The Guadiana Writers Club

Among the many British boats (okay, several Dutch as well) and British landlubbers a Belgian family blew in, blowing a fresh wind through the Guadiana community. Frédérique rendering Jacques Brel on Tuesday music night, the two children causing a lively chatter on the pontoon, and of course Valérie instigating the Guadiana writers club.

It started on a Sunday afternoon; several people had gone off for the Sunday walk, but some others – who had found it too rainy – responded to Valérie's call on the VHF net and got together to talk about writing a story about life on the Guadiana. The evolution of all this turned into not one but several stories in which every writer did a story about an animal in/on/at the river. What a wonderful different way it was to get this unique creation together with a group of people. Have a look at:

http://www.batoriveo.org/the-guadiana-writers/

One of the characters in the stories got a bit too familiar; see if you can spot Batatinha in this puzzle picture:

And so time flew. Besides the writers club, there were organized walks on Sundays and Wednesdays, I went to Spanish lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, music night on Tuesdays – amazing what a lot of musical talent there is in the yachting community – and none on Eos..., bar night on Fridays, market and coffee-get-together on Saturdays. One time there even was a quiz night! Not that we went to all the events, and we also didn't join the padel players (a racket game which looks like a mix of tennis and squash).

The weather wasn't really great with several nights of frost, quite a lot of windy days and never two dry days in a row. All the painting jobs were stored until later and between trying to dry the washing we tried to do some walking, hoping the umbrella was only along as a walking stick.

Our previous neighbours from Enkhuizen visited us with their camper van, I made another batch of marmelade, tried to do some regular Spanish homework and enjoyed myself reading all the Stephanie Plums on my new e-book.

The small village of Sanlúcar is situated in Andalucía, but on the radio we can only get three Portuguese stations and so we were very keen to see the flamenco concert which was organized one evening in the village. The poster announced it as a travelling tour of musicians along villages of less than 1,000 inhabitants and here in Sanlúcar they were received by quite a large crowd of spectators. And what a performance! Two guitarists, a cajon player (a cajon is a kind of box the player sits and drums on) and four singers. And what a shame I hadn't got my camera! Somehow my camera got unemployed these past weeks, must do better next time...