If its Tangy and Brown You're in Cider Town

Cider, sweet, sickly and the favourite choice of skint drunks everywhere. The Basques however claim cider as an important part of their culture. Being cultured a a few of us decided to partake in some real culture by spending all Saturday drinking cider, imagine that on the South Bank Show, Melvyn Bragg would drink anyone of us under the table.

All over the Basque countryside there are places called, Sagardotegis or in Spanish the infinitely more pronouncable Sidreria. They tend to be on farms where the stuff is made, with an instrument with the greatest technical name ever, "a piece of wood with a nail in it".

To get out of Pamplona into the countryside a mini bus was hired which was very exciting, a mini bus really helps the feeling that you are off on a trip. We also got the share the bus with a guy who had been out all Friday and hadn't slept it was now 2 on Saturday and he was no where near finished. The countryside is beautiful and hopefully soon there will be some pictures. It's actually very British, but with mountains. When we headed into the mountains it changes to a more Alpine feel. There are lots of isolated white houses and high up there was still some snow. It looked the Sound of Music but without the Nazis.

The place itself is a small wooden building attacthed to a farm. The cider itself is kept in a huge barrel. You need to go up and turn on the tap but as amatuers we weren't expected it to come out at a force horizontially. You position yourself where you believe the cider will shoot out and have to catch it. Then you had to move the glass towards the barrel because apparently that makes a huge difference, only a cretin doesn't alter the distance. It's a process that gets more difficult after a few ciders.

You also have a meal which is virtually always steak. Our place was exactly the same, its rough being a Basque vegetarian. The meat is very rare its like biting into a cow but they smoke it so you don't have all the blood and it has the texture of being well done. It was fantastic and they keep bringing it and bringing it until you concede defeat (for thats what it is) or die from meat poisioning.

On the way back we stopped in a village the tenth of the size of New Ash Green but still had a bar that was rammed at six. Metal appears to be the Basques first choice of musical genre which explains the unacceptably high level of mullets. The night finsihed as all nights should with a running race around the block where I claimed a perfectly reasonable third place. As Any British sportsman will tell you, that will do boys, let's go home.

love love love x