The Celtic coast of Spain

A coastal hop to Gijón

A good weather window opened up to let us make our next move along the coast. This was going to be a big hop (for a coastal hop) at roughly 110nm and 20+ hours. The issue for us was that with the weather and sea conditions at the time there were very few harbours on this stretch of the coast that we could enter and, of those that we could enter, most were either very small fishing harbours without places for recreational boats or were too exposed to swell to make it tenable. So, a big hop it was to the capital of Asturias, Gijón.

A pleasant sail until we ran out of wind

Leaving Castro in the morning we had a fresh E wind to push along on a broad reach. As we rounded Cabo de Ajo the wind backed to the NE allowing us to keep on the same broad reach as our course got a bit more west in it. Over the course of the day the wind gradually picked up from 14kt to the mid 20kt giving us a nice fast sail along Asturias’ dramatic and mountainous coastline.

Late that night though it began to peter out until we had completely fallen into a hole and had to hoist the iron gennacker in order to keep moving. Just before 0700 we motored into Gijón’s harbour spying a free berth on the visitor’s pontoon, we snuck in and made ourselves at home.

Exploring Gijón

After a full night’s sailing we were a bit sleepy so a few naps and a bit of wandering around was really all we got up to. Wednesday, however, saw us all ready for some cultural activities. And what could be more culturally nourishing than a walk around the headland park to take in the view from what turned out not be an industrial leftover but rather a sculpture, a mosey through the remains of the very finely presented Roman bathhouse archaeological site, before taking in the beachside promenade on our way to the Museo del Pueblo de Asturias. Here we spent a few hours examining exhibits of the traditional farming lifestyle. Many of these were original structures, grain stores, houses, mills and cider-press buildings, that had been relocated into realistic rural arrangements.

The Museum of the Bagpipe

The jewel in the crown of the museum, however, was its fantastic Bagpipe Museum. Good grief, why aren’t there more of these around the world?

Bagpipes are a key component of Asturian traditional music (and yes you should get onto Spotify and listen to it, it is great stuff) and today are a touchstone of their very active and proud Celtic heritage.

We wiled away a couple of hours here, much to the delight of David and the surprise of Frederieke.

Sadly, despite it being a bagpipe museum, there was little actual bagpipe playing to be heard. This is probably why Frederieke managed to get a bit engrossed in the place.

As an aside, the Spanish word for bagpipes, gaita, is also a slang term for something being a pain or a drag. Strange coinincidence, huh?

Sidra de Asturias

Another key component of Asturian culture is sidra, or cider. Since sidra fulfills a similar role to beer in Asturias, sidra bars are easy to find and are crowded and noisy establishments. In this neck of the woods, sidra is brewed flat and consequently, to give it a bit of bubble to enhance the taste, it is poured from on high into the glass. By on high I mean as high as the pourer can reach.

Order a sidra and you are brought a bottle and a glass. The waiter will then bring to the table what looks like a pipe, about 50cm in diameter and mounted vertically on wheels. They will then hold your glass at just below waist level inside the pipe and raising their other arm as high as they can they pour the sidra into the glass.

Now, this would be completely reasonable if it weren’t for the fact that, somewhere along the way and at a time that is now no doubt lost in the mists of time, it became the trendy thing for the pourer to not look at where they were pouring. Indeed, they don’t look at the bottle or the glass but instead fix their gaze at some point in the distance and pour, apparently at random, with an expression of almost mild surprise; as if they don’t know how they ended up between the glass and bottle or how they are going to extricate themselves from the position.

Some of the sidra goes into the glass, some of it goes into the pipe and the drinker is ultimately given a few fingers of very fresh and fizzy sidra. The net result of this process is that a) you are reliant on the waiter to keep your glass ‘filled’, and, b) that one can happily put away a long-neck or two without getting too inebriated given that much of it ends up in the pipe.

JoJo

In Gijón we also had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with John and Jolande, a Dutch couple on a very nice little catamaran that was moored next to us. While most of the world went bonkers with boredom during the covid lockdowns, John quietly set about building a 10m catamaran, JoJo. And a very nice job he did of it too. Now they were off to southern Europe for a bit of sunshine.