November novelties.

[Bierzo Baggie]

Sampedro, thanks for the Ferrol report. I’ll definitely run it one year. Signed up for the Lugo 10k this morning!

Nigel, here are the bear facts. Sorry if I ramble on but please bear with me……errrr, I don’t know the two areas you mention but if they are in the north of Burgos they don’t fall into the two surviving brown bear-zones although bears used to wander most of the Cordillera Cantabrica until relatively recently. The motorway from Oviedo to León has sliced through the main population and there are now two pockets. The western zone has the larger population, possibly as many as 50. To the east near the Picos de Europa (from Riaño across to the north of Palencia) there is a smaller population of maybe 20 or so which is threatened and perhaps condemned by the construction of a new ski complex and all the paraphernalia that this entails.

The Pyrenean population has long been unsustainable and the shooting of the last female by a French hunter was sad but anecdotal. They are now trying to re-introduce imported Slovakian bears but this has been met with controversy.

So, the only area with any slim hope of maintaining the last native brown bears of Western Europe is about 50kms north of here. They mainly inhabit the León-Asturias borderline but the odd bear has been known to cross into the Lugo province of Galicia to trash a beehive or two. I don’t think they’d make it as far as Burgos or Soria though. Anyway, I’m no bear buff and you´ll find more information here, although it´s all in Spanish.
http://faunaiberica.org/especies.php3?esp=74

Sweder, I had a conversation with a bloke in a pub once who said he’d shot a bear back in the 80s thinking it was a wild boar. Even then there were hefty penalties for murdering an endangered species and so apparently him and his mate skinned it and then buried the evidence. Be careful with blokes in pubs….

Enough bear-talk. I'm off to put some lights on the Christmas tree….