Sick of doodling the same old doodles on the postit pad while bored / on the phone / changing mental gears? Then you might be interested in the Big Draw, a week of nationally organised activites to get people scribbling with their chewed pencils in a more creative fashion.

There are a number of notable figures from the illustration arts popping up, including Quentin Blake, David Hockney, Gerald Scarfe and Posy Simmonds, and too many events to shake a stick at.

Partly for my own benefit, here's a list of the events taking place in London during the week.

So, time to sharpen up those HBs and flex the fingers.

One thing I'll miss about the UK will be the beer. For some reason that no-one's fully explained to me, the UK, alone in all of Europe and the wider world, persists in its tradition of creating bitters and ales rather than pilsener-style lagers (for a primer on the differences in beer types, check out this page).

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this in my view, and there's a wonderfully wide range of different bitters and ales available throughout the UK. Indeed, part of the fun of exploring a new part of the country is to find oneself in a pub getting through a pint or two of the local tipple.

Perhaps it's something to do with the climate - with the UK not generally noted for searingly hot summers (although this one just been is a notable brain-frying exception) drinking heavier style cellar-temperature beers in a cool climate seems to make sense.

And about the temperature of beer in this country - it's often referred to as being flat and warm in comparison to pilsener-style lagers. Well, it may not be super-cooled like many of your lagers, but when the weather on a good day often necessitates the use of a warm cardy or somesuch then cellar-temperature is just about right.

Also, the choice of beers in the average UK pub (6.5 draught beers, 8.9 bottled beers) is typically better than elsewhere in Europe. Noone else in Europe matches the variety of draught beers, although the Belgiums do manage to have an average of 17 bottled beers available in a typical pub (and there's nothing wrong with Belgium beers, either).

There's plenty more that could be written about UK beers, and the often superb pubs in which they are often served, but I think I'll save that to bore the next person I end up sitting next to in a pub.

Well, my life has taken a sharp right turn in the last little while (anyone whom I haven't filled in and is interested can email me for details).

As I result I'm currently back in London watching the Autumn creep in and catching up with friends. It's giving me time to properly say goodbye to London, and to the people I know here which is very nice.

It's been interesting seeing those I know reaching certain points in the cycle of life that are quite a way from when I first met them, and also good to have my experiences relativised when they talk about their past experiences.

I won't rabbit on with the philosophy, but there's been much to think about in recent times and it's interesting how a challenge gives one a different perspective on many things.

For those who haven´t been watching closely, the space race has taken a few new twists recently. Since the recent shuttle disaster effectively shutdown the US space programme, the Brazilians are keen to get a rocket into space despite a recent launchpad disaster, and the Chinese are gagging to get a man into orbit.
Even the Europeans are looking skyward, with the launch of their first (unmanned) mission to the moon.
If this is not enough, there are plenty of private individuals lining up to conquor space because of initiatives such as the X-Prize.

So, it looks like it won´t be too long before the heavens are as busy as the M25 at rush hour. I wonder if anyone´s had any thoughts about the need for the orbital equivalent of a few sets of traffic lights and round-abouts?

However, it may be that conventional spacecraft are obsolete if those experimenting with lifter technology manage to come up with anything.

Basically, a lifter is a type of levitating craft which some people are claiming is based on the technology behind flying saucers (yes, it does get a little weird). Although the principles involved are not fully understood, it does sound interesting. At the moment experiments have been limited to a number of leviatations of very light craft, but a recent success involves Orville, the world´s first ever mouse "Electronaut".

All bizarre in its own way, but fascinating nonetheless.

Looks like Wellington is coming up in the world, according to a recent article in the Guardian (link courtesy of brainsluice).

Good thing then that it´s where I´ll be ending up in a few months´ time, although maybe the hobbits will have gone home by then.

Has anyone noticed that novelty ringtones seem to be disappearing, or is it just me? These days I hear more conventional ringtones when peoples mobile phones go off, which tends to get me reaching confusedly for my mobile at the same time as I´ve always used a conventional ringtone.

Perhaps people have finally got tired of hearing the Mexican hat dance / Mission Impossible / the Simpson´s theme tune twenty times a day - I know I have.

I´ve just spent an hour or two watching the waves roll in on the beach at the bottom of Barcelona, with a crowd of eager surfers pouncing on each suitable wave.
There´s a strong on-shore breeze today, so the normally flat sea has been producing decent breakers, with the waves cascading over the breakwaters.

It´s one of the assets of Barcelona, and was given a makeover as part of the preparations for the ´92 Expo meaning that there are good facilities, although the sand can sometimes be more dirt/dust than true sand. Then again, I´ve been spoiled in the last few weeks with the fantastic beaches along the Cantabrian coast.

Madrid has been fantastic over the last couple of days, and any hesitation I had about visiting this city has been totally dispelled.

It is a total contrast to Barcelona, the other big city in Spain, and is very beautiful and sophisticated. I´m lucky enough to be staying at a friend´s apartment very close to the centre, so everything´s on the doorstep, and tomorrow morning this will be so literally when the Rastro starts up.

I´ve been introduced to the Madrid nightlife, where people only start seriously thinking about going out for the evening after midnight - the concept of time here is so distorted that the Spanish even use another word to distinguish the socially important part of the night - the madrugada, which generally refers to anytime after midnight but before about 6am. Even entertainment listings will refer to events happening at, say, "Sabado 1 mad." which means 1am.

This is a bit confusing initially, as it begs the question whether it refers to 1am on Saturday ("Sabado") morning or 1am on Sunday morning; turns out that the correct answer is that it is 1am on Sunday morning.

The galleries here are stuffed full of fantastic art, including much of non-Spanish origin such as Hieronymous Bosch ("el Bosco" in Spanish). The Prado is the queen of all, with fantastic collections of works by Goya and Velazquez, but the Reina Sofia has the Picassos, including the monumental "Guernica" and it´s attendant studies. Interestingly, Picasso executed a number of studies after the completion of the painting, almost as if her was thinking of having another go at it.

However, the most stunning sight of all to date, at least for the initial thrill, is a train station, the Atocha Estacion, where someone has had the incredible vision to make a public place such as this into a stunning garden.
More specifically, the high-ceilinged concourse doubles as a palm house, with gigantic fronds towering over one´s head. High jets spray a fine mist to keep the humidity constant, and there is a feeling on wonderful relaxation - a great place to have to while away the time if your train is delayed. In fact, I suspect that a number of people there on the day I visited had no intention of travelling, but were simply there to enjoy the ambience.

As I say, simply inspired.

I´m leaving sunny Santander (well, not particularly sunny over the last week) to travel to Madrid this afternoon for a few days, before heading off to France.

As far as the five weeks of language courses go (two in Santiago, and three here in Santander), I´ve learnt most of what can be learned easily and quickly and anything I learn from now on is going to be more difficult and probably going to take a lot longer to assimilate.

So, I think it´s a very good time to start putting the Spanish that I´ve learnt to good use. After the next week in France, I´ll be starting the Camino de Santiago, and I´m sure I´ll be meeting a lot of Spanish speaking people along the way. It´d be ideal to run across a Spanish peregrino (pilgrim) or two with a bit of English and do some sort of language exhange thing while walking the Camino, but this may be wishful thinking.

Yesterday afternoon was spent visiting some of the pretty towns along the Cantabrian coast in the company of Olga, the woman that I´ve been staying with for the last three weeks. All very pretty, especially Santillana del mar (although a total tourist trap at the same time), and it was interesting to find Gaudi´s El Capricho, an interesting holiday house that he built in Comillas.

That man must have been such a workaholic - even while on holiday he was putting his predigious talents to work.

Almost every day since I´ve been in Santander I´ve passed by a shop in the main street which specialises in school uniforms. This would be nothing worth noting usually, except for the fact that the manequins in the window are the most miserable that I´ve ever seen.

By this, I don´t mean the condition of the manequins, but instead the expressions that they have on their faces. Each one of them, dressed in a sample school uniform, wears what can only be called an expression of resigned disgust. Maybe this is some sort of psychological slight of hand intended to reassure the kids that get dragged into this store that it is perfectly acceptable and natural to hate wearing uniforms.

I remember from when I was at school that the only pleasure to be got from wearing the school uniform was working out some means of sabotaging the dress code, whether this involved non-regulation accessories, or altering the clothes so that they looked suitably scruffy or outlandish. This could include ultra-baggy shorts, ripped shirt sleeves, or in the case of the girls the cat and mouse game of shortening skirts so that they revealed as much as possible while eliciting no more than a low grumble from the teachers and staff.

Well, another weekend´s walking in the Picos de Europas saw me getting all the training I was after, and more.

With another classmate from the language school, I walked the Cares gorge, which follows a track hewn from the cliff-face of a narrow gorge, and it was particularly stunning. We trekked up a narrow gorge to Bulnes (pop. 23), a beautiful pueblo tucked away in the folds of the mountains, and found a high rock from which we could survey the view down the valley while eating lunch.

However, one of the local goats had eyes for our lunch, and it was hilarious trying to hold onto my lunch and my perch on the rock with one hand while trying to fight the goat off with the other - we both managed to get quite a few pictures of the goat hassling each of us, and it was ridicuously funny.

The route down the Cares gorge exists purely because of the hydro scheme, but it is a wonderful accident that it traverses such magestic countryside.
We stopped in Cain for the evening, another small village where the local men were playing a stange game, looking to be a combination of petanque and skittles. They would throw a wooden ball from a distance of fifteen feet into a square marked in the dust, and try in the process to knock down as many skittles in the square as possible. It was great to watch, but after half an hour I still had absolutely no idea as to the system of scoring.

Sunday saw us continue down the end of the Cares gorge, and eventually we had to tackle the hardest bit of the journey, which was trying to find our way across a mountain range back over from the province of Leon to Cantabria, to where we could catch a bus back to Santander.

It turned out to be an epic walk, and with a combination of low cloud and a lack of marked trails we found ourselves climbing a few more mountains than we expected, scaring a troupe of wild deer in the process.
Eventually we found our way down, but not to where we were supposed to be, but luckily the guidebook´s advice about the ease of hitching proved to be true, and although we missed the bus, we made it back to Potes for the night.

I think, all up, we walked a total of about 55km over the weekend, with about 30 of this on Sunday over terrain that was often rough and steep.
So, given that all the gear (boots, wet weather gear etc) functioned OK, and that I was carrying a full pack for the entire weekend, I feel happy now at attempting the Camino.

Bring it on.