Spanish hot chocolate, lots of rowing, and actually writing an essay

Whilst the UK spent the first two weeks of 2014 suffering flooding, gale force winds and hailstones, the CUWBC squad was lucky enough to be in Banyoles with beautiful sunrises, sunsets, clear water, hardly any wind (most of the time), moderate temperatures, and far too much hot chocolate.

View from my balcony

I think I was vaguely aware about Mediterranean style hot chocolate before, but I now have a heightened awareness of its superiority. It's not some milky, vaguely chocolatey tasting drink of the kind that we have in the UK. No, this is proper hot chocolate, insofar that someone has literally melted a chocolate bar with a tiny bit of milk and produced, essentially, a mug of molten chocolate. Beautiful. And dangerous.

I didn't actually take any photos of the hot chocolate because I was too busy eating/drinking it. Instead, here's a photo of some healthier frozen yogurt. 

Combined with the beautiful hot chocolates, there was also the problem of pretty much all Spanish supermarket food being chocolate-related in some way or the other. Chocolate belvita, chocolate cereal, chocolate rice cakes, chocolate chocolate, chocolate breadsticks, chocolate yogurts.... those twelve days definitely do not rank highly in my 'most lightweight moments'.

Girona, where we spent an indulgent afternoon with pancakes, churros, hot chocolate, frozen yogurt and one reasonably healthy apple.... 

In between all the food, there was quite a bit of rowing going on, but apparently I talk about rowing a lot anyway, so I won't go into it too much. The scenery, on the other hand, was something extraordinary. Snow-capped mountains rising up in the distance, the morning mist over the hills... I think it was probably the first time I've rowed in water that wasn't grey.

Also, we found out that Catalan for rowing is 'rem'. Hence the reason the Banyoles unisuits say 'rem rem rem rem rem rem rem'. An entertaining, yet probably useless piece of knowledge.

In other, more important news, I finally got around to starting an essay that I've been putting off for six months. This has taught me a few valuable lessons about procrastination, from which I may or may not learn:

• Don't procrastinate
• Seriously, stop
• Just start the work when it's set
• And stop procrastinating
• It's not worth it
• On the other hand, there's nothing like an imminent deadline to improve one's work ethic.
• But really don't procrastinate. 

My mum bought me this t-shirt for my birthday. I get the impression that she understands.