September 8: On giving it best

With a heavy heart, I have decided to return home early, with the Celtic characteristics of Galicia and Portugal still unexplored. The immediate excuse for thus bottling out is the three day (so far) delay in obtaining a replacement number plate for Carmen, plus the damage to her nearside, which makes it impossible to open the door, and means I have to clamber in and out of the driver’s compartment.

However, the truth of the matter is that I am travel-weary after the long slog south and really rather lonely. Being on one’s own is not a problem, when you can drop into the nearest pub or golf club and either pass the time of day with whoever may be there, or simply listen to other people’s conversations. But when you cannot understand a word they’re saying, or vice versa, you do feel a bit out of it, especially if there is no Times or television to help one while away the uneventful hours. So the prospect of driving several hundred miles through remote, inhospitable (so they say) Galicia, in a damaged van, with no company and a distinctly iffy weather forecast was not, I am afraid, one that ultimately appealed.

I knew that the game was up when I woke up this morning, pulled back the curtains to reveal a blameless sky of the brightest blue - and felt my spirits lift not a millimetre.
I am sure that Galicia is fascinating, and I deeply want to visit Porto and the Celtic sites of Northern Portugal, but both will have to wait until I can persuade someone to come with me.

In the meantime, the weather has been ironically blissful. Today has been by far the hottest day both of the trip and of my summer. I spent large parts of it in the sea, trying to cool off. This was pleasant enough at the time, but has left me with a blocked left ear. Although even that has its consolations, as it is helping to muffle the deafeningly loud music that is pounding out across the estuary towards the campsite, on account of the continuing Fiesta. Last night, the disco went on until 2.30! The very helpful man in the campsite reception warned me that I might be woken early tomorrow morning. God knows what that may involve. Probably yet another volley of deafening artillery shells, fired from the battlements of the fortress.

The town clock has a most melodious chime, reminiscent of the hours being struck on a spinet or, yes, a melodion. But at what appear to be random hours of the day, this is the signal for the aforementioned howitzers to open up over the bay, frightening the dogs and shattering the reveries.

However, you must not get the impression that I dislike Northern Spain. Very much to the contrary. The scenery is spectacular, the people are kindly, the food is much better than in Brittany and only two thirds the price, and the sea is wonderfully clear and almost silky smooth to swim in, even when there’s a decent swell running, which there certainly has these past three days. The surf has been by far the best of the entire trip.

Tomorrow, a taxi is due to arrive at the campsite at 9.00 to take me to an unnamed destination, where a new number plate should await me. Assuming that we don’t end up driving to Madrid or San Sebastian, I then intend to catch the bus to Oviedo, the capital city of the Principality of Asturias, to sample what the real Carmen promises me will be a “Pantagruelic” feast of Asturian specialities at El Raitan. (No, I didn’t know what it meant, either. Turns out that it’s from a ‘gigantic prince’ called Pantagruel, in Rabelais. But then Carmen always did have a better grasp of the English language than most of us in the NFU for whom it is our native tongue!)

In the meantime, I have been drowning my sorrows with some of that Breton bottle-conditioned beer that I mentioned a few days ago. The Duchesse Anne was excellent – beautifully malty, without being sweet, well-hopped, amber-coloured and quite strong. The Belle Ile was a bit of a disappointment. Despite having left it to settle for the whole morning, it was chock full of sediment when I opened it at lunchtime. It settled down eventually, and turned out to be a rather heavy, malty brown ale – the sort of beer that Newcastle Brown doubtless was before it was debased.

And if you’ve deduced from that last paragraph that that one of the reasons for my early return home is that I’m pining for a decent pint of good old Westcountry beer, you’d be spot on!