Castles and Motorbikes in Catalonia

St. Feliu de Guixols on a December Sunday Morning

After a few days of experiencing the culture and everything else in Ireland it is nice to be back home again. So if I haven’t got theatre and opera to enjoy here locally, we do have the sunny winter beach and the groups of people standing on each others shoulders to make human castles. This morning in the courtyard of the theatre building, the local motorcycle group called the Pirates had organised an event. They were collecting food which I presume was destined for some charity or other and that was where the castles group did their thing. There was also an exercise event where a number of stationary bicycles were being used in a group. So the motorcycle club had something better for every age. It was all very pleasant and friendly with all of the Pirates wearing their club colours. If you are in a group like this you have to show you are a part of it by wearing the uniform which consists of a leather waistcoat with the symbol emblazoned upon the back. So that is one patch and then there have to be other patches sewn on in other places to show the affiliation to which brand of motorcycle you ride. Just about all of the motorcyclists were also members of the Hells grannies and grandads. So now that I am a grandad perhaps I am old enough to join. I will have to go out and buy a motorbike, but I won’t buy one of those ugly Harley Davidson’s! I think I would probably get fed up of all the polishing that you have to do with of all of that chrome. My wife tells me that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just know that I have a good eye as far as motorbikes are concerned. In fact my eye might get a little bit misty when thinking back to the days of when I had my Suzuki GS 850. Now that is what I call a proper motorbike.

I recorded the video to introduce the shots that I recorded at the motorcycle event while by the beach. The beach looks quite different from what it is full of holidaymakers in the summertime. Today there was one person getting their feet wet with a little bit of paddling, but most people were sensible and keeping their shoes and socks on. Due to the recent storms that we have had there was quite a bit of flotsam and jetsam lying around the beach. It had us thinking that we should be collecting it and having it for putting on the fire to keep us warm during the winter.