Thursday 26 May, 2016

Gijon, Cantabria, Spain 43 32.9N 05 40.2W

Today's Blog by David  (Time zone: BST+1; UTC +2)

That easterly breeze stayed in all day on Tuesday but began to back and die overnight.  By 04.00 our speed had dropped below our pain threshold  and so the iron tops’l was called back into service and hoisted.  This allowed us to maintain our speed and achieve a fast, 35 hour crossing to Gijon.

Motoring for hours on end is quite boring but the tedium was broken from time to time by visiting shoals of dolphins, of which there seem to be quite a few ….

Entry into Gijon was uneventful, welcomed by a chap in what passed as a “launch” who took us to our berth, took our lines an gave us a warm welcome.  Well, I think that is what was going on because I couldn’t understand a word of it, but he WAS smiling while he chattered away to us in Spanish, so all was good.  The marina paperwork was pleasantly and efficiently dealt with and we were tied up, checked in showered and ready to go within an hour of arrival. 

Last night, Chris was keen to take us to one of his favourite haunts: a Sidereria, which, perhaps not surprisingly, sells a local take on cider.  This on the Scrumpy end of cider, cloudy and packing the alcoholic clout of a Pan Galactic Gargle-Blaster¹.  The astronomic reference is pretty apposite because it is also a very high altitude drink. High altitude, because the received wisdom is that one needs to aerate the cider by holding the bottle as far above your head as you can reach,  tipping it gently so a trickle of cider pours out into a glass that you hold in your other hand - as low down as you possibly can.   We were fortunate enough to have this demonstrated to us by a professional:

before being allowed to experiment on our own.  Oh, I should mention that most of the time he would be doing this while looking you directly in your eyes …. (Note how he angles the glass away from his trousers). 

In practice, it is better to hold the glass someway from your body: if you get it onto but not into the glass the cider splashes over your clothes  - if you miss altogether then it washes your shoes.  Either  way, judging by the primordial protoplasmic gloop that remains at the bottom of an ‘empty’ bottle, I doubt it will do your clothes or shoes much good.

The crew’s own experimentation met with patchy success – by which I mean it left wet patches all over Ted’s trousers.

Notes

1              Pan Galactic Gargle-Blaster (n)   One for Douglas Adams’ fans: a cocktail favoured by Zaphod Beeblebrox