Ride Day 10: Bilbao to Pontejos

From Bilbao we are trying to stay close to Spain's north coast.  What we've seen from other sources make it look very pretty but there are a lot of up and down rollers over the headlands.  Well, we should be well rested after two days in the city.

We got an early start out of Bilbao – a great sleep after catching up on some overdue work while we had access to internet, then on the road at about first light (0730).  (Did I mention that we found a frites joint in old town Bilbao?  I had to stop and have some.) 

I can justify frites and mayo when I'm burning 4k calories per day 

And here’s another random observation.  People here in Spain, every one of them so far, are stinking nice.  From the bikers that pass us, to the walkers we pass, to the folks in the stores, to everybody else, everyone has a smile and is willing to chat even though we have language barriers.  When we need some directions, people just stop and offer help.  We may not have one word in common but there is never any reluctance to help out.  It isn’t that way in France so much, even though I have enough rudimentary French to at least be understood.  Nonetheless, I love France for many reasons anyway.

It was a bit of a challenge navigating out of Bilbao.  As I think I mentioned the other day, Bilbao is NOT a bike friendly town.  My best advice if you are visiting by bike: take the metro into and out of town.  We rode and our route wound through some really industrial parts of town, some slums, some warehouses, but finally made it to the coastal roads.  That was nice – decent shoulders and polite drivers.

We had a great lunch in some little town by the seaside.  I went to the bakery to get bread (and chocolate croissant) while Lorie went down the street to the meat store for sliced ham and cheese.  We combined aforesaid ingredients into yummy sammies that really hit the spot!

But rain.  And lots of it.  We rode 100 km today and it rained steady for maybe 70.  It wasn’t cold but it could have been sunny and I would not have complained.  Many parts of the route today must have been the same as the route that the pilgrims walk for the Camino to Campostella de Santiago.  We passed lots of walkers.  I think that most of them think that we’re also on the “camino” – they all say “camino, camino!”  I don’t know how to say, “no, we’re just riding our bike,” so I guess that we’re on a pilgrimage, too.  Ours is to Lisbon.  Does that count for anything?

We're all pilgrims?

No idea who these guys are/were

One of the many rainy beaches we passed

We are staying tonight at a camp ground In Derby de Lorado.  This is apparently surfing Nirvana in Spain as there are VW busses and surfers everywhere.  From what we can see, there is also a fairly big surf running and there are lot of people out surfing.

But we are soaked and it is raining hard, so we were not super inspired to camp.  So we rented a box.  Literally.  It is a shipping container that has HANJIN painted over with happy hand prints, and into which a window had been carved and to which one power outlet had been led.  One light, too.  Bars on the window, too.  There’s a bed and it smells like mildew.  Lorie turned up her nose.  Me, too.  But we’ll sleep OK in our sleeping bags because we are toasted after a long, wet ride.

Our shipping container

The surfing in Derby Lorado

The weather report looks bad for tomorrow.  So more sogginess for us, it looks like.

More to follow.

Until then.