12-08-18 – 13-08-18 – Astigarra (San Sebastian), Basque Country
We were really looking forward to hanging out on the beautiful beaches in San Sebastian, but when we got to the city’s arena where we knew we could park for free, we realised something must be going on. The arena was cordoned off and there were lots of Police around. Dan quickly did an internet search and found out that we’d only gone and arrived during the week of Semana Grande. This is a huge Spanish festival of music arts, dance and religion that goes on for a whole week, and it was obvious to us that whatever was going on at the arena was part of the festivities. Clearly we were not going to be able to park there, but it seems at other times of the year, it would be perfectly fine. We had planed to ride the 20 minutes into the centre (GPS 43.297403, -1.970098) (approximately 2 miles), but with nowhere to park, we made another plan.
Given all the other parking areas were closer to the centre and it was quite late in the day, we made the disappointing decision to move on. We felt that the centre would be rammed with people and traffic, and why put ourselves through a stressful experience only to be unlikely be able to park.
We ended up staying a 10 minute journey further out of San Sebastian at a Cider factory. (GPS 43.2871991,-1.945746,1488) It was a great location, and you could go on a cider tour followed by dinner, but we arrived too late for that. The location had moho services so we were grateful to offload our grey water. We had a great view overlooking the apple orchards. It started to chuck it down with rain, then came the thunder and so we settled in for the night by turning off all our lights and watching the lightening for our evenings entertainment. There’s something about this that makes it feel all cosy inside.
The following day, we left after lunch to head back over the border to France, our first destination being Ondres, a beach town. It felt weird going back as we started our journey in Northern France, but it also felt good to be going back to familiarity.
