clairedavieswriter

Today marked the beginning of my End-to-End project, proper.

But before that, we learned that our stop last night, Orio, was once a whaling town, whose ships hunted as far afield as Newfoundland. We saw hints of its past in murals:

… graffiti:

… and street art – these fish were made from sardine cans:

Today Orio is better known as a centre for racing traineras: open rowing boats that were originally used by anchovy and sardine fishermen along the Cantabrian coast.
When we set off this morning, following the river Oria gently upstream, we passed the town’s super modern trainera boathouse (on the right of the picture below):

The skies were heavy but the rain held off for the first hour:

Guillaume had another darstardly trick up his sleeve today, involving a long, suspiciously unpaved section through open country. But after our experience in the eucalyptus forest, Jon had the measure of him. We re-routed along a perfectly good road that hugged the river valley and then joined a fantastic cycle path which took us all the way into San Sebastián – or Donostia, as the locals call it. Bidegorria is Basque for cycle path.

As a punishment, Guillaume was relegated to mileage-counting duties, while responsibility for guiding us went to his brother, Hugo headphones.
I mean really Guillaume, how could you not have suggested this:

Meanwhile, Bernard had been looking forward to a visit to the seaside, but once again his bucket and spade remained in his panniers (and our waterproofs remained firmly on): San Sebastián really wasn’t looking her best:

Later, Bernard got within spitting distance of the beach at Hendaye:

… St Jean de Luz:

… and Bidart:

But the only people venturing out were surfers or dog walkers.

It wasn’t unremittingly wet though. Jon even got his sunglasses out at lunchtime. We ate our gourmet picnic lunch in a children’s playground overlooking the French border.

And the sun was out again a couple of hours later, when we stopped for chocolat chaud in St Jean de Luz.

In between, we’d crossed the bridge into France:

And picked up EuroVélo route 1 – also known as the Velodyssée, or the Atlantic Coast route, which we’ll be following till Bordeaux.

It’s so well sign-posted, I may not need either of the Garmin brothers…

We’ve got the day off tomorrow – our legs are looking forward to some R&R.
I’ll leave you with my sign of the day, spotted on the way into Biarritz: