In which Sid and Doris rest up for more cycling later at a Nielson’s beach club
Thanks to Frostie, manager at Baia Dei Mori, we were in on Friday and already at play on the Saturday, while most of the guests were having their last day out of The Manager Box (or however they think about their work).
A fellow guest described Neilson as having a “narrow demographic” so it is entirely possible you already know what it’s like, in which case skip this post.
For other readers, the system here is you get a ‘villa’ which is part of a bungalow in the grounds. From there you sally froth to meals at the open air restaurant with a great range of food from the buffets. One night the club put on typical Sardinian food, wine and dance. This is now the fourth incidence of folk dancing though the first bought in for us. It felt very genuine and was quite charming.
In the rare moments between meals there is a timetable for paddle boarding, kayaks, dinghies, windsurf boards, catamarans, road bikes, mountain bikes, yoga, morning runs, stretch and tennis. The kit here is very good. The hiring is brilliant, the coaching is excellent and so kind in the face of Sid’s physical dyslexia.
Yoga is on a platform in the pine forest carefully built around several trees. “Relax and look up at the sky”. Om. Zzzzz.
The beach is crammed with kit and more of the kit is kept off the beach due to Sardinia’s sensible planning rules that keep buildings back from the shore line. It is a long time since we sailed anything under 28′ long. We took the beach team’s advice to take Beginners’ Dinghy. Some of the instruction is in the shade of the forest, using a short masted boat sitting on the sand. The boats are Picos which are floating ironing boards with a single mainsail. We more or less remember how to do it. However, the Pico has an abrasive surface often complemented by a bit of sand from the beach. We sustained a range of small abrasions and contusions so have decided that’s it for very small craft. Back to yachts in future, where the worst injury you routinely sustain is a stubbed toe.
The surprise of the week was the tennis. Some of the coaches here have had country and even world rankings. Sid and Doris have not played for about forty years. The skills were barely there in the late 1970’s and what there was did not immediately resurface. We added a private lesson with Charlie. Thanks to kind and well structured coaching we might well pick this up at home. When we played at the end of the week we were already better than uncoached beginners. Hey…
At the beginning of the week we had thought to take out a lightweight Boardman road bike just to feel the difference. But we seem to have had enough cycling unless it is part of The Journey. The bike lads were kind enough to look over our touring machines. Doris’s bike had a little attention to the rear mech, at which the young mechanic had sucked his teeth. Sid’s Neddy was pronounced fit enough so we had some more air in the tyres and readied ourselves for the ride home.
There was more readying to be had from the Spa. We had two fierce leg massages. Pros have these every day. For Sid this hurt more than any of the cycling, but S says that G has them and it will be good for us. But it is not so good for smaller creatures who do not have a very high pain threshold. No, not good for them at all, no. Ooch, arggh, no …
For nature notes we have a first on the journey. In a pool by the front gate are terrapins. We are not sure what to bring them to eat but they don’t seem undernourished. (cue joke about what do terrapins eat.) (Terrapin food, stupid.)
We also took some very artistic pictures (I am sure you will agree) of the pine forest at sunset.