A morning ride with a new bike through Gijon is a completely new experience – distances hardly matter any more. Again I go to the Carrefour (where I bought the bike) and help myself to a huge food-assortment – where before I always helped myself ‘locally’, now I could pick the finest from all over the world. And yes, I do!
Out at sea it’s beautiful again, the sea is calm (according to app notifications). So I refuel and continue, following a tip from a French sailor, to Viveiro. But as soon as I’m outside, really out at sea, I experience the sea differently again: the swell is powerful, but good-natured; ‘waves’ come along strongly, but appear ‘flat’ and stretched out far apart. Is this a foretaste of the approaching Atlantic Ocean? – Once again I have to learn to reinterpret the weather and wave forecasts! But the journey is short, the country, this interesting and unexpected northern Spain, attracts me.
Viveiro itself is not big, but diverse, consists of several politically merged districts, but in its core it is very old with (architectural) influence from the time of the Moors that can still be experienced today. This tradition is still carried on in new buildings today.
Here, too, the bicycle helps me to get a quick overview – with the advantage that I can then devote myself to the part that appeals to me most or where I can expect the greatest pleasure (here, too, there are bars and pubs in the old town, local delicacies tempt me at every turn).
Today, a major event seems to be keeping people on their feet: A car rally, which started with pomp the day before at the port of Gijón, meets me here again and attracts numerous onlookers on its way through Viveiro! People line the sides of the road and stick their heads out as the bolides pull noisily around the bends. It seems to me: noise comes before speed (otherwise you probably wouldn’t see the sponsors).
Am I in a buying frenzy? Yesterday it was a folding bike, today a bathrobe! – In northern Spain, I notice the big ‘China department stores’. General shops with all kinds of odds and ends for daily needs for little money. I had to go in there… Well, internet shopping at your fingertips, but my old bathrobe, which even still had some fabric on it, was crying out for a successor.
Apart from that, there’s not much to say today. I’m simply here. Enjoying the sun, the gastronomy in the old town’s inns, and leaf through the history book: the Romans were here, followed later, as I said, by the Moors, and during that time there were also spectacular Viking raids! They must have been such a pain in the bones of the inhabitants that everything that followed up to the present day doesn’t seem to be worth mentioning. – I find this extremely exciting: there are hungry northerners setting out repeatedly from Haithabu in their open, fast, combined rowing and sailing boats, crossing the North Sea, the English Channel and then the Bay of Biscay to land at this spot (and sail back), taking with them what they needed in the north: First and foremost, food for the journey, women, and – watch out wickedly – other goods of daily use.