Celebrating the first anniversary of setting sail.

Monkey guarding the Champagne

Wendy’s Diary 22 June – Caves and waves

A Swedish couple arrived in Ribadesella and tied up alongside the quay next to us and we had an interesting couple of days chatting with them. They have spent the last 5 years sailing and are on their way back to Sweden for a winter of repairs before sailing off again. They have so much experience and it was lovely to be able to pick their brains on what they had encountered.

A typical granary close to the caves.

Sven was keen to see the local historic caves with some 30,000 year old paintings and asked if we would like to join him. The cave entrance was blocked by a landslip around 5000 years ago and the cave was rediscovered in 1968 by some pot-holers. Hence it has been remarkably well-preserved and visits are restricted in both numbers and time as just people breathing changes the atmosphere and can cause deterioration of the paintings. There was an excellent museum alongside the entrance to the cave, and if anyone is likely to visit I would recommend doing the museum first, as the whistle stop tour of the cave with the narration in Spanish meant it was difficult to work out what we were supposed to be looking at some of the time.

The sketch of the boat, including the new dinghy cover!

Whilst I was finishing sewing the sun cover for the dinghy I noticed a mother and son standing close by. The boy was sketching the boat and after a couple of minutes he finished and I asked to see the sketch. It was a very good outline drawing of the boat and in my very broken Spanish I complemented the boy on his skill. A couple of hours later, the boy with both parents this time returned and presented me with the sketch which he had taken away and added in much of the detail. It was now instantly recognisable as Freya Frey and I was very touched by the gesture. We invited them on board for a cuppa and discovered that he is 12 years old and attends an art college. Maybe one day he will become famous and the sketch will be worth a lot of money!? Not that we would part with it anyway.

It was 4^th June before we finally left, setting sail for 18 miles to Villaviciosa, a place I am still trying to get my tongue around how to pronounce. We motored again as there was very little wind, our thoughts of sailing along this coast appear to be misconstrued! There is not a lot apart from scenery and birdlife, so just our sort of place. We found a deep part of the channel albeit with a very fast current, but with our hefty anchor and plenty of chain we weren’t going anywhere. It seemed strange to be at anchor again after just over a week tied to a wall but lovely and peaceful. The top of the estuary further up was covered in weed, some of which worked its way loose with each tide, and we watched clumps of it drift past the boat on a regular basis. When it came to lift the anchor, it made a rather interesting sight:

There is an anchor in there somewhere!!

We thought this made a lovely photo..our anchorage at low water.

On our second day here we decided to take the boat as far as possible upstream on the rising tide and made it to a huge cider bottling plant just outside the town with the unpronounceable name. A pretty river with mountain views, although no sign of snow now, I guess too late in the season for that on the lower slopes. Having established that there really wasn’t anything else around apart from one bar and a campsite we made plans to set sail for somewhere that maybe had a shop – not a big ask, although I do try and keep the boat well-provisioned, and fresh bread is always at the top of the shopping list.

A very common sign of the times, a half built building left for years since the property bubble burst

  

Horizons

As we exited the river mouth I spotted another yacht – a rare sight on this coast, pointed it out to John who said.. “It’s a cat(amaran)..., it’s a Catalac...  it’s British!...  I think it is Horizons!” He picked up the radio...”Calling the Catalac Catamaran off of Tazones... Is that you, Jeff?” We think Jeff must have jumped somewhat at this as he hadn’t spotted us before John made the call.   We know the previous owners of the boat well (Bev and Mary), but had only met Jeff once before at the TMA (Tamar Multihull Association) annual(ish) Paella gathering, at which John cooks the food (last year for the second time at Bev and Mary’s house). Small world stuff going on here!! Had we been 10 minutes earlier or later we would have missed him. Anyway, we came alongside each other, had a quick chat, took the obligatory photos of each other and discussed destinations. Jeff was heading to Gijon to meet up with another English boat owner (Roy), whilst we were heading for Aviles 34 miles away.

Some interesting rock formations on the entrance to Aviles

The pilot book says it is possible to anchor at Aviles, but having written off the first anchorage as too exposed, we headed further up river, passing several places that looked suitable for anchoring before reaching the pontoons just before the end of the navigable part of the river.   We had heard of ports that offered 2 nights free berthing, so I thought this would be a good place to ask if this was one of them. It took the harbour guys an hour or so to arrive with info and at the suggestion of 22 euros for the night. The weather forecast for the following day was a little iffy, so the thought of being caught out for 2 or more nights was something we wanted to avoid. “No anchoring within the port is allowed” was the response to our first request and statements starting with “but it says in the pilot book..” got us nowhere.

Our Spinnaker

We did a quick tide/wind/distance check and decided we would head for the next estuary instead, only about 6 miles further west. For the first time this season we did a spinnaker run for the hour’s sail to San Esteban. For non-boaty readers, these are the big, usually brightly-coloured, sails that protrude from the front of sailing boats and are good to use with gentle tail winds. Anyway it was fab to really sail for a change, albeit a short distance and an hour later we were tying up against a wall (free of charge of course) in this former coal exporting town. That is how most of the pilot books describe it, just a “has-been”. The reality was yet another pretty port, surrounded by mountain and sea views, with the most sheltered stretch of water yet. Good move, leaving Aviles behind, although we would have liked to have explored the old town.  

The quayside at San Esteban, with the wall that encloses the anchorage

There were 3 other yachts in the harbour, all French, 2 monohulls and an enormous cat, the owners of the latter kindly took our lines. Over the next couple of days we spent lots of time with Jean-Luc and Katia, swapping notes on where we had been and where we were going. As always the men got onto discussing technical stuff so Katia and I managed to extricate ourselves onto whichever boat the men were not on to discuss things more interesting to women folk. Our list of coincidences includes:

• 1.       We are the same age. (If you don’t know I am not telling you)
• 2.       We both have 22 year old daughters.
• 3.       We both have 20 year old sons.
• 4.       We are both accountants by trade.
• 5.       Contrary to what we may have believed possible a few years ago, we are both now sailing around the coast of Northern Spain in catamarans.
• 6.       We share the view that one can never drink too much tea!

This is a close up of the tree in the foreground in the previous picture - it had some curious birds on a nest in it which took quite a while to work out they were fake!!

Needless to say we got on well, conversing mainly in French (thank you again, Annie), meaning I now understand how John gets confused swapping between languages. Whilst I only have a very small vocabulary of Spanish, the hello, please and thank you had become automatic in Spanish, so reverting back to French was rather complicated. They set off a couple of days later with hopes on both sides of meeting up again soon.

John and Jean Luc deep in conversation overlooking the next bay

Jean Luc and Katia leaving San Esteban

We swapped to anchoring as the fenders rubbing against the wall were taking off a layer of paint. On John’s recommendation Jeff arrived in San Esteban a couple of days later, and joined us for a proper chat and an invitation to stop for dinner. With the conversation going back to when we had met in the UK, and the not so old email trail that had gone around inviting TMA members to a BBQ as John was not available to cook the Paella, the conversation very quickly brought up the question” who was/were in the wrong place – most of the TMA members or the Paella Chef”?? And so we had our own Paella evening on board Freya Frey, with the only other member in the locality very willingly attending!

San Esteban at night

The following day on Jeff’s recommendation Roy arrived and anchored close by. Whilst refuelling at Gijon that morning he had passed on the recommendation for our anchorage to Rick who followed within the hour. So with 4 red ensigns anchored we felt obliged to get together that evening and had a good old natter over a couple of bottles of wine on Roy’s boat. This was followed by gatherings on each boat for teas/coffees over the next two days swapping views on amongst other things “wifi” and of course the latest weather forecasts etc., as we were all looking at moving on West.   

Reasons to stay in port!

On Saturday Jeff headed out in a mild westerly leaving the rest of us behind waiting for the wind to change. Bright and early on Sunday 17 June we up anchored and waved goodbye to Rick and Roy, who were also preparing to depart in the now very gentle Easterly. We had Ribadeo in mind, as it was the next place with guaranteed shelter, albeit a rather long haul of 47 miles. With a favourable sea and wind we had the spinnaker up again and sailed all the way, in the company of 3 French boats to the North, Rick out ahead after he whizzed by us and Roy on our tail. I was NOT seasick at all on this run and it was nice to be back to what I call “normal” sailing, being able to prepare meals on route without either feeling nauseous or in risk of things toppling over in the swell. Maybe I will have to rename “normal” sailing to “what it used to be like” sailing!

We anchored for the night in a small inlet just beyond the commercial port. Ribadeo is, as with all the others, a lovely estuary surrounded by mountains etc and this time with a decent sized town with a Lidl!!!!! We went into the Marina (alongside Roy) in the morning and asked if we could tie up for a couple of hours to do some shopping and fill up with fuel when we got back. This was warmly accepted by the marina staff and so we headed into town (after setting off i-Tunes to download all the latest podcasts whilst we were out).

We haven’t found a Lidl since arriving in Spain and assuming the same low prices apply here as in France were keen to stock up on favourites like part-baked bread, almost impossible to find anywhere else, and if found, too expensive to consider worth buying. Unfortunately we didn’t find the Lidl but we did find a decent sized Galician-branded supermarket and bought rather more than was practical on the bikes and so rolled back down (thankfully) the hill to the boat fully laden – with the exception of the elusive part-baked bread. After filling up with fuel the marina staff suggested that we may like to stay a while and use the showers etc. Roy asked John for a lesson in Spanish pronunciation and I played on the internet whilst I had the chance.

We then took the opportunity of the rising tide to explore up the river to Vegadeo, where we found nothing of interest except the scenery on the way there and back. We made the call to sail further west again the next day so anchored up again and made preparation for a long sail of 47 miles to Santa Marta de Ortiguiera. I made some vegetable soup and Spanish tortilla (potato and onion omelette but nothing like what the English call Spanish omelette) so that we would have some easy to eat journey food in case the sea was a bit rough.

We snook back into the marina at around 5 in the morning and downloaded the latest weather forecast, all looked good, a decent Easterly along with an Easterly swell for a change. As we exited the estuary there was a large choppy swell which threw the boat in all directions. We are used to river exits being lumpy but this was worse than normal. We continued out in the hope that it would soon settle down, which it did very slightly once we were able to start heading West. After only half an hour I made the call that I couldn’t cope with 10 hours of this kind of sea as I was already feeling rough. We changed direction again to head in for the next estuary of Foz, and I went to bed. John checked out the pilot book and decided that it would not be possible to enter with the swell as it was, so reverted to the original course.

I spent the day feeling very ill and the only time I was out of bed I was feeding the fish (more times than I thought possible).  The sea state did settle a bit and John started to really enjoy the sail, and we blasted along at between 6 and 7 knots for the entire journey, a speed which will amaze some of our fellow cat-owning friends who think we are far too heavy to do so. It was consolation to both of us that the trip would be around 3 hours shorted than originally thought, and on the entry to Ortigueira John deliberately slowed down so that we wouldn’t get there too early for the rising tide.  We passed our French friends with the big cat at the entrance; they were just heading out to Cediera. We made our way up to the innermost anchorage in the pilot book and dropped the hook. John was snoring within seconds of his head hitting the pillow, it had been a long haul to do singlehanded.  

It was still a bit bumpy for me after the day I had had, so 3 hours later when John had recovered we moved again and tied up alongside the old quay, which was completely sheltered from the wind and swell. We went ashore, found the (very nice) club nautico and popped in for a quick drink before heading back for an early night.

Recovering from the long haul - a BBQ on deck in the sunshine

Whilst we have been here we have got the bikes out for a further explore, including to the old windmill above the town and has a 360 degree view. Yesterday we arranged to meet Jean-Luc and Katia roughly halfway between our two anchorages. After a string of misunderstandings we finally met up at a restaurant and had a relaxing afternoon chatting about where we had been since San Esteban. Prices here are so much cheaper than in France and we enjoyed the rare luxury of a meal out, 3 courses, drinks and coffees included for 12 euros each.

John has lost a filling and has an appointment with the dentist here next Tuesday, so we shall be tied up along the wall for a few more days yet. 

Wendy’s Diary 30 May 2012 – Westward bound again

After filling up with water at the tiny marina (just a couple of pontoons for the locals, not for visitors), a quick bit of laundry (by foot not hand) and a chat with a local retired fisherman re our destination we were ready to set off. The sail from San V de la B to LLanes was a little over 16 miles, so around 4 hours – not a long haul and fingers crossed for a flat sea. We had the wind behind us and for a while managed to sail, but as has often happened, the wind dropped and on went the motor again. The sea became short and I was seasick again! There is something about the swell around here that really disagrees with me.

Anyway, my chosen port of call is a tiny place, where a local artist had been commissioned to paint the concrete blocks that formed the outer harbour wall, and the town itself is described as charming. The aforementioned fisherman advised us not to go into the marina as it was pricey, but hang a right as soon as we entered the river and ask to tie up in the fishing harbour.  This was perhaps the smallest entrance yet, and with our fingers crossed for a safe entry we nudged into the fishing harbour, where we were told under no uncertain terms to go to the marina.  We decided to head back out to sea and to the next ria, a further 4 or so miles west.

The entry to Llanes with the painted stones - the entry is on the left.

Niembro was hard to spot along the coastline, but with only a few hundred yards to go we could finally make out where the gap in the cliffs was. It was almost high tide so we reckoned we would be ok depth wise as this was a drying harbour. So for the second time that afternoon we crossed our fingers as we crossed the bar. The swell disappeared and we were in a beautiful crystal clear river with a sandy bottom, giving the water a lovely turquoise colour. We passed the little quay and the river opened up with views of the mountains in the background a church, a restaurant and fields.

That's me on the right...trying to work out how we managed to sail in here!

We dropped anchor and had just the sound of birds and cow bells in the way of noise. I keep running out of descriptive words for beautiful places, but this was another one of those spots. And, unbelievably we had wifi on the boat. Having gone for a drink in the one restaurant in the bay, which just happened to be of the same name as a password protected hotspot, we collected the said password and the proprietor even suggested that we see if it worked from the boat. We did go back for another beer there before we left as a token of thanks for the use of the signal.

I have mentioned before that I am in the process of making a cover for the dinghy to protect it from the sun which as we head south will deteriorate more quickly (the dinghy not the sun). We picked up a discarded sun shade (the sort that comes out on a roll off a building) in St Jean de Luz, which seemed to be in good condition and was obviously a good material to use as it was designed for the same purpose.

Anyway, this time I waited for the tide to go out and sat on the beach in my deckchair next to the dinghy and attached the elastic clips that attach the cover in place. By the time I had finished my fingers had more holes than a sieve, though thankfully not too many of them drew blood. I got through at least 6 needles and all the pins we had left. I was determined to finish this stage so that it could start to be used.  The following day I sewed round the slits for the ropes that attach it to the davits, so the cover can remain in place in transit and just before the tide came back in it was in a state ready to be used.

The anchorage at Niembro with the tide out

And with the tide in

Sewing has never been one of my strong points, I don’t have enough patience usually for the slow progress, and tend to take short cuts and finish up with something not particularly attractive. Now that I have swapped my life around and am time rich and money poor, I was happy to take the time and do the best job I could, and I must say, that it has turned out better than I expected it to. It still needs a few finishing touches, but it does at least now do the job it was designed for and has cost us less than 20 euros in the process.  I am impressed with myself and have awarded myself a gold star!

Me walking on the beach at Niembro.

Between Llanes and Niembro is a small town with an unusual name (to the English anyway). As soon as I saw the name on the map I told John we had to go there, I wanted my photo taken next to the sign. The primary reason being to send the said photo to my sister in law in Cyprus as I knew it would amuse her. She and I play a form of scrabble over the internet, the games often take several days to complete as it depends on who is on line when, in order to play in turn. We use the game as something to talk around; it isn’t about winning, and hold written conversations alongside the games. Placing a word that would be considered rude/funny by a five year old amuses us both far more than it should and you will see from the photo why this one was of such importance.  It was only about a 3 mile cycle ride away and the effort was much appreciated in Cyprus!

The town with the interesting name

The cycle ride was useful in that we passed the nearest shop, about 2 miles away, and a fab little roadside stall selling a mixture of home-grown and brought in fruit and veg, situated directly in front of their poly tunnels. I stocked up as it all looked good quality and not too pricey. The anchorage is an idyllic spot, but without the bikes it would not be possible to do any provisioning (there is of course the restaurant).

Some caravans we passed which had been er..extended??

We spent 4 or 5 days there before I got itchy feet again, the sea looked calm and we up anchored and headed 12 miles along the coast to Ribadesella, a fishing port along a very long quayside, with places for the likes of us “yachties” to tie up alongside for free. I managed the entire journey without even a hint of seasickness, but with a very slight wind on the nose it was necessary to motor all the way. The forecast easterly arrived just after we tied up to the wall.

We are tied up on the far wall opposite the marina...see next photo

Tied along the wall at Ribadesella

Looking out of the estuary at Ribadesella

The quayside is where the locals and tourists promenade, the sea wall is high and so the view of the boat is slightly from above. Our renewable energy system has attracted huge interest amongst the passers, with many stopping to ask questions. John of course is delighted to speak in which ever language is required (Spanish French and English) to explain how it all works.
  

The valley we cycled up

Today we took the bikes up the valley for about 10km and on bikes with small wheels that is a reasonable distance. The road followed the river so was relatively flat; it was amazing to be cycling with big mountains all around us. My camera isn’t good enough to take decent shots of the views, but John took one with his.

We have met some more lovely people and are happy to spend the next few days exploring the area before continuing further west.

Wendy’s Diary 21 May 2012 – Santander, Suances & San V de la B

As many of you will know, about 25 years ago John spent some time studying Spanish literature at the Universidad Menedez Pelayo in Santander. He fell in love with the city and Spain and everything Spanish, particularly the food (Chocolate Con Churros being top of the list)!! For many years he has dreamed of sailing his own boat into this harbour and that dream finally came true early this month. Whilst I was trying to sleep off the latest bout of sea sickness (the swell down here really doesn’t agree with me), John spotted El Palicio on the headland, sobbed his socks off and then cooked some Churros to celebrate.

Cycling at El Palicio

In a very prominent place along the sea front is the Real Club Maritimo Santander, a very plush yacht club. On the Saturday when we arrived a regatta was taking place and yachts both large and small (but all rather fast) were buzzing round in circles either waiting their turn to start or participating in a race. We anchored in front of the club, and were made very welcome as visiting “yachties” and were offered the use of their facilities whilst we were there. We headed off for a stroll around the town, in particular John wanted to find the bar he frequented all those years ago to see if the same couple still ran it. We did find it but the present owners had taken over from his former acquaintance and it was closed at the time. 

Bronze statues of boys on the quayside (being used by a fisherman) overlooking the RMCS

Anchored off the RMCS with one of the "wash generators" passing close by

Back at the RCMS with wifi on offer we shipped the laptops and headed for the bar, with a clear view of Freya Frey bobbing around in the water.  We were quite close to a ferry stop and the ferries were very regular and created large amounts of wash. Sitting in the bar was far preferable to sitting on the boat in this state! Eventually the ferries quit for the night and we headed back to the boat for what turned out to be a very uncomfortable night.

The splendid interior of the club, with a little more than half of me typing

We spent a week mooching around the river in search of places away from swell and wash, and in between exploring the city, a cycle ride around the grounds of El Palicio, taking advantage of the superb surroundings of the sailing club (thankfully not expensive) and catching up with jobs on the boat. For a couple of days the weather broke the record for high temperature in May and we basked in around 38 degrees. I am in the process of making a cover for the dinghy to protect it from sunlight and in this heat sat out on deck with my sewing.  

Sunset through the red ensign

Snowy mountains in the background

Another "wash generator" sneaking up on us in the mist

If you are likely to follow suit and sail into Santander I can only say from my experience that whilst the city is certainly worth visiting, the difficulty in finding a smooth anchorage made the stay less pleasant. The wind changed direction more times a day than I drink tea (those who know me well will appreciate that one) and as the bay is wide the fetch soon picks up.  The river is not particularly interesting, mainly industrial and the areas at the head of the accessible part of the river (before a low bridge) were taken up with moorings and a small marina. One anchorage was at the end of the runway – the airport is not overly busy, so it wasn’t a problem and watching planes take off and land at such close proximity was a novelty. One last thing, there is an excellently stocked chandlery (ferreteria) at Pedreña (next to the fishing harbour not the one in the small marina) if you need one – big, well organised and not too expensive.

How close??

John’s memories of the city from his university days made him reluctant to leave, but after a week we finally headed out to our next port of call, Suances. Whilst the wind remained relatively light (motoring again) the swell was much bigger than we had anticipated (2-3M) resulting in me feeling ill again and so John did most of the helming. Our pilot book advised that the narrow river entrance should not be entered in heavy swell – “what is the definition of heavy swell” I pondered. Both feeling a little uneasy on the basis that it wasn’t yet half way up the tide, we decided to give it a go as I was feeling rough. This may easily have been a bad decision, as a particularly large wave came past just as we were going over the bar, but thankfully didn’t ground us. With both engines blasting we made our way through and into the calm of the river.


Our very old pilot book (1985) said it was possible to go a couple of miles up the canalised river – we thought that in the intervening years someone would probably have built a bridge but thought it was worth a look, and with no bridge in the way followed the river until it became too shallow. We headed slightly back down river and dropped the anchor for the night in strangely dark water. A bit like the brown water than you get in peaty areas but blacker! 

Grateful for a very peaceful night and well rested, in the morning we headed back down almost to the entrance and entered the harbour. This is split in two with pontoons for pleasure craft on one side and fishing boats on the other. We were too big and besides which there were no spaces available on the pontoons, so we headed for the side of the slipway. I was at the helm and brought the boat alongside, a challenging feat for me – John usually does this sort of thing, and I was petrified of hitting the wall, with half a dozen friendly locals spectating.  We were assured that it was no problem to tie up there and the boat would be safe.

The wall in the fishing port of Suances

Suances is a town split into two, with a beach resort running along a wide sandy bay and up a very steep hill is the main town, somewhere we didn’t venture due to the said hill. There was an excellent cycle path to Torrelevega 10km in land which followed the river and so was relatively flat. David, one of the spectators when we arrived, offered to drive us to Santillana del Mar one evening and we had a lovely couple of hours wandering around the cobbled streets of this medieval town, largely unchanged for centuries.

John posing in the square at Santillana

The church in Santillana - on the pilgram route Camino de Santiago

Another short hop with little sail but smaller swell brought us to San Vicente de la Barquera, where we have spent the last few days chilling out, catching up on washing and trying to avoid the rain which has returned with vengeance. This is a very pretty bay with ample choice of anchorage spots, both drying and not. We have found a spot in a small channel a couple of hundred yards from the shore which is well protected from the winds from the west and we touch bottom for a couple of hours each tide. Rather conveniently it has, if was sporadic, free wifi available, which we believe comes from the town hall. 

One of our anchorages in San V de la B. Note the washing on the line and the snow on the mountains in the background

The old part of the walled town is well preserved in parts and has a fort overlooking the bay at one end and a church at the other, with a narrow street between the two. We visited the fort yesterday, the highlight for me being the view from (nearly) the top.

The fort above the town at San V de la B

We are currently sitting out the latest wind and rain blowing through watching the weather and looking for the next opportunity to move further west. However as you will see from the photos, it is not exactly a bad place to have to wait!  

An aerial view of San V (not taken by us)

Wendy’s Diary 4 May 2012 – The rain in Spain falls mainly in April!

We stayed in the marina at Hondarribia for 10 days and with WIFI included on board. It was very nice, and not expensive at 11 euros per night, but still took another chunk out of our budget that we were hoping to avoid, but anchoring anywhere really would have been miserable. We spent the time exploring the area by bike, despite the persistent rain. I am not quite sure what the locals thought to us cycling around in our full sailing gear, but we enjoyed it despite the weather.

The one day the sun shone we naively took a marked hiking route as somewhere new to explore. This took us up to a tiny hamlet named Guadaloupe (yes really), up being the operative word, as it was perched rather spectacularly on half way up the mountainside. The route started on a nice bit of tarmac road, only wide enough for one vehicle, but remote enough that not many cars used it anyway. I commented that it was how I like cycling, on a nice smooth surface but without traffic.

After a couple of miles of more up than down, the road veered sharply round to the left, but the hiking route was marked as straight on up a footpath. OK, it was another hill so we decided to give it a go, and pushed the bikes until we came out on a small plateau with a fabulous view of the area. The signpost pointed up another hill which became steeper and steeper, with more ruts and rocks than you find climbing a path up Snowden. With John persuading me that the road was only another couple of hundred meters we plodded on for another half mile pushing the bikes – John even finished up carrying his at one point but I couldn’t quite manage that.

When we finally emerged at Guadaloupe the view truly was spectacular - all the way up the coast Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne and the start of a certain sand-dune that I took a disliking to a few weeks before on our way down the French coast.  A beer was top of my priority list after such a challenging climb and we found the local revelry, more by chance than anything as it didn’t have any signs outside. We treated ourselves to the menu of the day, a typical Spanish 3 course meal plus coffee, marvelling at the drop in prices compared to France (which we could still see!). Apparently they are so well known that they have sufficient customers so don’t bother with a sign.

John on the terrace at Guadaloupe

 The view, the meal and the ride down made the trek up the hill worthwhile. Since the car accident 3 years ago and then breaking my ankle last year I have become far more aware and scared of danger. Riding downhill on small folding bikes normally keeps my hands on the brake handles for fear of falling off on a bend. However it was a sunny day, the road was dry (a proper tarmac one on the way down) and I whizzed down the hill with a silly smile on my face and got a rush of adrenalin that my children would probably need to skydive to achieve. It was a fantastic day out.

 We finally decided that the level of swell and wind direction was suitable to leave on 27 April. We set off just after lunch with a target destination of Motriko (30 miles away) programmed into the chart plotter, with options to drop out at a couple of nearer ports if the conditions became unfriendly. Despite having taken a sea-sickness tablet before we left, it became another voyage on which I fed the fishes and consoled myself with the thought that it was good for waistline! John helmed for almost the entire trip and around 10.30 we entered the river that led to the harbour to discover that the channel was unmarked, and not where our chart plotter thought it was. We found some very shallow water decided to quit whilst we were ahead and made a quick exit through some breaking waves that had not been there on the way in and headed to Bermeo instead.

Bermeo is a large harbour, the outer parts of which is full of huge fishing boats and from the smell, obviously housed a fish factory.  The swell was still quite uncomfortable here and I really wanted somewhere a bit flatter to settle for the night. We continued on through a second basin, again full of fishing boats and behind a large mole John spotted the inner basin with pontoons and no swell. I may have kicked him in the shins if he wanted to avoid paying at this stage, it was late, I was tired and I wasn’t feeling very well. We found what appeared to be the only free berth big enough for us and tied up at approaching midnight. John went in search of the capitainerie on the off chance there was a night watchman (or should that be watchperson?) on duty to find that the gate at the top of the pontoon was locked. We did a quick tide/weather check and agreed that a 7am start was necessary to continue to the next river where we thought we would be able to anchor.

The river at Plentzia

A few hours of uninterrupted sleep and we headed out as planned toward Plentzia, a mere 16 miles along the coast. I took the helm once we were out of the harbour and whilst the sun wasn’t exactly putting in an appearance, it was at least starting to get light. It rained and rained but 5 hours later we entered the bay, and found our way into the river which was hidden from view until almost upon it. There wasn’t any space to anchor but quite a few free mooring buoys, so we picked up a pair fore and aft and breathed a sigh of relief that we had found somewhere calm that hopefully wouldn’t cost very much.

It wasn’t long before we met one of the neighbouring boat owners who informed us that the owner of the mooring we were using only used it in the summer and we would be ok to stay there for up to a week if we wanted, no charge. Oh, and by the way, it is a really strong set of moorings, and here is my phone number if you need anything! That set the tone for the place and we met quite a few locals over the next few days, all of whom were very welcoming and friendly. Most of whom were bailing out their tenders as we had had so much rain!

We were two boats upstream from a boat the same as Annie and Philippe’s, and on our second day the owner arrived to check all was ok. When he had finished he came aboard for a coffee and a chat and stayed for the next 4 hours. I can’t think of the equivalent term to golf widow, but get John talking technical stuff to do with the boat and you get the picture! Jon Mikel found everything fascinating and asked if we would still be there the next day as he wanted to bring us something. From that point he sort of adopted us during our stay, making sure we were ok. He returned with a town flag and a bottle of the locally brewed aperitif, which tastes a bit like cough medicine.

John and Jon

We had mentioned cycling or dinghying up to a local castle “Burgos” which is in my “Guide to Northern Spain”, a non sailing book we have on board. He said he would happily take us by car instead, an offer we accepted and found it just as good as the guide book suggested – on the outside. It used to be open to the public, then changed hands and became a restaurant specialising in medieval banquets, went bust and closed about 5 years ago. It is in fantastic condition and to me looked like a fairytale castle from stories like Sleeping Beauty.

The fairytale castle - sadly empty and unused.

On the way back he took us to the Vizcaya Bridge Shuttle in Bilbao, it was the first bridge of its kind in the world and in 2006 was made a world heritage site. Rather than taking the shuttle we took the lift 54 meters up and walked across the top, which of course had spectacular views.

The bridge at Bilbao

We are both internet “anoraks”, whether it be podcasts (we still haven’t missed a single episode of the Archers since we left the UK),  facebook and emails for keeping in touch with family and friends, blogging and in my case, filing online tax returns! Whilst the rest can be fun the latter is not and I successfully submitted mine from Hondarribia and then took on the challenge of John’s which of course included his French income. I know I am an accountant by trade, but I only ever worked in the public sector, so this was a completely new subject to me. I have downloaded more pages from the HMRC website than I care to remember and still don’t know if I have got my head around “foreign tax credit relief” so if anyone reading this has any expertise in this field they would like to share please get in touch!! Anyway, if you happen to be in Plentzia and want a nice bar with WIFI, go to the Socaire Bar, tucked in a square across the road from the east corner of the little marina – it was lovely (apart from the tax returns bit) and John recommends the tapas.

At 6 O’clock this morning (tide and time waits for no man) we left this little haven of flat waters and sailed (actually sailed without the motor most of the way – hooray!) to first Loredo for a nose around. Over 20 miles of calm sea with a friendly wind was luxury after the previous passage.

 John has spotted the marina on google earth with no boats in it. Google earth is another excellent tool for passage planning. I surmised it must be new, but he checked the date on the map and it was over a year old! So to satisfy his curiosity I googled “Why aren’t there any boats in Loredo marina” to discover that for over a year after the marina was completed (and I think at a cost of 23 million euros) there has been an ongoing argument between the local council who own it and the company who won the contract to manage the site, and so it sits empty. Row after row of immaculate pontoons inside an enormous new sea wall (presumably it was this that cost the bulk of the money).

The new sea wall protecting the empty marina - each concrete block is individually numbered, the highest number we spotted was 17 thousand and something.

We then headed across the bay to Santona, and up to the top of the navigable part of the river (for masted boats anyway), looking for a suitable anchorage. The wind had picked up by the afternoon and this inland bit of sea had become choppy so we entered the small harbour just before the road bridge crosses the river in search of somewhere sheltered to stop.  We settled on a pontoon that was separate from the marina part, and out of the way of the big fishing boats. John went off in search of bread whilst I stayed behind in case someone appeared and told us to “get off my land”. I thought, ah, I nice peaceful half hour to relax and chill out. No sooner had John gone than a dredger half the size of the harbour arrived, and began work about 30 yards away. So much for peace and quiet! John came back and took a nap and whilst the dredger did its stuff for a couple of hours, I took the opportunity to write up my diary.  

The pontoon at Collindres before the dredger arrived.

The dredger - far too big and close to get the whole vessel in the picture!