Poolside at last!

Well, we have made it to Sanxenxo for another chess tournament. At the start of last week we were wondering if this year would be Sanxenxo’s wet tournament but the organisers appear to have sorted the weather once again.

We timed our travel here so that we were able to step off the train from Vigo in Pontevedra and cross the road from the train station to the bus station and hop straight onto a bus to Sanxenxo. The bus always seems to take an inordinately long time making its way through Pontevedra before crossing the river and heading up through Poio, past Combarro and eventually on to Sanxenxo, picking people up and dropping them off at various points en route. Maybe it’s the result of the sun having come out but masses of people got on the bus in Pontevedra. Some years we have been almost the only passengers. Maybe it was the time of day: we caught the 3.00 bus.

At one of the stops in the town centre a hoard of young people wanted to get on, clearly heading for an afternoon, possibly an evening, on the beach. The driver appeared to just keep on selling them tickets and letting them get on until suddenly all the seats were taken and there was a group,of about 6 or 8 standing in the aisle looking sheepish. Some kind of discussion must have been taking place because it was a good ten minutes before they all eventually got off the bus again and we set off. Surely the driver must have had an idea that his bus was getting pretty full. A quick walk down the bus counting empty seats would have been a good idea, not beyond the wit of a bus driver, surely! But it obviously did not happen.

I felt rather sorry for the young people because at that time of day there was nit going to be another bus for two hours. Mind you even if they got to the beaches at 6.00 the sun was still shining. It wasn’t all bad!


We arrived and checked into the hotel. Then I wandered out to buy few things: bottles of water, sun cream and a mouse mat. The final item had been forgotten by the person who uses the computer most - not me! I had some difficulty finding one in the Chinese bazaar across the road from our hotel. The place is vast and seems to sell everything but the kitchen sink. It was when I was in the shop and about to ask for assistance that I realised I had no idea what they call mouse mats in Spain. So I had to explain in roundabout terms what it was I was looking for. It turns out to be an “alfombra”, which is more of a carpet than a mat. Maybe Spanish mice (mouses?) are more demanding than English ones. I could have got a very fancy one with a raised area to rest your wrist on and avoid strain. However, I decided to go for the plain and simple one that only cost €1!

Having done my bits of shopping I headed down to the pool for my first swim of this summer. The water was a bit chilly. After all, it has not been hot enough over the last few weeks to warm things up. But once you get over the initial shock it’s fine.

This is a rather splendid pool!

And it was almost empty. I suspect that tomorrow, being Saturday, might be a different story.

While I was there a couple of family groups turned up, in each case a mummy, a daddy and a six-year-old girl. One of the daddies was a stickler for rules, insisting that his daughter showered before getting onto the pool and going off the look at the rules and regulations noticeboard. The other spent a fair amount of time pushing his little girl into the pool. This struck me as rather mean, even though her only reaction was to say he was crazy - !Este tío está loco! she told her mother.

I am not sure I really approve of pushing children into pools in that way, even though the child in question appeared to enjoy it and was a competent swimmer. It strikes me as a form of bullying as well as setting a really bad example. The child will learn that it’s okay to push people into the water and may well do so to someone who is not such a competent swimmer.

There I go, being very British!

Of course that may not be a problem here, where every child seems to learn to swim very early in life. Ah, the advantages of a climate that allows for lots of outdoor pools!

However, that climate does not prevent the two mothers from telling their daughters how cold it was once you got out of the water. That’s out of the water and into a still sunny and warm late afternoon / early evening.

 Crazy people!