Eating well in Galicia

This region of Spain has a very good reputation for fresh food, particularly seafood. The Ria we're in is the main centre of mussel farming - it's full of moored wooden grids called bateas from which hang ropes which are seeded with baby mussels. Once the rope is in full production, the large and impressively maintained fishing boats come alongside with a crane to lift each rope and its precious cargo, to be sorted on deck through a large rotating stainless steel sieve.

Whenever we've been ashore we've found local grocer, bakers and butchers so a typical lunch is a fresh salad with chorizo or serrano ham:

We've mostly eaten aboard but last night went out in search of seafood in Vilanova. We arrived at the cafe / restaurant at 9.00pm and it was full of locals, mostly families, drinking coffee or wine but nobody was eating. Food only started to arrive about 9.45 so we had a selection of rationes (larger versions of the tapas snack) including calamares (squid), pulpa (octopus cooked in garlic with prawns and brandy), coquetas (mashed potato and prawns deep fried) some chips and a very nice bottle of local Albarino white wine. Absolutely delicious and good value at 28 euros, but eating this late takes a while to get used to.

Today we again had no wind so decided to stay here and get on with some boat jobs. The main was to make some sun awnings to go over the cabin so our trusty Sailright sewing machine was hoisted from its locker (could do with a hoist actually, it's very heavy!). We used some sides of a long-defunct gazebo from home that hadn't been used so, apart from the reinforcing webbing that we added, the result cost us nothing but our effort. Photos to follow.

We're hoping there may be some wind tomorrow; if so we'll move down to the next Ria which looks lovely