clairedavieswriter

Happily for Bernard and Colin, the two-night crossing was smooth, but sadly, Bilbao had not received the memo about blue skies and warm sunshine. It’s not for nothing that this region is called La España Verde.
Dressed for the deluge, we wended our way through Bilbao, crossing and re-crossing the river Nervión, including on this remarkably efficient transporter bridge (0.90c for cyclists)…

We enjoyed the excellent cycle paths (and patient drivers):

And passed one of the city’s most iconic buildings on the way up the valley:

Bernard was more interested in this sign:

Jon just wanted to show off his yellow jersey…

Leaving Bilbao’s elegant riverside buildings and heavy industries behind, we were quickly in the countryside:

And our only stretch on a main road came with a friendly sign:

We fuelled up the Spanish way: these were two of nine varieties of tortilla on offer:

It was only lunchtime, we were two thirds of the way to our destination, and feeling quite pleased with ourselves. Obviously, it was too good to last.
In truth, not everything had gone smoothly. Guillaume had clearly got out of bed the wrong side this morning, because we weren’t even out of the port when he pulled the old ‘route calculation error’ trick and refused to speak to me. But much worse was to come. Having lulled us with a glorious few miles of quiet country roads with long views…

… he pulled his most outrageous trick yet.
I should have twigged when I saw the astonished look on a local man’s face as we swept past his isolated farmhouse (in the picture above). Within minutes, we were on a rough track, which soon became a grassy path, which led round a field and up a steep muddy slope to this spot:

I decided we should press on. With the benefit of hindsight, this may not have been my best call. We plunged into a eucalyptus forest, along a barely discernible path, overgrown with gorse, brambles and all manner of other verbiage:

And then it got worse:

Honestly, the pictures don’t do it justice. I was glad of the presence of my domestique when we had to work out where the ‘path’ had gone, and to negotiate a couple of fallen trees. I have never been so grateful to see tarmac again.
We rolled into Durango at teatime, soaked from the latest downpour, the exposed skin on our legs and arms bleeding from our tussle with the undergrowth. Guillaume has yet to apologise. He‘d better be on best behaviour tomorrow.