You know what it’s like, you go out with a few mates for a beer, you then progress onto whisky and then after a few too many someone says “Are you up for the Talisker Challenge, it is in aid of charity”. Of course you say yes but next morning having cleared your head you look up Talisker Challenge and discover you have agreed to join in a Christmas extreme social distancing sport – rowing across the Atlantic starting in La Gomera and finishing 3,000 miles later in Antigua.
This seems to be the only reason Talisker would be connected with this fool hardy adventure, I don’t suppose the competitors take a bottle with them, the boats are so small a toothbrush would seem to be a luxury item.
For the past few days the competitors have been hosting their friends and families around the town. They are easy to spot as they wear the sponsors shirts all the time and try to look confident but I guess their minds are on the ocean as well as trying not to pick up covid just now as it would be a bugger to go down with it mid Atlantic after all the preparation. The friends and families are probably wondering if they will ever see their loved ones again and what a stupid thing to do. Today 21 boats set off, eight with one person, two with two, one trio and ten foursomes. They won’t come into contact with anyone else until February by which time Christmas will be over and we will have left the EU. As you can see in the picture Gill was the last person they saw before setting off!
One of the solo boats (from South Africa) had difficulty getting out of the bay. As you can see from the picture his boats design has a bit of a defect, he can't see where he is going! He nearly crashed into the rocks and then, perhaps in his embarrassment, rowed south instead of west, he might take a little while to cross the Atlantic at this rate.
It seems that the Canaries have been infecting too many people and are no longer in the Transport Secretary’s good books. This means that many thousands of Brits who have booked a Christmas holiday in the Canaries can’t come – more space for us whooppee – but it might mean we will have difficulty getting home as we presume EasyRyanTui Airlines will stop flying here. We will cross that hurdle next year, perhaps taking a scheduled flight via Spain. We should have gone to Botswana for Christmas instead as that is now on the “safe” list. In practice the infection problem seems to be in Tenerife who are clocking up several hundred cases a day, here on La Gomera there were no cases on Thursday but three yesterday, last weekend was a four day bank holiday so perhaps the virus has come in with weekenders from Tenerife.
Yesterday we drove round the island to reconnoitre places to stay next week. Some villages seem to have closed down either for the winter or because of the virus but Valle Gran Rey was quite lively so we have booked an apartment there from Monday until we move back to a hotel in San Sebastian for Christmas. The Valley is pictured, the town is at the end next to the sea.