Category Archives: Travelling

July 7, 2013 · 10:00 am

Chaudes-Aigues and Trail des Capucins

Some weeks ago Luca and I spent a weekend in the Central Massif in France, a plateau the size of Castile and Leon, with an average height of around 600m.

On Friday we went to Chaudes-Aigues where we wanted to spend the saturday in a spa. The village, in the region of Auvergne, has less than 1,000 inhabitants, a couple of hotels and restaurants and its famous for its hot springs. With over 30 different springs starting from 45ºC to 82ºC, the latter is supposed to be one of the hottest ones in Europe (if not the hottest as proudly announced in the signpost close to it).

spring

Luca by the 82ºC hot spring in Chaudes-Aigues (arguably the hottest in Europe… the spring as well).

Another curious thing of Chaudes-Aigues is a network of hot water going through private houses built back in the year 1,332, which is still working today though only in those original houses.

On Sunday morning, we woke quite early to cover the distance to Nasbinals, another little commune in the region of Aubrac where I wanted to run a ~18km trail.

Start line of the trail.

Start line of the trail.

I started the trail in the back of the pack so I took the first kilometres without stress trying to run with the crowd and only overtaking other runners where possible and moderately easy. In that way I could enjoy at some points the views offered by the circuit of the trail, which at points was through closed forests but at some others was through open countryside.

Fields of Aubrac.

Fields of Aubrac.

I was running with the water bag and carried some vanilla-flavoured energetic gels, so I did not have any problems with supplies, I didn’t need to use those provided by the organization. One good point of the trail is that the route was very well marked, however, the measuring of the distance wasn’t. The trail was supposed to be 18 kilometres long, and when my GPS-watch indicated 17.75km I saw a signpost saying “Arrivée 2 km”. In the end I measured 19.60 km, but I guess the organization knows this, as in their own web, when showing the altitude profile, the distance they have measured is clearly over 19km.

Profile of the race “Trail des Capucins” (over 19km instead of the announced 18km).

Profile of the race “Trail des Capucins” (over 19km instead of the announced 18km).

It is not such a big issue, though you may have been managing your strength resources to have a last good kilometre and instead you find out that there are still 2 more to go! It would be as easy as to announce the trail as a 19km or 19.6km instead of 18km.

In the end it took me over 2 hours and 12 minutes, and ended the 255th out of 810 runners. A good run for a Sunday morning.

Even if not of very good quality, you can find below a short video I recorded around the 8th kilometre to give a glimpse of how these trails are:

I uploaded the video

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June 16, 2013 · 10:00 am

B-52 Stratofortress, nuclear disarmament and The Boneyard

One of the oldest flying aircraft in the US air force is the bomber B-52 Stratofortress, built during the 1950s. Over 700 of them were built during a decade with only above 70 today being used in the active or reserve forces. The retired ones are either in museums or in The Boneyard.

Part of B-52 retired fleet.

Part of B-52 retired fleet.

During the visit to AMARG, the guide explained us one historical anecdote taking the following picture as the departing point:

B-52 Stratofortress without horizontal tail plane.

B-52 Stratofortress without horizontal tail plane.

The curiosity of the picture: as you can see the aircraft has no horizontal tail plane (HTP). 

The story went as follows: as part of Arms Control and Disarmament agreements between the USA and USSR, the USA had to retire a certain number of B-52 aircraft from service (over 300 of them). At some point a soviet delegation visited The Boneyard at Tucson to witness the retirement of those A/C. However, they said that being the AF base right there, side by side of the boneyard, the USSR could not have any guarantee that those B-52s would not be immediately put back into active service just after the soviets had left the city, and thus required that Americans dismantled the HTPs from all B-52s that were to be retired as part of the agreements. In that way they could always check via satellite image whether they had those HTP on or off…

Later on I checked the story in the Wikipedia where you may see the whole background of the START agreement. Some of the aircraft were chopped into 5 pieces. Those you cannot see in the guided visit to Davis-Monthan AFB but you can see them in satellite image here:

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June 15, 2013 · 4:00 pm

The Boneyard

The US Air Force’s 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), known as “The Boneyard”, is one of the places that I had wanted to visit since many years ago. Luca and I visited it a couple of weeks ago.

The Boneyard is an aircraft and equipment storage facility located at Davis-Monthan AF Base near Tucson (Arizona). The are over 4,000 military aircraft stored at the place. Most of them come from the USA (not only from the air force, but from other services as well) but there are some aircraft from foreign countries. The aircraft are stored for several reasons and in different conditions.

  • Some of them are maintained waiting for a possible future use of them (be it with US armed forces or through some foreign military sale, that is the case of several old versions of C-130, F-16).
  • Other aircraft are kept so their parts can be used as spare parts for other active flying aircraft (e.g. C-130, KC-135).
  • Finally, there are aircraft which are stored waiting to be scrapped so the metal can be reused somewhere else.
KC-135 partly scrapped.

KC-135 partly scrapped.

Hundreds of C-130.

Hundreds of C-130.

There are whole fleets of retired aircraft: C-141 Starlifter (retired once the C-17 took over their role), half of the C-5 Galaxy fleet (the A versions, due to budget constrains and fleet strategic decisions), the Vietnam-era helicopters Hueys and Cobras…

The Boneyard can be visited with a guided tour organised by the Pima Air and Space Museum (I will write about this museum in another post).  The tour is made with a bus which goes through the Boneyard very slowly and making several stops (though guests cannot exit the bus). The guides are veterans from the US armed forces, who have flown or maintained some of those models that you get to see. The wealth of knowledge that they have about them, the anecdotes and stories that they tell during the tour are worth much more than the 7$ that the tour costs.

The place is impressive, overwhelming. Not only there are thousands of aircraft but the seeing of them fully aligned, whole fleets of different models helps you put things into perspective:

  • World commercial airliner fleet (over 100 pax) has about 16,000 aircraft vs. the 4,000 at The Boneyard.
  • The largest airline fleets have about 1,200 aircraft.
  • Spanish AF has 14 C-130 Hercules vs. the hundreds of them you see at The Boneyard.
  • The dozens of retired Lockheed C-5A Galaxy that you can see there have a combined payload capacity of over 5,000 tonnes… which is more than the complete payload capability of any other air force in the world except the US one…

You may want to take a look at satellite images from the Boneyard here:

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June 13, 2013 · 8:00 am

San Diego Marathon

“The next time you’re in the USA, run a marathon there”. Those were the words from by brother Jaime after he took part in Chicago marathon in 2011.

It has taken me 2 years to go back there. This time for my honeymoon. This did not stop me to follow the advice. I went through a website with all the marathons in California and found that San Diego Rock’n’Roll marathon was taking place on the very last day of the trip. Perfect! That way the muscle soreness of the following days would not interrupt the tourism activities.

June 2nd, the day of the race was only one month and a half after March 17th, when we ran Rome marathon, thus I did not follow any special training plan for this marathon. I just tried to keep the form with which I arrived to Rome by running often, though I didn’t do any series session and only one long run… I paid for that.

The atmosphere was very good but only in some neighbourhoods, in others not so many people cheering the runners. Along the road 163, during the steepest (up to 6% along 1km) and longest (about 4km) climb there was almost nobody. Even if the overall profile is a descent I found the course quite tough. The times of the first 3 runners seem to say the same (2h15 for the winner, 20 minutes more for the second…). The other thing that I didn’t like much was the solid or the lack of abundant and varied solid supplies along the course. I thus only relied on my 3 energetic gels and drinks.

Course of San Diego marathon as recorded by my Garmin.

Course of San Diego marathon as recorded by my Garmin.

San Diego marathon profile.

San Diego marathon profile.

At 5:30am, before departing.

At 5:30am, before departing.

I went quite well at the expected pace (below 5’20” / km) for the first 28 kilometres, then I started to miss endurance and right afterwards the long climb “killed” me. I, however, did not stop and kept running up, if very slow (most of the runners in my time -between 3h45 and 4h- where walking during those kms). I’ve gone through much tougher situations in the last years, thus I only thought “well, slow the rhythm and the climb will finish at some point, keep up”.

Running at some point of San Diego marathon.

Running at some point of San Diego marathon.

In the end I finished in some 3h56’19” as clocked by the official chip (see the report of the race as recorded by my Garmin here). I was happy enough with the result and with having finished the second marathon in the year, another sub-4-hour marathon (the 4th in a row under 4h) and the 9th overall.

San Diego marathon finisher diploma.

San Diego marathon finisher diploma.

San Diego marathon medal.

San Diego marathon medal.

9 marathons!

9 marathons!

Enjoying the feat.

Enjoying the feat (behind me: San Diego Padres baseball stadium).

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June 12, 2013 · 8:00 am

Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards AF Base

During the recent honeymoon trip to the USA, Luca and I managed to visit 5 aerospace museums, 3 airplane assembly lines, 2 US air force bases and 1 space observatory… be sure some of the coming posts will be related to that side of the trip.

Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards AF Base

Since we were going to visit California and we would be around the desert of Mojave I thought that we could make a detour to visit Edwards Air Force Base, where the Flight Test Center of the USAF is located.

The Flight Test Center has got a museum which is open to the public, for which identification is needed and no carry on items able to take pictures of videos are permitted. The museum is free and opens 5 days a week. On top of that there is a monthly guided visit of the air base, flight line included. This tour is offered only once a month and you have to subscribe with some time in advance.

Several dozens of aircraft have first flown at Edwards and that, together with Rogers dry lake is what makes the place so special.

First Flights Wall at Edwards AFB (public domain image).

Some very famous flights at Edwards: the Bell XS-1 which first reached the speed of sound with “Chuck” Yeager at the controls, the test campaigns of the YC-130 (Hercules), C-17 Globemaster III (and the prototype YC-15 from which it got many features), testing of the Space Shuttle, testing of today’s state of the art fighters F-22 and F-35… take a look at the wall to get an idea.

Rogers Dry Lake is by itself a national historic landmark. The lake formed thousands of years ago, and today it’s mostly dry along the year and the strength of the ground permits it to have several unpaved very long runways in its lakebed. The longest one being over 12 kilometers long. It also has the world’s greatest compass rose marked into the lake to help flight test pilots guide themselves. It was there, in the lake, where the now retired Space Shuttle would land in its return from space.

Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards (public domain image).

The exhibit at the museum displays a replica of the XS-1, the first 2 F-22 prototypes, an exhibit about the formation of the lake, the history of the base, some remarkable test pilots, etc. The outdoors display has as a highlight a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (a classic in US aviation museums).

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird at Edwards (public domain image).

The area of the base is of 1,200 km2 (this is about 1/7th of the region of Madrid). The visit to it, museum included, lasts about 3 hours. There are veterans offering explanations at the museum and at one restoration hangar within the base. Our guided tour was led by a young aerial photographer, Jet Set  (what a name! :-)), who made if very enjoyable.

Along the flight line of the base, for the pleasure of European-based spotters (who don’t have the chance to see them often), were some test F-35s, F-22s, C-17s, Global Hawks, F-16s, etc. Apart from some aircraft flying around. I, however, missed seeing the B-2 that was somewhere “hidden” in the base (next time!).

Edwards AF Base entrance.

Edwards AF Base entrance.

Rosamond Dry Lake (a lake close to Rogers Dry Lake).

Rosamond Dry Lake (a lake close to Rogers Dry Lake).

YC-15

YC-15.

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June 6, 2013 · 8:00 am

Alcatraz

After many weeks here I am, back with the blog. Married and with a honey moon just finished, you can bet that most of the coming blog posts will be related to experiences we have lived during the trip. I will post them randomly, as I get to write them, without theme or chronological order…

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary

This was one of the visits that we had arranged in advance. As you probably know Alcatraz was a high-security federal prison which is now closed, quite famous for having hosted some specific inmates such as Al Capone. There were many facts and stories about the prison that I wasn’t aware of before coming and called my attention. To name a few:

  • The fact of being a federal prison versus a state prison made that many of the inmates were not particularly dangerous in my eyes (as in serial killers, let’s say) but offenders of federal crimes such as tax evasion. On the one hand we could think tax evaders not as especially dangerous types so why would you put them in such a place, on the other hand and seeing the levels of corruption we suffer nowadays, it could be exemplary to put tax evaders right away in maximum security prisons, as indeed they’re committing a crime against all of us.
  • Contrary to some vague image I had in my mind, also due to being a federal prison instead of a state one (with fewer resources) made conditions in Alcatraz even better for the inmates (such as food).
  • The fact that within the island some officers’ families were living at that time, kind of uneasy feeling. But hearing the memories of some of the girls whose father worked at the prison, the island felt to them as an ideal place to live!

Together with the ticket you get an audio guide which provides a terrific amount of information and voices that really get you into the atmosphere and do guide you through the place. You get to see the cells of some famous inmates, isolation cells, the library, dinning room, you receive explanations about riots that happened within the prison and escape attempts, etc.

We took one of the night tours (and we recommend doing so), which departs late in the afternoon and includes a whole series of extra activities at night once the general visit is finished: a detailed explanation of the June 1962 Alcatraz escape (possibly the only successful one), a demonstration of the cells’ doors’ opening and closing system (see the video below), the hospital, etc. In the end we spent over 3 hours in the island.

See some of the pictures we took below:

Alcatraz from afar.

Alcatraz from afar.

Up close view of Alcatraz.

Up close view of Alcatraz.

One of the cells.

One of the cells.

In one of the corridors.

In one of the corridors.

Behind the bars.

Behind the bars.

Great views of San Francisco from the island.

Great views of San Francisco from the island.

Hole used in the June 1962 escpae.

Hole used in the June 1962 escape.

Listen to the slamming of the cells doors (the guide made some emphasis to us trying to think what did that sound convey us):

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May 17, 2013 · 5:49 am

El Cosmonauta in Hollywood

Last May 14, it took place the premier of the movie “El cosmonauta”. You can read about the event that took place in the cinema Callao in the post from the blog of the project.

That same day Luca and I were visiting Hollywood and the Universal Studios theme park, and yes, you can imagine which t’shirt did I dress for the occasion: “I support piracy (of my movie)”.

El Cosmonauta in Hollywood ("I support piracy")

El Cosmonauta in Hollywood (“I support piracy”)

PD: during the whole day I only got one comment from Universal’s staff :-).

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March 17, 2013 · 9:30 am

Buon giorno, Roma!

This morning, as this post is being published I’ll be starting the 19th Rome marathon, together with my friends Serna, Manuel and brother Jaime.

I am very satisfied with the way I could train towards this marathon, no injuries this time.

Since running Berlin marathon last September 30th, I only stopped for a couple of weeks and swiftly started running again. Even if I started a bit late to pick up with the number of miles run per week (from mid December instead of mid November) I have amounted almost 800km in these last months, including:

  • 5 days of tough series training: 12x400m, 14x400m, 8x800m, 9x800m and 10x800m.
  • 7 long runs of over 16km each, 4 of them over 20km.
  • 5 races: San Silvestre Vallecana (10km), Course des Rois (10km), Le Deca d’Escalquens (10km), Trailhounet (18km) and Media Maratón de La Latina (21km).

You can see below the mileage run per week:

Maratona di Roma 2013 training season. Kilometres run per week.

Maratona di Roma 2013 training season. Kilometres run per week.

A lesson learned from previous training sessions: when I noticed that some muscle or tendon was getting sore from too much training I did not hesitate in slowing down that week, instead of keeping up with the training until getting seriously injured. Let’s see today how it goes, anyway, as Jaime says, it’ll sure be a day for the epic :-).

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November 17, 2012 · 8:00 am

The origin of football in Spain

One of the sports introduced by the British working at the mine of Rio Tinto (post about the visit to it I made the last week here), was football.

Welcome to Minas Riotinto (“Birthplace of Spanish football”).

I didn’t expect anything special as I had not researched the topic beforehand but I hoped there would be something knowing that the origin was there. This was immediately confirmed as there is a signpost at the entrance of the village about the relation of it with football.

But then, there was nothing else but the statue you can find below in front of the local football club field (playing in who knows which division).

I asked at the mining museum whether there was something to be visited about football and its origin in Spain. There wasn’t. “The town hall has a project of building a local museum of football, but today there is nothing”. What a pity. I guess I am not the only person who when travelling is searching for this kind of places and memorabilia, thus I guess it could have some potential.

Statue celebrating the origin of Spanish football in Minas de Rio Tinto (Huelva).

It is not the first time that I get this disappointment. You may remember that I had the same feeling when searching for the roots of football at the Freemasons in London. I would love to see such museum like the one about golf in St. Andrews, I hope that one day I will be able to do so. To date, the closest to that is the one-page text below, found at the mining museum:

Page about the introduction of football in Rio Tinto by British RTCL workers.

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November 15, 2012 · 8:00 am

Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto is a river flowing through the South of Spain opening to the Atlantic ocean at Huelva. I had wanted to visit it since long time ago. It is not just any river: it is especially acidic (pH2), it has a high content in heavy metals and as its name points out, it is red (“tinto”), due the iron dissolved in the water.

The Rio Tinto area has been a mining site since ancient times, and it is there that the British mining company, bearing that name, was founded in 1873, when some international investors bought the site to the Spanish government. The mining activity grew so much that at some time it was reported as the biggest mining site in the world (especially for copper).

The influence of the operation in the area reached every corner of life:

  • The ancient village of Minas de Rio Tinto was brought down in order to exploit the underground below it and had to be displaced.
  • A huge train system (over 300km of rails), only second to the national state train system, was built to bring metals to the port of Huelva.
  • The British colony formed by the company workers and managers brought by the owners introduced all kinds of changes in the society: from religion to the introduction of several sports (football, tennis, polo, criquet…).
  • The Mediterranean forest in the area was completely destroyed. Today, the a forest of pine trees, more resistant to the acidic conditions has been planted.

At first, several dozens of children were employed (about 50 under age 10!), salaries would be paid out in coupons to exchange for food from the company, work conditions were deplorable. Years later, partly due to the pressure of organized unions led the company to improve the standards of workers and to provide several social benefits. A major cornerstone was the strike that occurred in the first days of February of 1.888 which ended in the killing of over hundred demonstrators (“Año de los Tiros“).

In 1.955 the Spanish State bought back a majority stake of the operation to the Rio Tinto Company Ltd., which was kept ongoing for some decades, but today is closed.

Today, Rio Tinto has a very different interest, as it serves scientists from NASA to study the bacteria living in the extreme conditions of the river. This helps them in studying the plausibility of life in Mars under similar conditions.

The landscape is unique, striking. We took several pictures of it and I share some of them below:

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The village has a wonderful mining museum, a train tour through the mining complex (11km route and back) along the river, a small mine can be visited (entering 200m into it) and a typical British house of the time is also open for tourism. It is a very interesting tour for a day (different packages starting from 10€; just ~60 km from Seville).

We also recorded some 5 videos along the train tour. See the first one here (you may find the rest at my Youtube channel):

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