I hadn’t realised that all this time D had been going to The Gate, which is literally about 5 minutes walk from my house, for salsa lessons. When Amelia and I heard this we were like take us there, take us there! We also dragged James B along to give it a spin.

When we first got to The Gate at just a bit before 7.30 (which was when the first lesson started) the place was fairly empty. This was a bit concerning. But I should have known from past experience that salsa lessons never start on time. You’ll be lucky if you are rock and rolling by 8! So by the time classes started the dance floor was full.

The format of the lessons was slightly different from the classes I’ve done in the past – this time around we had a substantial warm up before hooking up with partners. Also, although it was a beginners class for the first hour, the instructor didn’t hesitate in giving us less basic choreography. The key I think was that he gave us a decent amount of time to learn the steps.

Though D, Amelia and James left us for the second lesson (which was a little more advanced) Mirela came and joined me. Surprisingly in both lessons there were enough male partners and actually they were all generally quite good. It really does make a difference when your guy can lead you.

Mirela and I stayed for about another hour afterwards dancing with various partners. Another difference I found with this venue was that all the people were actually there to learn to salsa and not just pick up which was quite refreshing (though I think there was some small element of that.) There was also a familiar face – one of the guys recognised me from my “salsa days” at high street ken when Jules and I used to go. Small world!