I finally made it to the island of Siargao last Wednesday.  It is pretty underdeveloped and the locals haven’t yet been corrupted by money and are very friendly and seem very happy. The surf here is great and there are lots of breaks, as the Island is surrounded by reef.  I get a boat to the breaks and the boatman waits for me until I have finished surfing … it’s great.

The only downside is that the Internet is soooo sloooow here.  It is sometimes impossible to download a single web page.  I have work emails coming in and am finding it difficult to respond.  This is also why I haven’t made any posts to the blog until now … it is working faster right now, so I am taking the opportunity to do as much as possible.

One of about 50 little islands I flew over on the hour and a half flight from Manilla. They vary in size and I am sure that tourism will spread to them at some time.

I’m glad that firearms had to deposited by passengers before their flights

A man giving each passenger a parasol for the short walk to the terminal when we arrived in Surigao. I took a ferry from here to Siargao Island.

Jo at a little market by the side of the road buying lunch … Yes Jo, it is a tomato.

For the purposes of completeness, although I am now in Asia, here are some photos of Italy –

Beautiful vineyards of Chianti

Florence

Hooray … I arrived in Manilla 21 hours after leaving Brighton.  I felt crap when i arrived in Dubai (which is halfway) for a 3.5 hour plane swap, but luckily I had a few hours sleep on the next leg.  Touched down in Manilla at 11pm and it was 29 degrees.

Drove 2 km to a hotel I had booked and it took about 35 minutes, but it was great …. I love SE Asia ….. there was people everywhere, cramped into jeepnees and other public transport, all cutting each other up and going nowhere.  Along the site of the road were people walking sitting, working, cooking and eating and it was like watching a film.

I got to the hotel at about 1am absolutely knackered and asked for a 7am knock to get back to the airport in order to fly to Siargao and go surfing.

I spent 2 days driving through France to Italy and stayed in a very wary town.  I have never really understood what people mean when they talk about bad energy, but this place had ‘bad energy’.   I had a bad nights sleep listening to things getting blown up and down the street and woke up ill.  I just wanted to get out of France to Italy ASAP.

I spent a day on the coast in a beautiful town before my friend Jo arrived.  I picked her up from the airport and we’ve spent the last 10 days in the most beautiful towns, cities and countryside imaginable.  I’ll post some photos as soon as I get a chance.

They call it the region of Catalonia, but it is always called the Basque country, which stretches from Biarritz in France, into Spain, taking in San Sebastian and Bilbao and a lot os coastline in between.  They speak a completely different language to French and Spanish and they are very patriotic.  See the photos below:

This was in the town of Zarrutz

Here are some more photos of Asturias, it’s a great place as you can see below.

Luarca, a great working fishing port that looks like Cornwall of Scotland

Luarka

Clean waves

Apple store … again :)

Waves in Gijon

Great farm building with the harvest hanging up to dry.

Llanes .. another fishing village perched on a hillside.

This could definitely be Scotland.

and the mountains overlook the beaches.

I Spend a lot of time on Gijon .. it has everything you need and is easy to get around and has several surf breaks within walking distance .. Excellent!

City Centre

Lovely camping spot .. nice and quiet, just as I like it.

Amazing statue/sculpture on the seafront, looking out to sea. It is called “The mother of Emigrants”. Beautiful and haunting.

A statue/sculpture dedicated to their sacred Cidra.

Cool steps

And everyone goes out walking in the evening.

Gijon (pronounced hehon)

Oviedo is the capital of Asturias, but the city I always come to is Gijon.  Gijon is built on a peninsular on the coast with the sea on 3 sides.  It has 3 beaches, with one long curving bay in the middle of the city.  There are several surf breaks.

Gijon has a university and although modern, it has a lot of culture i.e. book stores, museums, art galleries etc. There are also a lot more bars and restaurants in the city than anywhere else I have ever been, by a multiple of at least 3.  Many are Sideria’s and all of the seem to be trading well.  There doesn’t seem to be any economic downturn at all in Asturias.  The city has a lot os cycle lanes and they run alongside the caminas, which are specially made paths for people to walk and run along.  They have them in all of the Spanish towns and they are very busy.  In Gijon, every morning, the locals power walk along, generally in pairs, whilst chatting loudly.  In the evenings at about 6pm, it seems that everyone in Gijon comes out, dressed up and walk along the promenade and caimans, before going to a bar or restaurant.

Asturias – What Makes It My Favourite Place?

I love Northern Spain in general, but there is something special about Asturias. As soon as you drive into Asturias from Cantabria, there is a change in me.  The architecture and people also change. … Ah, I said that already … but it is true!

There is surf all along the coast and the breaks are empty, which is very unusual for Europe.

There is a proper mountain range called the Picos de Europa.  It’s like a very mini Alps.  It has great trekking and mountain biking and a couple of ski resorts.  Also, the mountains overlook the beaches in many places.  They are literally side by side.

The whole coast is very green as there is a lot of rain in winter, but after it’s rained, the sun tends to come back out.  The countryside is beautiful and along the coast there are numbers small fishing villages perched on the hillsides going down to a quay side, just like in Cornwall or Scotland.  Then amongst the beautiful scenery, you suddenly come across a town that is more industrial than anything I’ve seen in the UK.  There are coal mines as well as steel, aluminium and zinc plants.  These pockets of industry contain big factories with tall chimneys spewing out smoke or flames.  It is a real contrast.

It’s great that there are no British tourists and very few non-Spanish tourists You need to speak Spanish to get by as the locals don’t speak English.

Strong culture.

The cider – Sidra.  Big misshapen green bottles with corks in them. Cider is everywhere, they cook with it as well as drink it.  There is a whole ritual about how is it poured, as you can’t pour your own drink.  It needs to be poured from above the head and the person pouring can’t look at the glass, which he holds at thigh height.  You are given a straight pint glass but only about 1 inch of sidra is poured into the glass at any one time. You should drink it in one go, or take a swig and toss the remainder into one of the troughs along the bar.   Once you have drunk your inch, you need to wait for the waiter to return and pour some more.

The waiter will come back to you and pour another inch.  You must take the glass from the pourer of the Sidra.  He/she will hold the glass until you take it from their hand whilst looking in their eyes.  If you are in conversation, there will continue to hold the glass out to you, until you take it from them.  They won’t put it onto the bar or table in front of you.

Typical cider bottle

Waiter poring the cidra

Cidra pouring

Crates of the stuff .. everywhere.

When you pass through the countryside, there are orchards and very striking apple stores, in the gardens of most rural houses.

One of the apple stores

And another

They’re everywhere

.. I don’t know what it is .. i just love them. they’re aongside all of the houses.

Believe it of not, the bag pipes are played here.  There is a specific Asturian bag pipe.

Outside the ground

I drove into Asturias from Cantabria and immediately I felt at home. Different customs, different people, different architecture …. I’ll post more about this later.  It is an amazing place.

I came to Gijon, a city about the size of Brighton.  it’s got a university and culture and is built on a peninsular, so water on 3 sides.  There’s 3 surf breaks right in the centre of the city.

I found out that the cities football team, Sporting Gijon were playing at home last Sunday and bought a ticket. They got relegated from La Liga last year, so play in the 2nd tier, similar to Brighton.  It was a great experience. Although the ground is old, it is really set up in a way that UK clubs should be.  There are good quality bars and restaurants under the stands and they are open every day of the week.  There is also a top class gym/fitness centre open to the public in the ground.  Rather than serving crap that you have to queue for and pay high prices for, in awful surroundings, they give proper food and drink for normal prices in good quality bars and restaurants.  The staff are well trained, so there is minimal queueing.  My accountant is finance director at the Albion and i need to send him over here to look and learn.

In the ground, the atmosphere was excellent, with a particular area of a stand I was in allocated to the ‘Ultras’ who sing all of the way through the game.  There’s a guy with a microphone facing away from the game and starting all of the chants.  There was a guy with a drum and another with a trumpet following his lead.  .. see below. superb! I’ve always wanted to go to a game like this, as seen it on TV  in South America but never been.

Gijon went one nil down against the run of play with 10 minutes to go.  They immediately went up the other end from the kick off and equalised.  Then in the very last minute of stoppage time, they got a winner .. 2-1 .. everyone went wild … superb!!!!

Good quality bars and restaurants.

Old schools ground

Proper set up with guy and a microphone and speakers in front of the home supporters. His only job is to get the home crown and atmosphere going .. just like south america … we should definitely have this in England.

About a week ago I got 2 days at an amazing reef bread in the middle of nowhere.  At the end of a 3km lane, on from a little village is a forest on the edge of the sea.  There is a really good reef break with an ‘A frame’ and also a great right hander about 200m metres from it.  There were about 5 other vans camping there with Germans and French being the majority, apart from the locals …. still only 1 group of English surfers in Spain .. great!