Where's Bertie? He's in a municipal Aire in the village of Lanestosa. It costs €8 to obtain a card which gives you 24hrs of electric and 10 minutes of hot shower (toilet and washing up sinks are free). It is requested that visitors purchase at least one card if they are staying here, which I read to mean you could stay two days and just buy one card if you didn't want the services. Exact location: 43.21732, -3.43858.
Weather: Mainly overcast, with a couple of light showers but quite a few sunny intervals.
As always seems to be the case in Spain (and, in fact, in most European places we've been, outside of the UK), people were out in force taking their morning exercise along the promenade in Laredo as I set out for a joggette just after first light. The cleaners were out too, including the men pushing their rubbish trolleys and brandishing witches' brooms to sweep up the leaves, and a road sweeper driving around clearing leaves off the roads. It is, of course, late October, so the leaves continue falling whilst their predecessors are cleared, but the sweepers (manual and mechanical) will continue to battle them on a daily basis (except for Sunday, I presume).
Mick tag-teamed me in the running stakes, and as 'first light' is coming late just now (an hour earlier from tomorrow, mind), it was a late breakfast by the time he got back.
Mick's arm is now better; today his hip was troubling him, so I left him sitting resting it as I trotted off to town to avail myself of Santander's wifi to ensure we have a continued supply of crosswords. Alas, having walked the ten minutes into town, I discovered that Santander didn't have their wifi turned on, and as I neither speak the right language nor bank with Santander, I wasn't in a position to complain. It wasn't a wasted trip: I found some even better free wifi just around the corner.
I had observed on arrival in Laredo that the cashier in Lidl had spoken to me in Spanish, not Basque, and it was only when we popped by there again today and the same happened that I looked around and realised that all of the signs within view were monolingual. We had left the Basque Country at some point since Bilbao.
We didn't stay out of it for long; our journey inland to Lanestosa brought us back into the region.
Arriving at the Aire here at approaching 1pm, I set about preparing a combined lunch and elevenses, whilst Mick went straight out to the Tourist Office, as I could find no information online as to its opening hours, but knew it was open right then, as we had just driven past. The signage in the Aire said that we could buy the cards required to operate the electricity and showers here from any business in town, but it seemed that the place most likely to speak English was the Tourist Office. So they did, and Mick came back not only with two cards (we thought we would start with two nights here; we may stay longer) but also a good amount of information from the helpful assistant there.
Despite having good information about the walking routes nearby, we are saving them for another day, although in the knowledge that the forecast for the next two days is a little damp (as it was today, but it's not been bad, actually). The only activity this afternoon was a look around the village. It's medieval, I believe, and except for the main road, comprises narrow streets cobbled in large pebbles - not great for walking on and noisy for driving. We're certainly glad that we followed our noses rather than the SatNav's directions when we arrived and thus Bertie only had to negotiate one small section of narrow cobbledness!
It's the time of year when the trees get pollarded, allowing you to see how their branches have been spliced together over the years
Mick was rather taken with this abandoned grand house. With the structural issues it is exhibiting at roof level, by lack of maintenance, it is sadly likely that restoring it will now be prohibitively expensive and thus it will just fall further and further into disrepair.
Weather: Mainly overcast, with a couple of light showers but quite a few sunny intervals.
As always seems to be the case in Spain (and, in fact, in most European places we've been, outside of the UK), people were out in force taking their morning exercise along the promenade in Laredo as I set out for a joggette just after first light. The cleaners were out too, including the men pushing their rubbish trolleys and brandishing witches' brooms to sweep up the leaves, and a road sweeper driving around clearing leaves off the roads. It is, of course, late October, so the leaves continue falling whilst their predecessors are cleared, but the sweepers (manual and mechanical) will continue to battle them on a daily basis (except for Sunday, I presume).
Mick tag-teamed me in the running stakes, and as 'first light' is coming late just now (an hour earlier from tomorrow, mind), it was a late breakfast by the time he got back.
Mick's arm is now better; today his hip was troubling him, so I left him sitting resting it as I trotted off to town to avail myself of Santander's wifi to ensure we have a continued supply of crosswords. Alas, having walked the ten minutes into town, I discovered that Santander didn't have their wifi turned on, and as I neither speak the right language nor bank with Santander, I wasn't in a position to complain. It wasn't a wasted trip: I found some even better free wifi just around the corner.
I had observed on arrival in Laredo that the cashier in Lidl had spoken to me in Spanish, not Basque, and it was only when we popped by there again today and the same happened that I looked around and realised that all of the signs within view were monolingual. We had left the Basque Country at some point since Bilbao.
We didn't stay out of it for long; our journey inland to Lanestosa brought us back into the region.
Arriving at the Aire here at approaching 1pm, I set about preparing a combined lunch and elevenses, whilst Mick went straight out to the Tourist Office, as I could find no information online as to its opening hours, but knew it was open right then, as we had just driven past. The signage in the Aire said that we could buy the cards required to operate the electricity and showers here from any business in town, but it seemed that the place most likely to speak English was the Tourist Office. So they did, and Mick came back not only with two cards (we thought we would start with two nights here; we may stay longer) but also a good amount of information from the helpful assistant there.
Despite having good information about the walking routes nearby, we are saving them for another day, although in the knowledge that the forecast for the next two days is a little damp (as it was today, but it's not been bad, actually). The only activity this afternoon was a look around the village. It's medieval, I believe, and except for the main road, comprises narrow streets cobbled in large pebbles - not great for walking on and noisy for driving. We're certainly glad that we followed our noses rather than the SatNav's directions when we arrived and thus Bertie only had to negotiate one small section of narrow cobbledness!
It's the time of year when the trees get pollarded, allowing you to see how their branches have been spliced together over the years
Mick was rather taken with this abandoned grand house. With the structural issues it is exhibiting at roof level, by lack of maintenance, it is sadly likely that restoring it will now be prohibitively expensive and thus it will just fall further and further into disrepair.
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