Concentration Camping

Camping. It’s a rite of passage apparently. Something that, in American society (or so certain kinds of movies would have you believe) fathers do with their sons to help them develop into men – because Americans still need to be able to survive in the wilderness, catching fish with their teeth, wrestling bears and the like.

It’s different here in the UK of course. I never went camping with my dad. I never went camping at all until I reached the grand old age of 24, and if I had gone with my dad I would have found the whole experience to be quite different from that portrayed in the American films I’d grown up with – we don’t have any bears for a start, and as for camping in the wilderness… it can be more like camping on a council estate (which is the British equivalent of a wild, untamed wilderness), since in most cases campsites seem to be simply fields where people go for a cheap holiday and to drink lots of lager, eat lots of barbequed food and sit about being lairy, all side by side. Am I saying it’s a microcosm of British society? Well, I wasn’t, but now I think about it, I suppose I could be.

Don’t get me wrong though; camping is fun, I just haven’t really figured out what’s fun about it yet. Is it the sounds of people snoring from across the field? No… is it waking up at three in the morning with a screaming bladder and having to weigh up the benefits of emptying it against the inconvenience of getting dressed lying down and then traipsing to the toilet block in the cold and or dark and or wet? No, it’s not that either. Is it the way you can never be sure of the weather, but how much fun you have depends on it? Is it the kids that wake you up with their screaming and squealing at 7 in the morning? Or the way it takes ages to do anything? How it’s difficult to get clean, stay clean, feel clean?

rocking it with the Stoli

No, it’s none of those things, but in spite of those things, it’s good. It’s just something that people do in order to get a change of scenery, and that in itself does them a world of good. There’s always something new to see (and laugh at)… and it’s a great excuse for drinking with your friends.

A couple of weekends past, Mrs Cake and I decided to go camping on Anglesey, North Wales. I was dispatched to Aldi to pick up some bottled beers for the missus, and while I did so I started thinking about which of my spirits would be going with us. The winner: Stolichnaya. There’s no point in taking your single malts when you’ll be drinking from plastic beakers. I also picked up some Holsten Pils for me.

Ok, rules. First, find the flattest pitch possible, as far away as possible from other campers, always have your first beer while erecting the tent, reward yourself with a 2^nd beer as soon as the tent is up and carry an open can of beer around with you at all times. Those seem pretty universal.

an empty shoe makes a handy drinks holder

We stayed this time at a site near the town of Moelfre, overlooking an enormous beach. It was a peaceful site – in fact it would turn out to be too peaceful…

After a couple of beers and dinner, I rolled a joint and we took it and a couple of cups of vodka down to the beach for an early evening stroll, returning a little while later with a happy buzz and a propensity for hysterics.

As the light faded and we sat outside the tent that night, watching not very much in particular happen, chatting and drinking a little more, I wondered – what’s it all about? Not life no, but why were we there? We were just sitting in a field, not doing anything. And so was everyone else. We were having a nice time, but couldn’t we have been having a nice time at home?

We could be having a nice time at home, but while there would be more to entertain us, it wouldn’t be the same – we wouldn’t be having quite such a nice time. It’s the same reason you go on holiday.

As the evening wore on, we moved our chairs into the shelter of the tent and continued the fun.

“This is great, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s dead peaceful and relaxing, there’s no lairy people about, it’s just really nice.”

Right at that moment a man popped his head round and said, “just to let you know, it’s a very still night and your voices carry a long way – you can be heard up to a quarter of a mile away, so you know – just to let you know…”

So we were being reprimanded for being noisy. It seems that for once we were the lairy ones. We looked around us and realised everyone else on the entire campsite had gone to bed, and it was only 10.45! What the… it’s Friday night! Why’s everyone gone to bed?

Over the next hour or so Mrs Cake and I went through a series of emotions and thought processes:

-          Yeah, perhaps we were being a bit loud…

-          It is after 10.30 (though we didn’t realise it at the time), and the campsite rules did state ‘no noise after 10.30’…

-          We weren’t being that loud!

-          It’s not like we were shouting and swearing!

-          We might have been jokingly singing that Taylor Swift Trouble song… you know, with the screaming goats.

-          How dare they!

-          Oh christ, was everyone able to hear what we were saying?

-          You couldn’t have heard us a quarter of a mile away! The edge of the campsite isn’t that far!

-          Ah, it’s all right, he was kind of nice about it…

-          What a dick.

-           

Yeah, a bit neurotic as someone whose had a few drinks and a joint might be… We kept ourselves a little quieter on the Saturday night, though an incredibly Manc couple came over to tell us we weren’t being that loud after all, which was nice. They had been reprimanded for having a fire in a barbeque, which someone else had earlier told them was ok. They compared the way the site was run to a concentration camp with its military discipline and iron fist. You could see the family home at the top end, and the Manc guy came over later to point out that the owner was standing in his conservatory, surveying the site with a pair of binoculars, like Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List.

It wasn’t the first time we’d heard the comparison – at the end of a walk to a nearby pub on the Saturday we’d met an older couple who had asked where we were staying and described the campsite as militaristic.

shower beer

Ah well, we still had a nice time and a good laugh, and that’s what it’s all about, eh? Yeah. And I was able to get a shower-beer in – because the showers were warm and impeccably clean, so military discipline is good for something.

A couple of weeks later we camped with our friends Paul and Victoria in a field, behind a pub in Derbyshire. This was a very different affair – more space, no noise restrictions… and a pub, of course.

We’d been booze shopping beforehand again, and this time we’d decided to try Asda just for a change, and because they tend to have better deals on spirits than Tesco. I had £30 burning a hole in my pocket and an intention to buy some gold rum.

shopping

My idea had been to not buy two bottles, but I forgot this when I was having trouble making a decision and Mrs Cake said, “you could buy two bottles”, so I did and here’s what I ended up drinking that weekend in Derbyshire.

Mount Gay Eclipse

Class: Gold

Origin: Barbados

ABV: 40%

Price: £13

Presentation: I like the bottle shape –rectangular with rounded shoulders – and it has a distinctive label depicting a map of Barbados. It’s very recognisable.

Thoughts: I’ve read quite a few nice things about this (user reviews on retail sites, blog reviews and the like) but I can’t for the life of me understand why. To my palate this is rough, grainy, thin and not particularly complex. It may have a 2.5% advantage, but it also lacks the sweetness of Bacardi Gold, which I would normally tend to look down on. I would actually prefer to like the Mount Gay Eclipse to that, but I don’t. I’m not saying it’s a bad rum, but it’s only good for mixing or for your hip flask.

Liberty Ship

Class: dark

Origin: unspecified

ABV: 37.5%

Price: £10

Presentation: There’s nothing fancy here. It’s a very basic bottle with a very basic label depicting a compass.

Thoughts: I have to say I’m more impressed with this one than with the Mount Gay. Maybe it’s the lower expectations and I know that for £10 it can’t be up to much, but for my taste, there’s more going on here. Perhaps there should be, given that it is of the dark variety…

On the nose I’m getting balsamic vinegar, and in terms of palate it is dry and spicy. It’s still not special, and it won’t get much use beyond cocktails and the hip flask but it is marginally the better of my two camping purchases. In direct comparisons with dark rums of a similar price point though, Lambs (thought slightly more expensive in general) is preferable.

I did take both bottles camping, and opened both, though I’m not sure why. One would surely have sufficed. Perhaps I wanted to make sure there was some left for when we got home, and there would be more likelihood of this if I dipped into two bottles instead of relying on one. That must be it.

I know, it being the middle of winter that this maybe isn’t the right time to be posting on this topic, but such is arbitrary way in which I work. I mean, it doesn’t matter; once it’s posted it’s there forever, so it will be relevant when spring rolls around again.

And uh... yes, that’s it for now. Have a good week!

Golfageddon

In a change to this week’s planned post that I did myself the favour of not advertising in advance, I’m going to take you back now to some “research” that I did in July of this year. And by “research”, I mean drinking heavily and playing golf in Spain - an event that we chose to christen Golfadeggon. San Javier in Murcia, was the location, where there are more British per capita than there are in Manchester. That’s not necessarily a fact; it’s just intended to give you an impression of how many British people live and visit there. You don’t need a word of Spanish, but I found that you can mightily impress the locals with just a tiny bit – one taxi driver was bowled over when I handed him a two euro tip and said, “para ousted.”

“Oh-ho-ho! Speak Spanish!”

“Uh… un poco.”

With our flight at around 3pm, plans were made to meet at the airport at 12.15 – for ‘a few scoops’. When I got that message from Chris, I thought he meant he wanted to play golf before we went (if you knew him, you’d understand), so I said, “no, I’d best not; I don’t want to mess up my game before we even get there.”

A couple of days later I asked what time he wanted to meet at the airport, and he asked if I’d been drunk the other night, since he’d already told me – 12.15.

I wasn’t, as it happens, but now I understand what “a few scoops” is; it’s a few drinks. I suppose that should go in the Booze Terminology section…

So it came to pass that the four of us – myself, David, Chris and John – met in the upstairs bar in Terminal 1 of Manchester Airport, where they actually have some interesting beers on tap. I stuck with Amstel – little did I know it would be wall to wall Amstel in San Javier, where it was an astonishing 2.2 euros per pint up and down the strip.

One night I asked if they had any Spanish lager, whereupon the English waiter said, “Amstel”, to which I replied, “Amstel isn’t Spanish” and Chris chimed in with, “It’s Dutch.”

“Is it?” said the waiter. “I literally had no idea that was the case.”

Amstel it was, then.

We did pick up some Estrella in the supermarket, but it wasn’t the red kind you get in Barcelona. Instead the cans were green, and looked to have been brewed in Murcia. Later, at the airport, we found some red cans and discovered that the red variety is a noteworthy 5.4% ABV, while the green is a disappointing-but-still-not-to-be-sniffed-at 4.8%.

Unfortunately, the green one isn’t as tasty as the red.

I was a little disappointed at the beer choices because I like Spanish lager; Estrella, San Miguel, Cruzcampo, Alhambra, Mahou… they’re all good. I suppose that’s what you get for going to a largely British resort. Still, at least it wasn’t a choice between Carling and Fosters.

Since we were staying in an apartment on the golf complex – as far from both the course itself, and the actual town as it was possible to be… we made it top priority to get supplies in on the first night. I knew that soft drinks, beer, bacon, eggs and bread would all be essential, but was surprised to see everyone else’s baskets piled high with biscuits, sweets and chocolate. I didn’t even pick up a basket because all I wanted was beer, whisky and perhaps aguardiente de orujo.

DYC 10...

...and in the shower

John had located a Spanish single malt, DYC 10 year old, while I was still seeking out the booze aisle. “I want that. Where did you find it?”

I hotfooted it off to get one of my own. It’s packaged in a chunky Bruichladdich style bottle, weighs in at a standard 40% and cost under 15 euros.

That very evening I cracked it open, eased out the oversized cork, and sampled the malty goodness. I had actually been looking for the DYC 8 year old blend that scored a remarkable 90 in Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible [clean and cleverly constructed, he says, “Just so enjoyable!”]… but they didn’t have that. I figured a 10 year old single malt must surely be even more interesting, though I didn’t recall reading anything about it in the guide. Well, we all liked it anyway. Light-bodied and easy-drinking, we would get through three bottles of this between us over the course of the week.

David also bought a Spanish blended whisky called John Cor. That one was under 5 euros, and John confessed to preferring it over the DYC.

I uh… don’t remember too much about the John Cor. It certainly wasn’t bad – for 5 euros – but I don’t think I’d want to pay too much more for it. Spirits are so cheap in Spain as a matter of course that you don’t ever need to buy anything that cheap. It becomes more the sort of thing that you go, “well, if this is only 11 euro, I may as well also get this at 5 euro”, because it’s still cheaper than a bottle of Bells at home, and you’re getting two interesting new bottles.

Chris' Johnnie Walker Red (after a day)

Chris went for a Johnnie Walker Red, which he finished off in a little over two days – with coke, I might add – but he can’t drink beer like the rest of us and cider can be hard to find in Spain, so he had to have something to rely on.

As a result of all this freely flowing booze, my poor hipflask didn’t get a look-in. One swig on the first day was all it got, and ever after it was just sat on the kitchen counter. I had considered taking it on a round of golf with me, but the need to maximise my performance asserted itself from day one, and by the 5^th of the 6 rounds I had started playing the best golf of my life and didn’t want to jeopardise getting a great score.

I did get my best ever score for the course we played (which I had played 5 times previously, two years ago) – 118, but it still wasn’t a great score. And that wasn’t even on the days when I was playing my best golf! On the best days I was striking the ball beautifully, but hitting all the hazards and getting some rotten luck. Still, I now feel great about golf again – no doubt until my next round, when I’ll realise I’ve forgotten the technique that started working so well for me.

Our general routine for the next week revolved around golf, booze and food. If we had a morning round it would be up and out, a breakfast of Coca-Cola and chocolate, followed by lunch and a couple of pints at the clubhouse after the golf, before swimming, cans, possibly a snooze, and a shower at the apartment before heading to the main drag where the evening would be spent eating and drinking at the various bars and restaurants.

We took in some of the entertainment, which was limited to one-man tribute acts singing to recordings, and in one place for which we had free drinks vouchers, a Michael Jackson act that was a guy dancing to a live Michael Jackson video… Chris spent about an hour at the bar trying to get our free mojitos in there.

If we had an afternoon round, it would be a lie in, followed by lounging around, golf, a couple of pints at the clubhouse, a shower and straight out for dinner and more drinks. I tried to take a whisky into the shower with me every day, as any good alcothusiast should. 

We got a couple of games of poker in, using lightweight Monopoly money instead of chips, but I was having no luck. I think we were all pretty smashed by the time we got down to it anyway, so there was far less caution and far less tension that there usually is.

Time at the clubhouse and on the strip was invariably accompanied by an opening period of silence as everyone got onto the various free wi-fi and played Super Stickman Golf 2 and Wordfeud – intermittently glancing up to watch for passing freaks and ghouls. The pints go down easy, and the food, while unadventurous, is good. Being lads, we nary saw a vegetable the whole time we were there. It was pretty much meat, chips and bread all the way.

So 108 holes of golf, and seven days after arrival, the day of departure came. It was beer for breakfast for me, as we still had a few cans left. We followed that up with an afternoon sat in a bar on the strip, eating chicken wings and drinking beers until it was time to get to the airport… and Duty Free – one last thing to look forward to.

I had decided to get at least one purchase in before the airport because I figured there was a risk – with Murcia Airport being tiny – that there wouldn’t be much choice on offer. I’d been hoping to get one of those exclusive to international travel Highland Park expressions, but knew the chances of this would be low.

I called at the supermarket a day or two early then to pick up a bottle of the standard Cutty Sark blended scotch (40% ABV). It’s readily available throughout Spain, but much harder to find in the UK. It features in my 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die book, and at 11 euro, is perfect for a casual purchase, leaving room for further acquisitions later on. It was tempting to get something else at this time too, since you can nearly bring back as much as you want, but I was worried about the possibilities of breakages within my golf travel bag. The stingey weight allowance on Jet2 of 20kg doesn’t allow for much clothing alongside your golf clubs to pad out the contents.

 I wrapped the Cutty Sark in a towel, stuffed it in one of the larger pockets of my golf bag, and stuffed a few more clothes on either side.

Duty free was slightly disappointing, but there was still enough there to choose from. There are two shops selling booze, but from what I remember, the only scotch on offer is the standard Glenfiddich 12. Instead I focused on the Spanish stuff, where in the second of the two shops I found the DYC 8 (40% ABV) that I had been looking for. It was only 14 euro, so I figured I may as well get something else as well, and went back to the first shop to get some Gran Duque D’Alba Solera Gran Riserva brandy de Jerez that was 20% off at 21 euro. The Cardinal Mendoza was there too, but I decided to try something different this time.

A good haul really, and one that leaves me with 6 unopened bottles of spirits back at the old homestead. I’ve decided to finish one or two before I open anything new, but with me, you know that’s not going to be long.

It wasn’t all good outcomes. Despite a lovely enthusiastic welcome from Mrs Cake, we discovered the week long alcohol abuse has left me with a vastly inflated belly. I’m hoping that works itself off naturally, since with my back, sit-ups are out of the question. On top of that, because of all the holiday cigars, I just felt so dirty – and not in a good way. At least, not just in the good way. I mean, I always have that general background feeling of dirtiness anyway. That ain’t going nowhere.

So, let me see, were there any particularly funny moments? I don’t remember anyone falling over in a comical manner or anything like that but… Chris’ profligate swearing through the various rounds of golf had us all laughing. One time he exclaimed, “You son of a fuck!” which we soon transposed into “Son of a fucking fuck” and rode on for the rest of the week.

There was one time on the course where David had a particularly tricky bunker to get out of, and hit two or three shots before the ball jumped out into the heavy rough just in front of the bunker. On his next shot the ball jumped right back into the bunker where it began. Oh, I howled with laughter. I don’t think that’s considered good etiquette on a golf course, but it lightens the mood, and I’d prefer people to laugh at me when something like that happens, than they remain po-faced.

There was definitely a lot of laughing, but those are the instances of note that I recall.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to justify tagging along next year too with further booze tourism adventures already in the planning stage, but definitely the year after that.

Gran Duque d'Alba

So I hope you’ve enjoyed the brief travelogue and have had a terrific weekend so far. I’ll see you next week with something else, hopefully.

More drinking in the shower

apres golf

Just a quick post this week. I figured it was about time we had an update on one of my favourite pastimes; shower drinking. Sometimes I have a shower even when I don’t need one – just so that I can take a drink in with me*. You can read the original post on this activity here. Now, assuming you’ve done that, let’s bring you right up to date with some pictures and a bit of commentary.

First up you’ve got a glass of St Remy XO brandy at the MacDonald Portal Hotel, near Tarporley, Cheshire. This was after the first round of golf on my second stag do, and you can see there that there was a handy little shelf in the corner that almost seemed like it was designed for this purpose. You can also tell it got pretty steamy in there, but it was entirely because of the hot water.

Much beer, whisky and cigars followed, and it all culminated in me having a bit of a whitey far earlier than I would have liked. It was probably a good thing though, because it meant I was [fairly] compus mentus (considering) for the next day’s round. And I got a birdie, so that was quite thrilling.

Santa Eulalia, Ibiza

Next is a shower-beer from my honeymoon in Ibiza. This is Xavi Alonso on a can of Cruzcampo in the bathroom of our hotel in Santa Eulalia. Nice. I’ve gone for the cubicle corner technique, there.

King of bottled beers

Back at home now, but this time with the king of bottled beers; Double Maxim. I know I’ve done a post on shower drinking at home before, but I was so excited at having some Double Maxim to take in with me, that I thought it deserved a picture. If you don’t know why I was so excited, see the wedding post from… some time ago.

The shape of the bottle meant it was unsuitable for balancing on the corner, as I had with the Holsten Pils cans, so I just moved the shampoo from the corner shelf, and stuck it in there. Success.

The next two pictures are from Honeymoon Part 2 in Vietnam, about which you should be able to read on these pages in coming weeks. There’s a can of Bia 333, a glass of Glenfarclas 10, and then a bottle of the green variety of Saigon beer.

Finally, and bringing you right up to date with a shower drinking episode from my latest adventure, that if you were following me on Twitter, you would have seen was known as Golfageddon. Again, a full account of that will be posted on here at some time in the future. The glass in question here is DYC 10 year old single malt.

golfageddon

That’s it for now, but you can rest assured shower drinking is not a hobby I’ll be giving up any time soon, so I’ll collect a few more and hit you with another post sometime in the future. Don’t forget, I’d be delighted to see your shower drinking triumphs, so tell me about it in the comments. I’ll be back next week with another post that, at the moment is looking like being an investigation into the phenomenon that is the hot toddy. Join me then, but until then, have a great weekend. I know I will – I might open a new bottle.

*not really.

Shower Drinking

People who know me quite well know that sometimes I like to take a drink into the shower with me. I like to think of it as representing a kind of attitude, living the dream, doing it your own way. Yes, I am a maverick. I don’t really think of it like that; I just think it’s cool.

It started when I was at university. Sometimes I’d already be drinking a beer, but I’d need to have a shower in advance of going out and, not wanting to leave any dead space in the drinking, it didn’t take much imagination to conceive of the idea of shower drinking. Innovation – it’s what separates us from the animals.

These days it’s less about preventing interruptions in the drinking, and more about enhancing the experience of having a shower – just as having a drink might enhance the experience of sitting in the garden. It’s particularly good if you’ve just gotten in from some heavy exercise, or you’ve played a round of golf in sweltering heat. Let’s face it; there’s nothing better than having a beer when you’re proper thirsty, when you just feel like guzzling it down, until the bubbles burn your throat and you’re ready to stop, then you stop and go: Aaaaaaaaah! If you’re proper thirsty and need a shower: shower drinking. Essentially, it’s kicking back and relaxing - like having a whisky and a cigar on the patio - but you’re getting a job done at the same time, and it doesn’t feel like a job anymore. Afterwards you’ve got a proper beer buzz, because you drank it so fast.

You don’t have to limit your shower drinking to beer, either. You can take anything in there; it just helps to make sure the shower facilities are suitable. Beer is good because it comes in a can, so your liquid is protected from the shower water, and you don’t have to worry about breakages. At home we have a shower cubicle, so I can set the can down on one of the corners.

Stronger liquors are more of a risk, since you generally have to drink them out of a glass, so it means you have to weigh up the risk of breakage and possible injury. Also, if you take it with ice, you need to drink a bit quicker since the heat from the shower may cause it to melt into your drink too quickly. You could use a hip flask I suppose, but I prefer to keep those for covert, out of home drinking (perhaps the showers in the swimming baths?). Drinking from a hip flask around the house is just a bit weird. I suppose you could always innovate in other ways – sippy cups and the like.

Few showers are ideally equipped for shower drinking, but that’s part of the fun – the challenge of making it work, and coming out on top. When I was on a golf holiday in Spain, I’d take a glass of brandy (Cardinal Mendoza Solera Gran Reserva ) into the shower with me, and there were no shelves at all in there, not even one of those awkwardly shaped ones that are designed to hold soap. Luckily the shower space was fairly large, so I was able to set it on the edge at the bottom, far enough away from the cascading water to ensure that there was no contamination. You wouldn’t want any soap suds dripping in, would you? Perhaps that’s what those little cocktail umbrellas are for…

Try it. And tell me if there’s anywhere unusual that you like to take a drink.