It’s been freakishly warm for months, but winter suddenly arrived on Thursday. I pretty much spent the day hibernating, apart form German class. Yesterday morning I went into town. It was raining but that usually means very short queues everywhere. I didn’t take an umbrella because of the gusty wind, just a cagoule. I got everything done, with gaps of waiting around in shops for the heavy showers, then headed…
I’ve been having fun hunting up the local rock art with an archeologist from Northumbria. There’s lots of it, but while the rock art from the North Pennines is about 5,000 – 3,000 years old, the Palmeran art is much newer at 1,200 – 500 years old. We went to El Verde near El Paso cemetery, where most of the carvings line up with midsummer sunset or midwinter sunset (well,…
On Saturday I was in the Roque car park selling books from the boot of my car, when the ravens turned up, begging for food. That’s why I keep cat food in the car, specially for them. Then they got curious about the boot of my car and the books. I started to get a bit nervous when s/ze took an interest in my pot of change. That’s the black…
Well, I saw it! It was cloudy at low altitudes, so I was glad I’d joined the bus going up to Pico de La Cruz with a group of about 16 people from Astrofest. Since buses get a lot more expensive after midnight, the organiser was persuaded to have the bus drop us off shortly after 11 pm, so it would be “home” by midnight, even though it meant a…
The Canarian Tourist Board will be live streaming tonight’s lunar eclipse at http://www.thebestclimateintheworld.com/geminidas Just to remind you, the moon is at almost its closest approach to the Earth, so it’s will be a supermoon – noticeably bigger than usual. There are two parts to the Earth’s shadow: the penumbra is the outer part, and the umbra is the much darker inner part. Penumbral Eclipse begins 28 Sep, 00:11:47 The penumbral…
When I heard that the road outside our house was going to be closed for a go-kart race, I was picturing loads of very noisy karts snarling past. Frankly, I was congratulating myself that it was due to finish at 7pm. One year the regular rally went on until midnight, and the noise drove me crazy. But this was great – motorless karts rolling down the hill, some cheap and…