A Walk to the Nursery

Firstly I would like to correct something which I stated in my last post. I stated that on Sat7th/Sun8th November for the first time ever Spain produced more than 50% of its electricity from renewables for the first time. In fact 53% of it's total energy was produced from wind power alone! Rather impressive I must admit, although one has to also point out that this was in the hours between 12.30am and 5.30 am when there was very low energy demand and it was very windy all over the country (I can vouch for that the boat was fairly banging about!) it was also warm and it was night time so the majority of the country was sleeping. The total wind energy production percentage for a year in Spain is usually between 8-11%. So it is a great milestone to have reached but a very variable one for a country that is entirely covered in turbines. Also I have learned not to quote out of magazines without doing a little research first!

Enough of the boring stuff! Yesterday Ali and I decided to walk to Alisha and Kaylee's nursery to pick them up instead of taking the underground. Here are some pictures of what we saw in and around the nursery.


Firstly a picture of the girls on the way to nursery in the morning all wrapped up because it a bit nippy at 8am!


Here is a picture of the Forum Building it is in Parc Del Forum which we have to cross to get anywhere.



This is Ali standing at the start of the Avenuida Diagonal which starts at the Forum Parc and goes diagonally the whole way across the city away from the sea (the clue is in the name!) We walked up here to Poblenou which is where the nursery is and only really a 15 - twenty minute walk but we take the underground with the girls as we have already walked for about 15 mins to get through the Forum Parc.



The first interesting thing we came across was the Parc del Poblenou which is actually four parks which have the inconvenience of being cut open by roads but it is the city so I suppose you cant argue when getting space to do something that isn't thirty stories high! The park is a 'homage to the shade' It has many weird and wonderful features like the cactus holders above! But is also full of willow tress and archways covered with vines as below. In the summer when they are in full growth they must certainly be a welcome respite form the hot Spanish sun.

This is one of the gates - no plain iron railings around here!

And these are the park 'benches' they even swivel so you can look which ever way you want!


This is the Skytower just a block or so up the Avenue from the park there is a restaurant at the top. I never understand how these buildings with the overhangs stand up but Ali assures me that it is perfectly safe....


At the half way point of the Avenuida Diagonal (as far as we went for today) there is this building the Agbar Tower. It is inspired by the eruption of a geyser and is far more colorful than my photo suggests as it was taken into the sun because we had to head back towards the nursery.

We discovered the Glories shopping centre here which has a big Carrefour Supermarket and is just next to the tram line so we decided to take the lasses to the park after nursery then get tea and the tram home to the marina.



On our way to the nursery we saw a few more interesting sites too. The one above Ali took the photo I had told him to get a snap of the graffiti on the wall but being himself Ali included the building site too!



This is a university Campus which is built around an old factory chimney. Poblenou is the old industrial heart of Barcelona and they have preserved quite a few of the original chimneys if not the factories too.


We have noticed since we have been in Spain/Barcelona that all modern buildings absolutely must incorporate a 'twist' in the architecture whether it be just colour or gravity defying overhangs or the usual squintness of everything. Here is another example, this building looks like it has a giant yellow net draped over it why I do not know but it does stand out which I presume is what they were looking for!


Alistair thought these bins were very good and maybe the answer to Lerwick's wheelie bin dispute, every street nearly has recycling bins at the end and they are emptied every night.
They are very heavy and would presumably be less of a hazard during a winter's gale.


This is one of the many small pieces of art that are on the Rambla de Poblenou (a rambla is a street with a central paved walkway, usually with benches and trees.) The rambla is the main focal point of the area with lots of benches up and down the old people always talk to the girls and it seems like a really nice place - until you notice all the crazies lurking amongst them, there is an old alky who is very often to be heard roaring at people up and down the rambla clutching his bottle of meths like beverage, but he seems harmless enough. He is one of a few I have noticed when hanging around waiting for the girls to be finished.

This is the nursery all the mums and dads wait out in the street to pick up the kids each day.


Back at the Parc Del Poblenou

An old factory chimney in the Parc

Peerie bairns and big bairns


More lovely autumn colours


Then we went up to the supermarket deftly keeping the girls out of sight of the nearby Disney store (we had looked in earlier and Ali nearly had a heart attack at the frivolity and prices!)


The girls loved this huge sausage but didn't love the whole newborn piglets vacuum packed in the fridges behind the sausage, that was a new one on us too - eek! they looked so peerie and cute but so dead and lifeless.

We got the tram home and found out it actually comes a lot closer than the tube which is good when you have tired girls!

Barcelona - Where we are

Well we have been in Barcelona for about 3 ½ weeks now and have fairly settled in. I was wondering what to do with the blog because I don’t think anyone would want to read a boring daily diary of what we are doing as we are not horsing around sightseeing and some days all we do is put the girls to nursery, collect them buy the dinner and not much else, not exactly riveting stuff.

This first entry will be mainly pictures of the marina we are in and surrounding area. The marina is called Port Forvm marina, and is actually a super yacht marina (God knows what they were thinking letting us in!!) It has a surprisingly good winter rate and first class showers (always a good thing!) the internet is really fast and electricity and water are all included in the price. I would say the only draw back to this marina is that we have to walk for 15 mins at least to get to the food shops or the underground or tram. This is however very good as we certainly get our weekly exercise just from doing that walk two or more times a day. The cycle lanes around here are very good also and the girls can cycle along with us now without having to cross any roads. Once we get to the underground we can get almost anywhere in the city fairly quickly and we use it every day so the girls are getting very used to it. It took a long time to persuade Alisha to go through the barriers without screaming as the first time she tried she took so long they closed on her!

Anyway here are the photos.

This is us at our winter berth. One boat has a Dutch couple on board, another has an English couple on board, one of the catamarans has a Swedish bloke on it there's an Irish party boat and the other three are usually empty. Everyone seems very friendly which is good as we will all be stuck together for at least three months. There is another inner basin to the marina but the bridge that towers over our boats is only 16.5m high so we certainly cant get through! Behind our boats is the 'Super yacht marina' It is now getting quite quiet because it is winter and the boats have all left for the Caribbean or the Middle East.

This boat was our nearest neighbour for the first two weeks she is owned by a Kuwaiti and cost £70,000,000 and she is much smaller than his dad's boat who has the other half of the berth next to her when they are here! 'Apparently' that one has a submarine, helicopter and mini coupe on board! There was a large two masted yacht in the marina which cost over a million pounds a metre to build! All of the big boats have a full time crew working on board all of the time whether the boat is going anywhere or not and whether the owners are there or not. The mind boggles at the sheer craziness of it all.

This is the first thing we pass next to the marina office on the way to town.
We aren't entirely sure about this one probably some kind of street art, At first Ali thought they were storing the sheds like that but each one is welded onto the next and you can walk through them and they all have different textures and patterns on the inside.

This is a huge solar panel which towers over the boat on the other side of the dock. When it was built in 2004 it was Europe's biggest solar installation. Incidentally on the windy weekend we were holed up in Denia at the beginning of November Spain produced over 50% of it's energy from renewable sources for the first time ever. Pretty amazing but the place really is plastered with windmills and of course when it is windy here it is usually also sunny so the solar panels would have all been working well too.

To get to the shops or the underground we have to walk through the Parc Del Forum which is a huge concrete park and the following pictures are all of the park.


Huge piece of rusty artwork


This is the skate park. The parc as a whole is usually populated with skaters and rollerbladers but the funny thing is that they are not usually in the actual purpose built skate park - typical.

This is the best bit of the parc it has a really great play park which the girls love. When you want to get somewhere quickly it can be a bit of a drawback! Luckily it is at the top of the hill from either direction, coming home or going out so it means that we don't have to carry Kaylee so much when her little legs get tired, funny that how they don't get so tired when running towards a play park!


Really good climbing frame



This is something which is going to open soon it is basically lots of rope ladders, swings, zip lines etc at different levels. We can't wait to try it out and will post photos once we have done so.

The Parc del Forum has something for all of us, This is a large building being constructed in front of the tram stop and Ali loves to stop every day and watch them working, luckily he cant speak any Spanish or I know he would be asking for a winter job!


We try to go for at least one big family cycle run per week we either cycle around the Parc del Forum or we go the other way to through the Parce de la Pau which is a grassy park that goes along the beach front to the North of the marina and is bordered inland by this...


A huge power station we cant see it from the boat or hear it but occasionally between the power station and the incinerator complex to the south it can get a little smelly when the wind is coming from a certain direction!


There is a small river that goes past the power station which the cooling waters run into and it is amazing how many people fish just at the end of the river maybe the fish are bigger there. There are also a few of the expected wild cats living in the rocks of the breakwater but they are far healthier looking than the cats we saw in other Spanish towns. Must be the water...

We are really enjoying being here so far and the next post will have a few pics of where we have been in Barcelona and one or two of Ali's birthday party this weekend, now that was a bit of a rammy!

Denia to Barcelona

Friday 5th November - Tuesday 10th Nov Still in Denia

Denia taken from the top of the castle our boat is in the marina on the right hand side

We ended up staying in Denia for another five days because the wind varied in strength between strong and extremely strong and always from the North. The forecasts for the whole area were pretty awful really and we were glad not to be in the Balearics as they were getting the worst of it. The wind had given us a bit of a shock as we hadn’t realised how bad the sea actually got. Each morning we would go for a walk out along the breakwater to see what it was like and say - not today!

Captain Jack?!

There was a lull in the weather forecast for the Saturday morning and we set off at 4am hoping to get to Valencia before the ‘real storm’ started. We were about ten minutes out of the harbour when the wind started gusting (not forecast) from the North West (not forecast) at about 25 knots (not forecast!!) so I decided we would turn back as if it was this bad already and we didn’t make it to Valencia before the high winds then we would be stuck out for hours again after enduring a whole day of bashing into the wind.

Typically by the time we got back to Denia the wind had died back down again and somebody was in a fairly bad mood, not helped by the fact that the vent in the fore cabin had been leaking soaking the bed after all the water splashing over the boat and the girls were up and alert too! I packed 'grumpy' off to bed and did school with the girls for a couple of hours.

Once Ali woke up we decided we should make the most of Denia since we would be stuck for a few days now. We went off to the Toy museum. Denia was obviously a big toy producing town in the early 20th century and there is a toy museum in an old workshop building. The girls loved it looking at all the old dolls and kitchen sets thankfully it was all behind glass display units or they would have been right in on top of it all.

Aargh Chucky!! Can you spot two little girls?

We went walked through the tunnel under the castle as Kaylee was dying to go through it.

The Tunnel

It takes you out to the North side of town where we went to the beach, by now the wind was picking up quite dramatically and was still coming from the North West so Ali said I was off the hook for making us turn back in the morning - phew. There is a big climbing frame on the beach so the girls had a good old play on that.

We spent a bit of time in the internet café on the pier which was German owned and came to realise that Denia is a German enclave, all of the other customers were Germans and most of the businesses on the pier were also German owned. It was in the café I realised that the German’s also do the European kissing on each cheek thing. I had been under the impression it was just the loved up French, Spanish and Italians that kissed everyone they met but in the café all the Gudentags were accompanied by a kiss from the lady owner (who incidentally looked like an extra from an eighties soft rock video!) They were all very nice and could put up with the girls running around which was the main thing.

Windy Day

The wind really did pick up on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday so much so that I stayed on the boat with the girls for most of this time getting them off would have been a bit dangerous as we had to jump about a meter to get to the pier. The boat was heeling over more than it does when we ar sailing ometimes and ALi used and extra rope from the berth next to us to try and keep us from banging against the boat on the other side. This all made Ali resolve to buy a gangplank. He went along to the chandlery and found the cheapest gangplank to be over 500 Euros so obviously buy turned to make! On Monday Ali walked to the edge of town to find a builders store and returned with two long planks of decking which he had sawn up for himself in the store then carried back about three miles, he was pretty knackered but at least now we could walk precariously across the boards to get to shore.

We discovered ‘Bay Radio’ the English radio station for the area which was ever so slightly amusing, on a par with Shetland's own SIBC at home. It has hourly news and celeb gossip plus loads of cheesy British music peppered with advert for ‘British Toy Shops’ and English speaking lawyers etc. they even have a Sunday morning love songs programme just like Radio 2. It was well worth listening to for comedy value alone.

Collecting pine cones to throw at wolves!

We spent the last few days watching the weather and going on sea walks and play park missions around Denia. It is a nice enough place but we were slightly afraid we would get stuck there, it wasn't somewhere we felt we could spend a few months! On Tuesday morning the wind had died down a bit and was forecast to go to the west so we fuelled up and set off.

Tuesday 10th November Denia - Oropresa

It was a little bouncy at first as the wind never really did go to the west and didn’t die down much either but it was nothing like the last few days so we headed North and thought we would just sail until we got tired at night and then stop at the nearest harbour as there are marinas every 20 to 30 miles at the most.

The wind calmed entirely at dusk and we stuck the engine on and motored on into the dark.

We decided to stop in a place called Oropresa because it was closest to the next headland to go around. It was dark but thankfully clear as we were approaching because there were loads of tankers anchored nearby and some moving so we had to keep a very good look out. I though some other lights we could see were the lights of houses on the headland but it turned out as we got closer to be loads of fishing boats. We were only about half a mile from the harbour entrance when we noticed a very fast boat with very little lights approaching us. That was very little lights until they turned their spotlight on us. It was the police! They started shouting at us and kept the spotlight shining right into our eyes which as you can imagine is a bit disconcerting - probably the intended effect. We shouted over ‘Ingles, Ingles’ and they asked where we came from only then did we realise the problem that they had approached from the side that our Shetland flag flies from and we shone a torch onto our British flag instead and they said OK and zoomed off as fast as they came!

We radioed into the harbour and had a garbled conversation without understanding a word each other said and decided just to go in and have a look. We skulked around the harbour until the marinero turned up to help us tie up. We filled in our forms and went to bed as it was after midnight.

Wed 11th Nov Oropresa to Hospitalet de l’Enfants

(Don’t worry we didn’t end up in the children’s’ hospital just a place with a strangely similar name!)

Again we had to wait for the Capitano to come on duty at 9am before we could set off. Ali got his boards out again for a gangplank as it was another big gap to jump. Whilst I was having a wash the girls started jumping around screaming that daddy’s wood had fallen into the water and I should come and rescue it straight away. As fast as I could I got up on deck to find one plank floating past the bow almost on it’s way out to sea and the other floating under the pier. The girls and I rescued both by hanging off the safety rails and pushing the planks along with their nets. They were very proud that they had rescued ‘daddy’s wood.’

It turned out to be a flat calm day even though the forecast had been for light westerly winds (any wind we did get was coming from the North East - yep the direction we were heading) Ali finally succumbed to the flu and spent the whole day in bed whilst we slowly plodded along the coastline.
The girls 'helping' me clean the cockpitThere wasn’t much to look out for at first just the usual fishing buoys.

The girls were a bit narky and spent the entire day fighting and crying so I was glad when they finally had a nap in the late afternoon. I thought yeah now I can sit and read my book in peace. This was not to be...... There were a lot of fishing boats further out than us which I thought nothing of at first as they were quite some distance away and all trawling towards the shore. Then the first one started to speed up and head for port - apparently the first boat back to the harbour gets the best price for their catch, this means that they all fish away for as long as they can either until they get a good catch or they see their competitors heading home and it is a balancing act of big catch versus first back! As usual we were entirely in the path of all twenty boats heading back to port. I was keeping a good eye on them then one would start to head straight for us so I would take the wheel go behind it and resume course, reassess the rest of the boats and get back to reading my book, I soon gave this up as it became obvious the sight of each boat heading for port was spurring the next into action. None of the boats made any attempt to go around us and it felt a little like they were playing chicken with us and seeing who would change course first. It was always me so they won! We were slewing around so much then going over big bow waves that Ali felt compelled to get up and see, "what the hell I was doing?"

The rest of the journey was uneventful except for the wind picking up finally but only an hour from port so we just motored on. The place we had decided on was called ‘Hospitalet d l’Enfants’ which is a very strange name for a town made even stranger by the fact there is a big Nuclear reactor close by. We realised we were down wind of the reactor but hoped one night wouldn’t be enough to fry us. It was just a repeat of the night before, getting tied up then bed except Ali found a cafe nearby so the girls ha burger and chips for supper.

Thurs 12th November Hospitalet d L’Enfant - BARCELONA!!

The nuclear power plant

We set off as soon as we got up in the morning and dodged out past all the fishing boats that had tied up around us for breakfast. We had a forecast for Westerly winds once again and once again it was wrong we got all the sails up as we left the harbour and the wind promptly died away ands we were going along at about 1 knot. It would have taken us 2 and a half days to get to Barcelona at that speed, we didn’t have enough food and just wanted to get to our winter berth so I eventually put the foot down and the engine went on. This picked the speed up to a much more respectable 6 knots and enabled Ali to go back to bed as he still wasn’t feeling very well.

It was a very uneventful motor along. We saw our first fish farm since leaving Scottish waters. And managed to put away the gennaker and tidy up a bit since we wouldn’t be out on the water for a while.This is the 'automatic swing' it goes back and forth as the boat rolls (much more effective in the big swells off Portugal!)

The marina we were heading to was Port Forum which is North East of the main harbour of Barcelona. We had to go past the airport which was very impressive as we travelled beneath the planes taking off every minute or so. We could see all the planes queuing up to land on the North side of the city sometimes we could see four or five at a time and it makes you realise what organisation must go into running a busy airport.

We hadn’t really thought of Barcelona as a busy harbour until we got close and started to see all the anchored ships with other big boats entering and leaving through them. It was a bit mesmerising and thankfully calm as it was dark. We had to wait until we saw a gap between big boats to cross the harbour entrance (we put the pedal to the floor so to speak!) We noticed a couple of boats hovering around between the big ships except for three green lights on top I remembered that they were the lights displayed by a mine sweeper which I never expected to see. They must have been using them just to signify a military boat as there is no way there were two minesweepers in the harbour at one time. We made it past all the big boats and only had to alter course for one more fast ferry on the way to the marina.Barcelona at night as we came in

We radioed in and the marinero said he would be waiting for us which was good as we were under the impression that there were two entrances to the marina and tried to go to the North since the south looked a bit dodgy in the dark until the marinero came out in his rib to take us in. Oops again - I wonder if we will ever get it right!? Not the best first impression to make at our new ‘home’ We got tied up, showered and went in search of food as we were starving and had nothing decent left onboard having used up Ali’s tin of corned beef at lunch time.

We discovered the only restaurant in the immediate vicinity was a little pricey but we were knackered and hungry so we had a posh meal and a bottle of wine to celebrate getting to our winter berth. We went through to the bar afterwards and talked to an English couple who came in on their motor boat at the same time as us. They are staying for the winter too and we had a good old chat as they have been living in Menorca for years.

We went off to bed slightly drunk and very happy to have got to Barcelona, Ali being especially happy as the Barcelona boat show was still on for another few days……..