Biscay Again, but Kinder

Biscay has a reputation and, for the second time, chose not to live up to it for me. A long low swell, a steady grey sky, and a wind that stayed on the beam all day.

I did my circuit. The walkway route around the container stacks and back along the starboard side is, by my phone's reckoning, just over half a mile. I did it eight times, which is four miles, which is the most exercise I have taken deliberately in about a decade.

There is a particular pleasure to walking a route you cannot get lost on. No decisions. No junctions. Just the same corner, the same rust streak, the same lashing rod with a bent handle, coming round again every eight minutes or so. It is the opposite of driving and it is the closest thing to it I have available.

The seagulls that boarded us before the Channel are still here. They have established themselves on the forward crane housing and they watch the deck crew work with the expression of a committee that has already reached its conclusions.

At some point in the afternoon a container ship passed us going the other way, close enough to read her name and to see one figure on her bridge wing. We did not signal. Neither did they. Both parties knew.

Rice and toast, incidentally, have been retired. I am back on normal food and everyone has been very adult about not mentioning the aubergine.