Ah, the sweet relief of dropping anchor after a 400-mile sailing ordeal from Cartagena to El Masnou. We staggered onto dry land like sunburnt zombies, grateful to be done with the sea’s relentless rocking. we weren’t exactly the picture of seafaring glamour. Salt crusted in our hair, moving with the jerky gait of people who’d forgotten how stairs worked, we collapsed onto the dock with the dramatic flair of shipwreck survivors.

The El Masnou marina stretched before us: a postcard-perfect lineup of day boats bobbing gently in the autumn sun. It was charming, but not exactly bustling with liveaboard neighbours. Great, we thought, this is going to be six months of talking to seagulls and our own reflections.  "Well," I muttered to Pookie, "looks like it’s just you, me, and the seagulls for the next six months.”

Spoiler alert: I was delightfully and spectacularly wrong. 

Enter Tim, the Human Energizer Bunny

The universe’s first clue that our "quiet winter" was a fantasy arrived on two wheels. Within 48 hours of docking, and almost before we could unpack our sea legs, my brother’s friend Tim came roaring down the marina on his scooter like a middle-aged action hero come social guardian angel. Tim is the kind of guy who makes you question whether you’re squeezing enough adventure out of life. After a near-death encounter with a bodybuilder’s truck (yes, really), he’d rebooted his existence with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store and a philosophy best summarized as "Why not?"

Case in point: He’d recently single-handedly restored a crumbling chateau in the hills above Alella, because apparently weekends are for amateurs. Soon he was dragging us to dinners with his circle of entrepreneurial friends - winemakers, very hi-tech (Think Google) innovators, and a man who was designing automatic fruit pickers as a side hustle. For the next six months, Tim became our unofficial Barcelona tour guide, popping in like a cheerful, sunburnt genie whenever we muttered "I wonder where we should…”.

Chateau finished and now up for sale, Tim filled his days with bike rides into the hills around El Masnou. Heath would have loved to join him but having traded his six pack in for a barrel and riding a mountain bike, it didn’t quite live up to the performance of Tim’s slender tones and speedy road bike.

Bubbles, Bars, and World-Class Cocktails

Meanwhile, Pookie, my far more talented half, had been dabbling with a gadget called the Flavour Blaster - a device that shoots scented bubbles (Because obviously a margarita isn’t complete until it looks like it’s auditioning for a sci-fi movie.)  Still a newbie, she was thrilled when the company connected us with Simone, a cocktail wizard who owned not one, but two of Barcelona’s hottest bars—including SIPS Bar, ranked 3rd best in the world.

Simone gave us a backstage tour of his liquid alchemy lab, where drinks arrived under glass cloches filled with perfumed smoke, glasses looked like golden hands and garnishes were applied with tweezers and surgical precision. I meanwhile, perfected my sagely nodding whilst basically understanding nothing beyond "more gin, please." 

Zombie Walks and Tapas with Strangers (Now Friends) 

You might remember from the last blog that we’d raced from Sitges to El Masnou to dodge incoming bad weather. Well, we weren’t about to miss the Sitges Film Festival - the mecca for horror and sci-fi fans - so we hopped on a train back to Sitges. The highlight? The Zombie Walk, where thousands of undead enthusiasts shamble through the streets, groaning like extras from The Walking Dead and hoping for cheap Tapas vouchers. (Pro tip: Nothing bonds strangers like pretending to eat each other’s brains.) 

Back in El Masnou, we were minding our business when a woman carrying her cute little dog like a furry security blanket started following us. Not in a creepy way - more in a "I think I recognize you but I’m too nervous to interrupt" way. However, after half a mile of awkward stalking, she finally pounced.

Jess: "Excuse me… are you… Pookie… from MasterChef?"

A simple “Yes” from Pookie and Jess let out a little scream of excitement causing her dog to question its owner's sanity. “I thought it was you!”. It turns out, Jess was a MasterChef fan, and even though she lived in Spain she watched every episode she could from not one but close to 3 countries!! Within minutes, she’d appointed herself our personal Barcelona food sherpa. A few days later, we were wandering through the streets and alleyways of Barcelona with Jess, her friends and our sailing buddies Glen & Sheila (More Cartashananighans). Jess, waving forks like a conductor as plates of pan con tomate and pulpo a la gallega crowded the table. Then announcing "You HAVE to try this place - and this one - oh, and we’re doing karaoke later!". Needless to say the night dissolved into a blur of flamenco guitar, spilled vermouth, and a "Bohemian Rhapsody" rendition for which we should’ve been arrested.

Celebrity Cameos and Gaudí’s Bone House

Just as we’d settled into the madness, my daughter Paris (yes, that Paris Adams - singer-songwriter extraordinaire) swung by for a few days demanding a proper Barcelona immersion. Challenge accepted.

By now, we were practically Barcelona experts, so we hit all the hotspots: Simone’s “SIPS” bar, the #1 ranked Paradiso, and the pièce de resistance (for me at least) - Casa Batlló.  If Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton had a lovechild raised by a cheerful skeleton, it would be Casa Batlló. Antoni Gaudí’s Barcelona masterpiece isn’t so much a building as a fever dream carved in stone.

The facade? A psychedelic wave of tiled scales and bone-like pillars, with balconies that look like the grinning jaws of sea monsters. The roof? A dragon’s arched back, glittering under the Spanish sun. Inside, every curve, stained-glass window, and mushroom-shaped fireplace whispers, "Reality is overrated." A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the crown jewel of Catalan modernism, this house doesn’t just defy architecture - it mocks it while sipping absinthe. Visiting feels like stepping into a fairy tale… if the fairy was on acid. We wandered around it with devices that showed you the concept behind the reality and gave you a Pixar type look into the mind of this brilliant man.  If you're ever in Barcelona, join the 1 million visitors and have a look around - fantastic.

Paris, as ever, is super busy and so her visit was again quite short. Also as it was now approaching Christmas we headed back to the UK. 

Medieval Banquets and Plotting Our Escape from the British Winter

As winter crept in, we returned to the UK for reunions - old friends, new friends, and Eddie from MasterChef, who married the wonderful Nami in a gorgeous ceremony. Then, because our family doesn’t do things by halves, we went to a full-blown medieval banquet for Christmas.

Picture a room full of adults in chainmail, feasting like it was 1399. My son Kyle, dressed as a Medieval plague doctor which meant no one was actually sure it was him, sat next to my daughter, who,  under the influence of too much mead was attempting to juggle clementines. I love my family. Absolute madness. Absolute perfection. 

But let’s be real - the UK in winter is basically Narnia without the talking lions.

So, as we shivered our way through December, swapped presents and tried to kid grandchildren into thinking an ill fitting red jacket really did mean that it was the real Santa, we found ourselves staring longingly at photos of Spanish sunsets. So, faced with another 3 months of drizzle, frosty car windscreens, and an icy drive that made everyone who walked on it look like a newborn Bambi, we naturally, we said "Screw it, let’s go to Thailand." 

So, our next stop: Sunkissed Thai beaches, more family get togethers, fancy dress and a trip to help harvest the wines in a Thai Vineyard. We also take a trip to Vienam where we try Vietnamese street food and visit the Giant Hands in the Ba Na Hills. We will (eventually) the return to Sawasdeekat for more sailing shenanigans where the sea, unlike the British weather, actually wants us around.

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Moral of the story – Don’t trust a quiet marina

TL;DR: We expected solitude. Instead, Spain gave us: 

- A scooter-riding life coach 

- Cocktails that belong in museums 

- A zombie horde 

- A dog-toting superfan 

- A daughter who made us look hip by association 

- A Christmas straight from Series 2 from Black Adder