75.8km – 9H22’
Bilbao and 3000 Km: 41 days 3 hours and 57 minutes
At 6:00 the team is in the van for a 20km reconnaissance so we can cross Bilbao with as little trouble as possible. It’s a city of 1 million people and the biggest city in the Basque country. It’s also very stressful for the team who has to guide Serge, because between the mountains and the river this city is a tangle of roads that drives you crazy. Even though the city is almost deserted it takes us an hour to make the reconnaissance. Yesterday in the camper it took me 2 hours to trace the route, which makes a total of 3 hours just to cross a city. Now you can understand why we didn’t have time to visit the famous Guggenheim museum, which we didn’t even see. To be quite frank, this industrial and harbor city (The 2nd Port of Spain after Barcelona) didn’t make a lasting impression on us.
No sooner is Serge at the starting blocks than he is already in action; a slow trot and great motivation today: the clocking of 3000 km. There will be no encounters during the day, except for a few drops of rain. Then, as is often happens near the sea, the sky clears.
We are leaving the Basque country and entering the province of Cantabria, even more mountainous than Bizkaia. Serge clocks 3000 km on the Atlantic Coast, 1.5 km after Islares.
Laredo is a seaside resort which isn’t very attractive seen from above, in spite of claims by most of the guidebooks and websites that it is the most beautiful beach on the Atlantic. Unregulated urbanization has disfigured the site.
There follows a succession of small towns which Serge goes through and he continues his route to clock additional kilometers, then he doubles back to where we are spending the night on route N634. It isn’t late and he seems to be thinking about the extra time he can clock. There are days when I can’t understand such stubbornness!
2 remarks this evening:
• Every day we are able to find a baguette to eat; so we Frenchies are not at all out of our element.
• The Spanish walk a lot and we cross, even on main roads, old and very old people who are walking and talking together!
Tomorrow we will go through the cities of, Torrelavega, Cartes, Yermo and Cabezon