Where's Bertie? He's in a municipal Aire at Llanes, where it costs €3 for 24 hours (exact location: 43.42394, -4.76796).
Weather: Mainly sunny, but with clouds coming and going.
It was a chilly 2 degrees as I set out for a run at first light this morning. Being so early, there was nothing going on on the river (lots of canoeists yesterday, rowing fast circuits involving jumping out onto the beach, running along dragging the canoe, then doing a quick launch back into the water), but I entertained myself by investigating the other side of the estuary. It's a long beach over there, although the tide was in, leaving no beach behind. I have the mental image of a hot summer's day, with an early afternoon high tide, with hundreds of holiday makers gradually migrating to huddle together on a smaller and smaller patch of sand.
Mick was up and raring to roll by the time I got back, so not long after breakfast, off we set, intending to move 20km along the coast to a nice spot on an estuary.
For reasons that are a little unfathomable in retrospect, we didn't even stop there, rejecting the location before we even got to the car park itself, even though the car park, when we found it, was really quite lovely.
We then tried another place two kilometres along the coast, but that one wasn't attractive, although it would have been a good base to take a look at that stretch of coast. So, we came to Llanes.
I had been pre-warned that the Aire here has the most ridiculously complicated entry system, and that warning was valid. Worse, at 11am, the partly-misted-up touch screen was largely unreadable with the sun on it, making it an extra trial to navigate my way through inputting passport number, country, address, name and email address, not to mention having to choose a numbered parking bay (then choosing another one when it erroneously said my first choice was taken). Accordingly, I didn't trouble myself with inputting accurate information. Considering the price of €3 per day, it's a mystery why the town decided to use the most complicated system ever encountered, and I hope that someone has told them that it is putting people off from staying here. The Italian chap who was just arriving as we got back from our walk would almost certainly have failed the entry test if we hadn't helped, and at least three other vans have driven off from the barrier since we have been here (why would Spaniards even carry their passports? How many people, like me, would just input any random number into that field to see if it will accept it?).
Not wanting to have to go through such trials a second time, I made a snap decision that we would stay here for two nights. Whilst the location of the Aire is nothing to write home about, our walk along the fortified coast, and through the town had us immediately take a liking to the place and if we were allowed to stay for three nights, we would. (I wonder how long one has to leave for before the 48-hour max stay resets itself?)
Here's a glimpse of the bit of coast we walked, running the length of the town:
These two snaps were taken from the same spot
I failed to take any snaps of the town itself. Maybe I'll think to do that tomorrow.
Our choice of coffee stop by the river in town proved to be good, as the waiter somehow devined that we would appreciate a bit of wifi and, unsoliciated, wrote down the password for us. Finally, after four failed attempts on slow wifi elsewhere, I have a new audiobook downloaded.
It's been far too long since we had proper cakes from a proper cake shop, but almost immediately after leaving the café, we fell into a Pasteleria. So excellent did the display look, it was difficult making a choice, but not knowing the Spanish for 'Oh gosh, I really don't know!', we made snap decisions when the assistant got to us. Mick's selection was somewhat larger than mine:
Intentions were good to go back out this afternoon, but our late lunch was a large one and a certain lassitude set in. We'll have to hope the weather is good again tomorrow for further explorations.
Weather: Mainly sunny, but with clouds coming and going.
It was a chilly 2 degrees as I set out for a run at first light this morning. Being so early, there was nothing going on on the river (lots of canoeists yesterday, rowing fast circuits involving jumping out onto the beach, running along dragging the canoe, then doing a quick launch back into the water), but I entertained myself by investigating the other side of the estuary. It's a long beach over there, although the tide was in, leaving no beach behind. I have the mental image of a hot summer's day, with an early afternoon high tide, with hundreds of holiday makers gradually migrating to huddle together on a smaller and smaller patch of sand.
Mick was up and raring to roll by the time I got back, so not long after breakfast, off we set, intending to move 20km along the coast to a nice spot on an estuary.
For reasons that are a little unfathomable in retrospect, we didn't even stop there, rejecting the location before we even got to the car park itself, even though the car park, when we found it, was really quite lovely.
We then tried another place two kilometres along the coast, but that one wasn't attractive, although it would have been a good base to take a look at that stretch of coast. So, we came to Llanes.
I had been pre-warned that the Aire here has the most ridiculously complicated entry system, and that warning was valid. Worse, at 11am, the partly-misted-up touch screen was largely unreadable with the sun on it, making it an extra trial to navigate my way through inputting passport number, country, address, name and email address, not to mention having to choose a numbered parking bay (then choosing another one when it erroneously said my first choice was taken). Accordingly, I didn't trouble myself with inputting accurate information. Considering the price of €3 per day, it's a mystery why the town decided to use the most complicated system ever encountered, and I hope that someone has told them that it is putting people off from staying here. The Italian chap who was just arriving as we got back from our walk would almost certainly have failed the entry test if we hadn't helped, and at least three other vans have driven off from the barrier since we have been here (why would Spaniards even carry their passports? How many people, like me, would just input any random number into that field to see if it will accept it?).
Not wanting to have to go through such trials a second time, I made a snap decision that we would stay here for two nights. Whilst the location of the Aire is nothing to write home about, our walk along the fortified coast, and through the town had us immediately take a liking to the place and if we were allowed to stay for three nights, we would. (I wonder how long one has to leave for before the 48-hour max stay resets itself?)
Here's a glimpse of the bit of coast we walked, running the length of the town:
These two snaps were taken from the same spot
I failed to take any snaps of the town itself. Maybe I'll think to do that tomorrow.
Our choice of coffee stop by the river in town proved to be good, as the waiter somehow devined that we would appreciate a bit of wifi and, unsoliciated, wrote down the password for us. Finally, after four failed attempts on slow wifi elsewhere, I have a new audiobook downloaded.
It's been far too long since we had proper cakes from a proper cake shop, but almost immediately after leaving the café, we fell into a Pasteleria. So excellent did the display look, it was difficult making a choice, but not knowing the Spanish for 'Oh gosh, I really don't know!', we made snap decisions when the assistant got to us. Mick's selection was somewhat larger than mine:
Intentions were good to go back out this afternoon, but our late lunch was a large one and a certain lassitude set in. We'll have to hope the weather is good again tomorrow for further explorations.
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