To Mainland Spain
18 August 2015 | Valencia Spain
Myra Rowling
The morning after the finger incident, we set sail for the mainland at Denia. The sail was champagne sailing, or Bollinger sailing as Margot calls it. Just blue sky, blue sea and Trilogy doing 9 knots steady. We arrived at Denia which is a pretty little town under a large tabletop mountain and with a castle on the hill closest to the marina.
After suffering at the hands of two marina staff, one who didn't speak English and one who was a Latino incompetent lazy sexist sod, we felt safely berthed after an hour and a half. The problem was there was a tangled mess of mooring lines, some too short, some attached to nothing and the terrible two didn't seem to care. Our men folk sorted it out eventually and we had a much needed boat-made sangria. The town was well worth the incompetent marina staff however.
We wandered amongst all the attractive Spanish families on holiday ( what a relief after Sant Antoni!) along the waterfront to Les Barques restaurant, again recommended by TripAdvisor. It was in an atmospheric little square surrounded by pastel painted buildings. We tried tapas again - octopus, cuttlefish, white bait or equivalent, sardines, huevos rotos or broken egg, and the Denia speciality, tomacat. Despite our initial concern, the last was the best - eggplant, tomatoes, garlic, tuna and delicious oil. We then wandered on to the main street where, to our surprise and delight, the annual festival celebrating the Christian victory over the Musselmen was in full swing. It is also the festival of Sant Roc, the patron saint of the town (and the curer and survivor of the plague.)
Men dressed as Turks, with voluminous trousers, velvet vests with Arabic writing on the back, full sleeved shirts and fezzes were obviously going to be the vanquished. Row after row of men (and one of women) dressed in short Roman-like tunics and belts with sandals or calf length boots, led by children carrying a banner and a man with either a blunder bus or twirling staff, came marching along, arms folded and shoulder to shoulder. No wonder they won! Each group had a band behind, which always featured double kettle drums on wheels. One group were called Hospitallers and most wore crosses on their tunics. Another group were Knights in armour and spectacular capes. They finally all gathered on a stage, speeches were made which Google tells us were the Moors and Crusader ambassadors negotiating, and failing and then going into battle. This was probably signified by the blunder busses being fired, which not only startled us but deafened us as well.
We caught a free solar-powered, very slow ferry back to our boat, settled into bed, only to be galvanised out by loud explosions. We were extremely close to, if not on top of, the midnight fireworks display which was spectacular. A great experience and a great festive night.
Next day on to Valencia. It started as Bollinger sailing too, but then got up to around 20 knots so a bit of reefing down and changing of for'sails were required. After a spirited 40 mile sail we made it to Marina Real Juan Carlos 1, a very nice marina that was purpose built for America Cup races.
Myra Rowling
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