For years Shane has been telling me I must try the Bavarian Ham Hock in Gandia’s Bar Sacramento. Each time I’ve been there, each time we’ve been there, the Polish owner Robert sadly tells us he doesn’t have any in prepared so I, or we, have hamburgers, very good hamburgers but you don’t go to Spain to have hamburgers. This December, when we asked for Bavarian Ham Hock, Robert didn’t put his long face on and warned it would take some time, but that was OK because there was football on above the bar and you do go to Spain to watch football.
Inevitably when the ham hocks arrived they weren’t as huge as they’d grown in Shane’s telling, the meat fell away deliciously from the bone, but not into the great sea of vegetables he had me imagine.
You can get three hocks for six quid in Leeds Kirkgate Market. So the day we looked at the maps for the first time, I bought carrots, parsnips, potatoes, celeriac, cream and three hocks, one each for us, one for the freezer. Their three hours in the oven gave us plenty of time to join up the three OS maps that cover our epic journey.
We came to some decisions:
1. We will include a little detour on our first morning to take in breakfast in Saltaire, Shane has never been to Salt’s Mill.
2. We are looking for stage finishes/nice places to stay/good places to eat in the Kippax, Castleford, Sherburn triangle for Day One and somewhere near Howden for Day Two.
3. We confirmed our decision to follow waterways as much as possible.
I’d soak your ham hocks for a little longer than we did, they were delicious but salty. That night back in Sacramento, Barca beat Bilbao 5-1. Messi scored twice. There was fourth decision made over the Yorkshire ham hocks.
4. Shane needs to buy a bike.
