A final few days in Spain: Zarautz, Donostia–San Sebastian and a final port of call
Final trip miles 3,537
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| Pitched: Midsummer's day in Spain |
Sadly the crossing of the border at Hendaye did not
miraculously produce the longed-for Spanish sunshine and our coastal campsite was
a soggy and dismal affair. We quickly felt like ‘long termers’ bedded in for
four nights as every other British, German and Dutch van moved off after only one
night’s stay wheel spinning and carving up the grass causing the Spanish owner
to shake his head and complain loudly in
animated Basque.
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| A view of Zarautz from the campsite |
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| Just beached on Grande Playa |
But the weather can’t spoil the charm of seaside town
Zarautz. From our camp high on the cliffs we walked down the challengingly
steep ‘bio path’ to the long curving beach where its mile and half of perfect
sand was packed with slippery wet suit wearing surfers.
The old town behind the seafront has winding streets of
three storey balconied shops and pensiones, including a trio of tower houses, and
cavernous and dimly lit tapas, or pintxos, bars. Alongside the many fish shops,
grocers and bakeries the old town also has probably the best town centre
supermarket in Spain, the Eroski. We stocked up on favourites of light and
feathery mushrooms, hot peppers, seasoned olives, avocados, a kilo of fresh
gambas, Verdejo wine and Aurum beer and barely broke into a 10 euro note. Ace
Eroski!
A shiny new Euskatren took us the half hour ride across
the green hills to the gorgeous belle époque town of Donostia – San Sebastian.
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| Donostia-San Sebastian |
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| El Sagrado Corazon |
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| Playa de la Concha |
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| Puerto Vieja before the clouds gathered |
A welcome sunny morning brought hundreds onto Playa de la Concha and we meandered along the elegant promenade of the Paseo de
la Concha leaning over the balustrades to watch the beach activity.
The old fishing harbour was full of leisure boats dodging canoeists, splashing dogs, diving children and fishing lines of the old boys lined
along the harbour walls gutting their catches of fresh bass. Up on the rampart
walls we felt the stiff cool breeze that is ‘combed’ by the huge
cliff side iron sculptured prongs of the town’s famous artist Chillida.
Back in the old town, we sought out a
favourite pintxos bar from our visit the previous year and were quickly lost in
the narrow streets packed with 'foodies' looking for the best place to
stop for a tasty morsel or two. We found ‘Txalupa’ on our third circuit of the
many tiny bars and bodegas – San Sebastian has more eateries per square meter
than any other city in Spain.
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| Bar Txalupa - found eventually on Calbeton Fermin |
A small but scrumptious feast of pintxos proved to be a crab salad stuffed red pepper, a tortilla and cheese wedge, a slice of bread topped with Serrano ham, goats cheese and caramelised onion and prawn and mayonnaise ‘inside out’ sandwich.
The practice is to visit the many pintxos bars spending
no more than the time it takes to devour a couple of tapas in each, but after
our helping of stuffed chillies and crab meat at a second bar we declared
ourselves ‘out’ and headed back to the beach to walk off lunch.
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| The rain in Spain fell mainly on..........us |
Our last day dawned bright, sunny and hot. Dammit. It was an easy drive to the port at gleaming Bilbao reached through an impressively engineered new bypass through the mountainside. The 20 minute drive on the new road saved at least an hour navigating the centre and cost a mere toll of 1.13euros. 27 degrees at 6pm and we were sitting outside Bertha with a cerveza suddenly remembering the searing heat of Greece.
What strange weather we have experienced and Bertha has coped with. A truly extraordinary journey and fittingly, we clocked up a landmark 3,500 miles today with views of the Bay of Biscay and our sea voyage home...
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| Sleepin' on the dock of the bay: one final night at Puerto Bilbao |
