If you’re gritting your teeth in preparation for a smug post about my holiday while you’re stuck in your office back in Blighty then don’t bother. It’s rained non-stop this week while the UK has been glorious. So there.

We’ve been drowning down in SW France, trying to stay cheery while drinking unholy amounts of cider, playing backgammon, and eating more cheese than is probably wise. Swimming has been engaged in more as a dare than as a pleasurable activity, and any glimpse of sun has been met with squeals from the girls and sprints upstairs to don sun-worshipping garb. Only for it to start raining again five minutes later.

Yesterday we jumped in a car and drove an hour and a half to San Sebastian. I’d read this cracking piece by Rebecca Seal and was dying to get my chops round some pintxos.

We spent a very happy hour squelching around La Bretxa, a food market that wasn’t quite as romantic as you’d expect but in terms of ingredients – and particularly fish – was just phenomenal.

There were anchovies:

Mussels:

Turtle feet:

A woman stabbing crabs:

Cows’ faces:

We mingled with the locals.

There was a man selling children:

Sam got a date:

My brother bought a new hat:

And then we went and ate. A lot.

I loved the nomadic style of eating – bouncing from bar to bar, swigging beer and txakoli, and chewing bits of bread slathered in crab, ham, cheese, prawns, boquerones….

At the penultimate place we visited we ate some elvers – baby eels. Looking like a barber shop floor after Medusa has been in, they were surprisingly lacking in flavour:

Or maybe unsurprisingly. They didn’t exactly have a lot of time to butch up on the flavour front.

The highlight was a place called La Cuchara de San Telmo, which I was assured was Jose Pizarro’s favourite place. My photos were crap but we ate pork belly with apple gunge and garlic and rosemary oil, a fat scallop wrapped in bacon, silky foie gras, crispy goat cheese, braised veal cheek, crispy fried owl….I lost track.

We were defeated:

It’s a truly wondrous place. Pay my slightly fatuous blog post no heed – I’m on holiday and the first sun of the week is just peeking through the clouds. I’d need at least a day to give San Seb the time it deserves. It’s a very special city and I urge you to go there.