Friday 27 October 2017

Friday 27 October - Laredo

Where's Bertie? He's still in the same dead-end road/car park as yesterday, by the beach at Laredo.
Weather: Mainly overcast but with a few sunny spells.

At a glance Laredo doesn't look like it offers much opportunity for walking beyond the beach and the adjacent promenade, but even so I did a quick search in wikiloc.com and was surprised to find that there was a short circular route that visited the hill behind the old town.

We had been unaware of the existence of the old town when we ventured in that direction yesterday, only learning of it when I discovered that Laredo gets a small mention in our guidebook.

So, after taking sequential runs along the promenade this morning (Mick's was delayed as he must have slept with his arm in an odd position last night, leaving him in lots of pain when he moved or straightened it this morning), we set out early in the afternoon to take a look at the recommended walking route.

The arrow I've marked on this photo points at the prominence where we ended up...

...although, inexplicably, the advertised route turned back towards the town just 300m before the top. We hadn't expended all that energy in walking up a hill to omit visiting the high point, so we made the detour, which afforded good views both back down to the town and beach...

...and, in the other direction, along the rugged coast.


Coming back through the town, I happened to spot the name 'Santander' (as in the bank) above the door of an old-looking building and it occurred to me that, as Santander offers free wifi in the UK, it might be worth checking here. Wifi there was, and it even extended to a nearby bench, so a very late lunch (I had taken sandwiches with us, but we'd not paused to eat them) was had whilst I downloaded some podcasts. We are listening to a series on the History of Rome over tea each evening and, carelessly, I'd allowed us to run out of episodes a couple of days ago.

We were debating this evening whether to move on tomorrow or to stay another night. The forecast being poor for the weekend and Monday led to points for and against both options, however, the final deciding factor is that our quest to find a functioning toilet in town, where we can empty Bertie's cassette, has been unsuccessful (plenty of toilets; none of them working - even the one with a green light on saying it is), which means we are going to have to move on.

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