Bull Running

We are still having internet problems and have a had a really nasty stomach bug in the last week which is why i haven't posted for a while.  I will get round to posting on the places i have missed out, but for now I am just going to tell you about the bull running!

We arrived in La Rapita four days ago and found that there was a week of festival on in the town right next to the marina.  this basically entails lots of music, fireworks and drinking until around 5am every day.  However, everyday they also have a Pamplona style bull run through a gated off section of the town and we thought it would be rude not to give it a go.  What a mistake!

We headed in to town for the start at 1230 and had a quick beer with Tom and his family to give us some dutch courage.  At the start line it all seemed fairly undramatic, we were surrounded by other people of varying age, from 10 year old kids to 70 year old men and were thinking whats the worst that could happen!

I decided that it looked safe enough to do with my Nikon SLR and managed to get some pretty good shots right up close to the bulls as they ran past and some of the local kids "Torroing" the bulls in the square they end up in.

We then managed to end up in a small alley with no where to get cover and a bull at each end.  We managed to get around one of them whilst some other guys distracted it and I went back to taking photos.  I had just taken the one below when I realised I was now the only person that wasn't taking cover and made a dash for one of the railings, unfortunately the bull was way to quick for me and managed to knock me off as i tried to climb.  Having managed to scramble to my feet i made another run for it, which was a fatal mistake, the bull was on me in a split second and had me on the floor again trying to stamp on me!  The only thing I could think to do was try to put it on the floor to so it couldn't trample me so I rugby tackled its front legs and brought him down just infront of me.  This gave me a small window to get to the barriers before he got up, which I didn't make!  Thankfully at this point Tom and a few others were trying to distract it and I managed to crawl under the barrier, not the most graceful exit, but at least I was away from 300kg of raging bull!  

Whilst it's a bit bonkers that these things are allowed to go on, I was really impressed with the safety precautions that were in place.  No sooner had i stood up and three paramedics were dragging me off to an ambulance that was  really close by.  I try to insist that i was ok, which i mostly am, but they wouldn't let me leave until they had fully checked me over! 

I now have a very high respect for the old school Matadors! 

Pobla

From Valencia we made the short journey up to Pobla Marina where a good friend of ours keeps his boat On Y Va.  The marina it's self was a little rough around the edges, but it had every thing you could need and the people were super friendly!  It would actually make the perfect marina to buy and refurb, it has a good client base and a lot of Oysters winter there to get round the excessive cost in the Balearics, anyone want to loan me €10m?!

The surrounding towns were all occupied by Spanish tourists, which made a nice change from the "Brits abroad" scene on Ibiza.  It was obvious that the bad times had hit quite hard in this area of Spain, with lots of derelict or half built apartment blocks and quite a few closed down restaurants.  The contrast between the relative affluence of the marina and clear dilapidation of the surrounding tourist areas that have nothing to do with the marine industry was quite stagering.

Unfortunately, we had numerous systems fail on us over the past weeks, so lots of maintenance was required.  Nothing serious, but things that still needed to be sorted none the less, the most annoying of which was the watermaker.  I still think it is a great thing to have and more than likely would go for the same one given the choice again, but they do require a lot of TLC.  The main problem they encounter is the heat, it never stops working because of it, but you get some funky bacteria that grows in the filters and produces some kind of sulfur.  It's not harmfull, but it really stinks and it is pretty gutting to have to ditch 200Lt of freshly made water because of it!  While I am on the subject of heat, I don't think it has dropped below 30C here for the last 4 weeks, I know the UK is having a pretty bad time of the weather so I just thought I'd drop that in!  Not to complain at it, but thank the gods we have air conditioning, it would be nearly unbearable if we didn't;  I just hope the condensation pumps I just had to replace don't give up on us again!

One of the things I liked most about Pobla Marina was the pool club, during the day you could chill and take a dip and at night it turned into a relatively cool bar!  As you'll see from the photo above they stop you swimming after dark though.  I also nearly forgot to mention that Helly decided to make a random appearance after being given some days off work, so needless to say a good amount of cocktails and G&T's were consumed!  

We also had the pleasure of watching the Euro final in a really small bar in the marina.  Those of you who know me also know my hatred of the wretched, ridiculous, played by pansies, followed by yobs "Game".  However, I have had to re-think my position!  The Spaniards that we watched the game with in the bar, and all of the ones that piled in after, were all really cool people.  They weren't your usual UK style thugs and all tried to get us involved in the celebrations as much as possible!  So my re-thought on football is that I don't hate the sport, although they are all still pansies, but I do seriously dislike the majority of the UK supporters of it,  they could definitely learn a bit about how to behave from the Spanish.  

We are still heading up the coast and are now only about 120Nm from Barcelona.  The next post will be on a really ugly place called Burianna!

F1 Aftermath

Valencia was a very cool city, lots of good restaurants and bars a short walk from the marina and even more a short tram ride away.  The marina was a bit isolated, but for the purpose of watching the race it could not have been better.  We had a relatively good view from the balcony that at the end of our pontoon and we watched the start of the race from there, seeing 20 cars roaring down the straight and into turn 9 from less than 100m was pretty spectacular!  From there we headed down to track side where we could get a closer look through some gaps in the fence, that is of course unless you are Jack who, along with 15 other people, found a gap and snuck though to get with in about 5m of the track!  We found the best place to watch it was from up the mast, which was easily high and close enough to see over all of the other boats, stands and various camera cranes!  

View from the balcony.

View from up the mast.

Looking down on the boat.

Needless to say there were plenty of places to party, both the night before the race and the night of the race.  I won't, and probably legally can't, post all of the debauchery that happened over the 72 hours that Matt, Jim and Jack were with us, however some of the highlights and it seems SOP when Jim is involved were: Jim deciding our 6 person dinghy could take 8 and nearly sinking it, when being told by the Guardia that lights are required at night on the dinghy Matt promptly pulling out his phone and activating the flash,  me getting a lift back from the club on the back of a Guarida motorbike round the track and Jacks incredible, but very dangerous dancing!  I think our saving grace was Carol's amazing ability to keep us all vaguely in line, with out her there I am sure we would have managed to sink the boat or get put in jail!  I have debated whether to post any photos of the various partying antics and have decided that it's probably best not to for everyones sake! So instead below you will find a photo of the main culprit, and place of blame for anything irresponsible that happend over the weekend, Starking at the top of the mast.  Incidentally he also managed to coin the phrase Starking which has now been accepted into the Urban Dictionary, so if you are interested in its meaning go to www.urbandictionary.com. 

After the race they opened up the track and we thought it would be rude not to take the scooters for a spin round it.  We also, surprisingly, managed to stay relatively sober on the Monday night which enabled us to go for a sail on Tuesday.  It may seem strange to some, but that was actually the first time since the start of the trip that we just went out for a sail.  We obviously do a lot of sailing, but it is all in aid of getting somewhere, it was very refreshing just to go out for the purpose of sailing!  On the way back we anchored off the beach outside the marina and went for a much needed swim, the whole weekend the temperature didn't drop below 32C.  Crazy Jack, who was yet to make a proper appearance, was suddenly awoken and repeatedly hurled himself from the bow in any nature of spin he could muster!  

 Jack in the pits.

Matt on turn 8.

Crazy Jack inverted.

It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend anyone with a boat near Valencia to get it booked for next year, we found that the price of the marina for 7 days over the F1 weekend to be cheaper than we are paying in most of the other marinas further up the coast!  We are now further up towards Barcelona, where we are planning on wintering the boat.  So far we have stopped at Pobla, Burriana and Castellon, but I'll blog about those in another post!