Katie Butcher

For Christmas dinner, mum and dad took Nigel and I to ‘Restaurante Brabo’ Belgian Restaurant in Calpe. It is quite a small restaurant and was full when we arrived just after 7pm. Nearly everybody who was there seemed to be just finishing off and by 7.30 the restaurant was clear except for us and an elderly couple sat at the other side of the restaurant. We had an 8 course set meal.

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Apéritif with Starter
This was a large glass of fruity alcoholic drink (cointreau and wine?) accompanied by bread rolls and a plate with mini cheesy/fishy tarts, pâté, and a glass of melon balls in coconut liqueur.
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Salad
Mixed peppery salad leaves with slices of smoked duck and smoked salmon, served with orange and blueberry dressings.
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Soup
Seafood soup
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Pasta
Baked giant prawns with tagliatelle in a creamy champagne butter
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Sorbet
A refreshing raspberry and blackcurrent sorbet
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Meat
Young wild boar steak served with red wine gravy, with a poached pear and cranberry sauce, boiled potato, green beans wrapped in bacon, and potato croquettes.
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Sweet
A large plate of mixed sweets including ice cream, coffee cake, chocolate mousse in advocaat, apple strudel.
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Coffee with chocolates

The food was all beautifully presented and delicious, although I was quite full by course 6. We were served a sauvignon blanc with courses 2-5 and a rioja with 6 onwards.

We all agreed that it’s unfortunate that the restaurant was let down a bit by the service. The waitresses were dressed very casually and weren’t terribly professional or even that friendly (so perhaps it’s not great working on Christmas day, but you make an effort!). If they had just worn plain black pants and a plain blouse or t-shirt it would have been a large improvement. The quality and presentation of the food was much higher than the presentation of the actual establishment which was a real shame.

It’s taken me more than 2 months to read this book. I was not enjoying it and couldn’t get into it which was why I was taking so long to read it. I restarted it at one point to make sure I hadn’t missed something as it was slow and didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I also contemplated giving up, but I perservered and fortunately it did finally pick up pace around page 130 (about a third of the way through) and I started enjoying it after that.

The story is set in the late 1950’s and follows a university student who goes to Tuscany to research a memorial garden that has some intriging elements that could potentially make a good thesis. It turns out to have even more of a mystery surrounding it than he ever imagined.

I think the name of the book and the fact that on the cover it is described as a thriller is a little misleading. I wouldn’t really say it was ‘thrilling’ enough to be a thriller. It was a mystery, and had some good twists, and I think the ending was clever, but it wasn’t really a ‘page turner’. It was a good story and I thought it was well written (definitely better written than ‘The House at Riverton’). It’s a shame that it was so slow at the beginning. I don’t think I will be going out of my way to recommend this book to anybody but I wouldn’t shy away from reading more by Mark Mills.

Recently I’ve been playing around with software that will help plan routes for biking. I had come across some good websites with MTB routes on them, but been frustrated that frequently routes were only available in formats that are used with proprietary GPS software and devices (like Memory Map and Tracklogs).

I came across a free piece of software called GPS Utility which converts GPS data from one format to another (e.g. it will convert a Tracklogs file to open format .gpx file). The great thing about a .gpx file is that you can open them in Google Earth.

There is a fantastic website called GPS Visualizer that enables you to create profiles out of GPS data, so if I plan a route I can see how hilly it will be.

First you need to convert a .gpx file to plain text using the converter on the site. Then you can use the elevation look-up utility which will look up the elevation at given coordinates. It will then plot a graph of the elevation along your route – very handy. You can even create overlays for Google Earth, where you route will show in different colours depending on the elevation. That makes it very easy to see the hilly bits.

Here is an example of a profile I made for a route from Pateley Bridge which goes around Gouthwaite Reservoir.