The "Besitos" moored in the calmed Ciutadella harbour

Should you walk through the port of Ciutadella, you might find this boat moored next to the building of the old port captaincy. Besitos is her name. She is a traditional Menorquin boat of a type called "llaut" operated with a latin rig, a triangular sail set on a long yard mounted at an angle on the mast, and running in a fore-and-aft direction.

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Latin Rig

Poisonous beauty

Echium plantagineum, commonly known as purple viper's bugloss or Paterson's curse, is a species of Echium native to western and southern Europe (from southern England south to Iberia and east to the Crimea), northern Africa, and southwestern Asia. It has also been introduced to Australia, South Africa and the United States, where it is an invasive weed. Due to a high concentration of pyrrocilidine alkaloids, it is poisonous to grazing livestock, especially those with simple digestive systems, like horses. The toxins are cumulative in the liver, and death results from too much Paterson's curse in the diet.

Throughout these weeks their purple flowers bright in Menorca's prairies together with other herbs that bloom at the same time. Despite their beauty, people of the island do not have them in high esteem for being often the cause of death of horses that eat those plants when grazing.

The Hotel del Almirante in stitches

For some two years one of our guests; Mrs. Maureen Wright has been capturing the ambience of the hotel entrance carefully perfected in the medium of cross stitch.

Maureen has presented this to the Hotel and I am pleased to tell you it is framed and displayed in our home.

Walking among partridges at Cutaynet.

Throughout the eighteenth century the flourishing trade between the port of Mahon and other ports of the Mediterranean gave way to an era of prosperity in the island. The bourgeois who got rich on trade and privateering wanted, as a symbol of their prosperity, buy land, which so far, were in the hands of the nobility since Middle Ages.

 Thus, at this time the large agricultural holdings on the island were segregated and the new ones, often preserved part of the array name.

Cutaynet is one of those properties whose land belonged one day the vast region known as Cotaina

As I walked around the area I have been in the middle of a group of partridges that had been singing as daylight was coming to its end.