about - so up until wednesday's lecture I had no idea it was happening. Out task was to go from the head of the valley, where the Rio Nansa starts, to the sea - taking various samples and notes on the types of trees and vegetation we found along the way.

We - the 15 or so students, of which Arm's and I are the only English, left on a huge minibus from uni at 9, and I slept all the way to the coffee stop. It seems a Spanish necessity to have coffee at 11. Even en lectures we'll all take a 15 minute break and go down to the cafeteria for one.

We arrived at the first location, and tumbled out of the bus, following Juan Carlos up into an Oak wood to take some data. We just scrambled up a bank from the road, no path, and he talked about the forest and its history. It's very different to field work in the UK - here, we're doing it all together, and we're essentially told what to write - in Edinburgh it's a much more independent task, with the result that everyone gets different data. He did stress that the aim of the excursion was just to get a grip on different collection methods, but still.

This was repeated at different spots along the way, each time we got further down the valley the vegetation got more diverse , and older. Before lunch we stopped at a huge dam built after the civil war to provide hydroelectric power to the valley, and Juan Carlos talked a bit about the political and environmental impacts of the dam - both of which were pretty complex.

Lunch, however, was my favourite part of the trip. 7 of us, including Juan Carlos, ate in a restaurant, all sitting and chatting with wine and 3 courses of amazing Spanish food - I had 'cabracito', which was slow cooked kid (i.e. baby goat) in a delicious sauce, with stewed pears and cream for pudding. So good, and so nice to have the time to relax.

2 more stops before we came back to uni, and I fell onto my bed. My flatmate brought me a much appreciated chocolate pudding.

Went out in the evening.