week 3

Week 3
14th July (Lou)
Spain...The country of getting rather lost...Today brought us in and around and inside and through the twiddly nitty gritty bits of both Bilbao (quite pleasant AND I survived driving it!) and Santander (ooh not so fun for Joe...) We did however accidentally stumble upon a BEAUTIFUL fishing village down a 12% descent (Brian survived though) It was perfect, locals wending their merry way through their day and children swimming off the harbour. It was a pretty divine accident! Elantxove was its name! Then went to find a beach but I accidentally read Joe's circling of the windsurf book wrong... and we ended up in a horrible touristy yucky place which we soon escaped, for Oyanere where we stayed literally on the beach. Downside = tried kiting, onshore wind, scared of killing people so I gave up. Treated to a pretty good firework display tonight.

15th July (Lou)
Had to wait around till 7 30 pm in the beachy place for all the people to leave before you were allowed to do water stuff... so we hung around. I got heavily into my book (The Lovely Bones, anyone looking for a good read HAS to read it, I couldn't put it down) Joe fidgeted his way through tillhalf 7 and then I had a horribly frustrating wave-over-the-head windsurfing 'session' lasting aprox 10 mins, and Joe had horribly frustrating kiting session. So we went to bed. In a slight grump! Another 4 am wake up call, Joe thought we were going to be broken into! Turned out it was just people on the beach. Phew.

16th July (Lou)
Decided to head to better calmer climes, Ria di Rodieles to be precise, very nice calm flat water wide river/sea/lagoon place. Spent the day wandering about and reading some more, an unfortunate twist of the ankle bodyboarding the day before (well, running into the sea...) no windsurfing prevailed. Found a place to park up free again, and managed to use campsite toilets too! There was an amazing labrador who was on a walk with its owner who really didn't want it to go in the water but he managed to get in there and then he lay down in protest! Amazing.

17th July (Lou)
The lady at the campsite caught me sneaking in to use her toilets. Speaking no Spanish I decided the best tactic was to make up a language, or sort of buy myself time to make up a reason for striding so confidently into her campsite. I made up a Spanish word to stall her...it went something like 'Trahida?' then thought up an ingenious story about visiting a friend... luckily she didn't understand a word of my English so I just left. Next time I might just ask if I can use her toilet.

Finally, the time came where I had an amazingly fun windsurfing session! Flat water, hardly any wind, perfect! Did tacks and gibes and upwind sailing and everything!

Moved on to a campsite for the night down the road a bit, very peaceful, at Playa Espanyol next to a more hardcore surfing beach.

18th July (Lou/Joe)
Decided to use the campsite to its full potential and do a huge amount of washing, we looked like a Chinese laundry outside our van! Joe washed the van AND turns out the graffiti rubs off (with a very good scrub!) Lathered ourselves in another luxury (shower) and then headed on for more Western climes and a supermarket after a walk down to the beach. Found another trusty port (THE place to stay when looking for free accommodation it seems...) Beer or two in the quest to find Wi-Fi connection, but alas to no avail. Then sat in bar which promised Wi-Fi but it doesn't work! Went back to the van after deciding to eat donuts and hot chocolate instead of eating tea. Found that the other side of the port was a happening Spanish festival with some stages, music and dancing old people (very quick dancing too), we did not fully partake in the wibbling, (Joe couldn't be persuaded to shake a leg with the grannies!). After waiting for the “better” people on the big stage to appear we retired with the opinion that all Spanishy music sounds quite nice but very similar.

19th July (Joe)
A four in the morning wee to a Spanish rendition of Tina Turner's Spanish twin singing ''Simply the Best ''. . . .
After a bit of a lie in we decided to escape our town to continue west. After seeing a cool beach we initially drove by, we decided to return to it (involving a maneuver across a main road, down a cliff like lane, past a river and under a bridge. Empty beach with a couple of Spanish families having BBQs on the big ones provided (!) After a snack and a walk we decided to continue, with aims of getting just north of FISSLE to a windsurf spot in the book, but we saw a cool beach on the way down another cliff lane thing, and parked in a field with only a couple of other cars. Rigged up for an afternoon windsurf of the big C shape beach. Perfect conditions for Lou to practice slightly higher wind maneuvers. After a chat to a Spanish windsurfer that came to join us (who works in Madrid- 37degrees yesterday!!), he said the point and the end of the estuary is the most northern point in Spain and that the forecast for the next few days is ideal for this beach, so we're hanging around till tomorrow see what comes.

Ate lemon chicken and maple flavour golden syrup on pancakes.

20th July (Lou)
Went for a really fun windsurf in the afternoon after Joe tried with his kite but it was a bit gusty and he didn't get on too well..Went to the most northern point in Spain! Ended the day by sleeping on the streets of O..............after a beer in a random bar