Good morning, welcome to part two of the Mi Yorca Odyssey as I continue following Challenge

Mallorca around the island. We're two days into the five days, so it's beginning of day three of

racing. And last night in my apartment in Palmer had quite an interrupted sleep actually because,

as predicted, a gale force wind blew in across the island.

It relented a little bit this morning, but all night it was absolutely knocking at things over in the street,

rattling around the chimney pots and lifting tiles off roofs. It was extraordinary. So we've had rain,

we've had sunshine, and now wind.

And I was, I couldn't sleep and I kept thinking about that amazing poem that I'm just going to

inflict on you for a couple of minutes by Ted Hughes called Wind.

This house has been far out at sea all night.

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills.

Winds, stampeding the fields under the window, floundering black astride and blinding wets,

till day rose.

Then under an orange sky the hills had new places, and wind, wielded, blade light, luminous black and emeralds,

flexing like the lens of a mad eye. At noon, I scaled along the house side as far as the coalhouse door.

Once I looked up, through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes, the tent of the hills

drummed and strained its guy-rope. The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, at any second

a bang and vanish with a flap, the wind flung a magpie away and a black-back gull bent

like an iron bar slowly. The house rang like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it.

Now deep in chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip our hearts and cannot entertain book,

thought or each other. We watch the fire blazing and feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

seeing the window tremble to come in, hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

...