Because La Palma is an island, the plants here evolved in isolation, and many of them are unique to the island, or to the Canaries. One of my favourites is the Tower of Jewels — Tajinaste in Spanish and in Latin, the Echium genus. It’s related to borage, and most species have a big spike with hundreds of tiny flowers. The most spectacular is Echium wildpretii, which really is…
If a beach is all you want for your holiday, then frankly you’re better off in Tenerife. But if a beach is part of the mix, then we have two main beach resorts, Los Cancajos and Puerto Naos. Our sand is like the Model T Ford – “Any colour you like, as long as it’s black”. When the sea mashes up black, volcanic rock, that’s what you get. However,…
Well, I finally got my books on sale. I would very, very much appreciate reviews. I’m not asking anyone to lie, but if you liked any of my books, please put in a review. And if you didn’t like it, you are, of course, completely entitled to your opinion, but perhaps you’d like a cup of tea instead? And if you see anything wrong with the listing, please, please tell…
One of the fun things about Thursday’s job was meeting Luis Alberto Hernando. Not only was he the favourite to win this year (which he did in an amazing 6:52:39), but he’s also my kind of bonkers. (For those of you who don’t know Spanish, I’m translating myself into Spanish, and then he’s saying the same thing without the Mad Scientist accent. Very seriously.)
Today 11 of the Transvulcania runners visited the observatory, together with about 20 journalists. Lucky me, I got the job of being their guide. So I showed them around GTC and the MAGIC. It felt a bit odd, because the runners were interested in the telescopes, but the photographers were largely interested in the runners. Well, it’s their job, obviously: they weren’t there for me or the telescopes. But at the end,…
I had too many blogs. There was the La Palma blog, and the personal blog with the writing stuff, and one about astronomy and one about El Hierro. Plus there was my bookshop and my main site (or at least it used to be my main site, but it was very neglected and old-fashioned.) All this took up far too much of my time and interfered with writing. So I…