We were invited on a day trip to visit 2 hydroelectric power stations in the nearby mountains. The trip was primarily organised for one of our advisor’s classes, but he invited us along as well. It was not necessarily relevant to our project but was definitely relevant to mechanical engineering as a whole.
We got the bus from the university at 9 o’clock and after around a 2-hour drive, we arrived at the first station. This one was a dam situated on the edge of a mountain. We first got a tour of the bottom part of the power station before walking through some tunnels and up some steps to the top of the dam. Although it was an overcast day the view over the mountains from the top of the dam was still pretty spectacular. The tour wasn’t as useful as it may have been due to our beginner level of Spanish.
We then got back on the bus and moved to a different power station. This one was underground and involved walking down a long tunnel to get to. This station made use of pipelines many miles long in the hills to generate electricity.
On the way back to university we stopped for a coffee and some lunch, and at around 3 o’clock we were back in Gijon.