BBC Radio have a series of short conversations that they call The Listening Project. The key is something powerful in a short conversation often between family members though sometimes friends. Loss and love are frequent themes. I noticed this one:
Itchy Feet – Ian and Judith
last week. Its a slightly strained conversation between what you’d have to call an elderly couple – from Yorkshire. The introduction is something like: he went off travelling on his Honda motorcycle for a four month trip and returned to his wife 14 years later (can it really be true?). Now he is planning his next trip. He’s 70. He talks about getting his visas for Russia and Mongolia, sounding like he is following in many overland motorcyclists’ wheel tracks. ‘I’m fit as a butcher’s dog’, he says, ‘when my hip gets mended’. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ve spent more time in a tent than t’Indians’.

From Potes to Laredo at EveryTrail

Saturday! 7th
Well, it rained yesterday evening so I got into my sleeping bag and tried to sleep but the rain kept me awake until it stopped some time shortly after dark. This morning its damp and cool. The showers are thankfully short though my flimsy travel towel is getting damper – in fact everything is getting grubby now. Its now that you yearn for those simple pleasures of a nice bed, bathroom, bath towels and a proper kitchen. But the roughing it is part of the fun – honestly. I bought some fresh bread from the shop and have my little jam containers purloined from the hotel for breakfast with a cup of tea (tea bags with dried milk – but its fine). It was delicious. It seems to have taken nearly the whole holiday to find fresh food. I shall stay put today, maybe walk into Potes (its 4k) and head off to the coast tomorrow, Sunday. I also read most of Venture into the Interior. Its interesting to have a parallel journey going on in my imagination. It gives some added status to my venture to Spain.

Before I left an extremely garrulous Dutch man engaged me in conversation. He is here, he said, because he won a competition to see the final stage of a cycle race around Spain. He said last night he met two girls down in Potes, half his age, who told him about a party which he accompanied them to. He says he got back to the site at 6am. He says he is an oil and grease salesman. He is travelling with two tents and was living life on this site in a large four person tent, though he showed me, just after I had got my earplugs in and helmet on, his spare tent, a Coleman 3 person tent packed up that weighed 5kgs.

Sunday 8th

The last campsite probably at Laredo. The ride was fine, just under 100 miles, first of the Picos road going north from Potes, then some nice coast road where the sun came out and then, the unavoidable motorway going from near Santander over towards Bilbao. Despite having the coordinates for this place, I got taken down unpromising roads into industrial estates before finally deciding to just look for signs and follow them. So I arrived. It’s a bit unprepossessing to start with. For sure it is right by the Parque Natural estuary/beach but there’s a peerless fence around it and it is a rather full slightly down at heel family site for the Spanish. The site owner pointed out that there are tables scattered around the site and that I should camp next to one. Actually they are sinks – washing up sinks and I am right next to one of them. They are useful, very useful to cook on, to wash up conveniently, get water to drink and cook, but incredibly ugly. Its ok. And the sun came out for a while and the temperature rose to 29. While I can see that back in the mountains there is dark cloud and rain. So I think it was a good move to come out to the coast. A British couple and a young Spanish couple have arrived since I got here. I’m looking forward to some good walks by the sea tomorrow.

Leon to Potes through the Picos at EveryTrail

Today presented a few challenges. Breakfast at the hotel was everything a hotel breakfast could be, huge variety and potentially endless, although much of it came in little containers that left a small mountain of litter on my table afterwards. Breakfast was deserted. I’ve been avoiding coffee for the last four days and it is definitely helping my stomach.
I had half a plan to head over to the Picos again and camp at Potes which Alan Rogers gives a good rating for. But the first challenge was to escape the underground car park. It presents a steep and winding concrete road up onto the street and not only that, you have to stop on the steep incline, press the button on the wall for the door to open above you and then spring out up the last part of the slope and onto the street.; OK in a car but a little tricky on a big heavy bike. I made it but with the odour of burning clutch in the air that seemed to hang in my nostrils for a while after I had ridden out of town.
I had an idea of the route, quite tight and twisty after a while and I found eventually I got into a new technique with countersteering and leaning the bike under me while I kept relatively upright. It was making corners feel much more under control. But havint just discovered this, I think we must have crossed into a different autonomous region because the road surface suddenly became much worse, full of potholes, tar banding and negative cambers. So I slowed down. Then I got high enough to be riding in cloud and at times I could only see a few yards in front of me, this combined with tight 2nd gear bends with sheer drops on one side and overhanging rock on the other. Now add the odd cow wandering over the road and you have the full picture.
After a while I reached an iconic biker location, the Puerto San Gloria, a lookout on a spectacular downward hairpin complete with a few sports bikes parked and their riders looking through the mist to the valley below. I did not stop to join them. I barely saw them and kept going down concentrating for grim death.

Eventually the mist cleared but the bends did not ease up for another 15k. But I made it down to Camping La Ilsa Picos de Europe campsite just out of Potes by 2pm. I could have revisited a site a stayed at on the way down but that would have meant another hour travelling so I decided to stay. I was initially a bit iffey about the site – it’s a bit featureless and next to a road (though behind a stone wall) but I warmed to it: English is spoken and the shop sells some fresh produce and chilled white wine. The wifi also reaches to me tent on occasions.
After tonight – just three more nights before the ferry.
Tonight I am cooking my most elaborate variation of a pasta dish: local organic onion and beef tomato cooked in olive oil with herbs, chorizo and pasta and white wine. Meanwhile a woman is playing an elaborate hiding the ball game with a large, lovely old dog. I have no idea of the breed. It pretends to growl at her and prance off as she tries to get something out of its mouth. Humans and animals. Maybe we learn something from them – or from our relationships with them.

Today I took the ride southwards on the coast road down to the bay of Arousal, but it wasn’t as successful or enjoyable as yesterday’s ride.

To the Cape of Arousal at EveryTrail

The road is not as attractive and there were roadworks in a town about 5 or 6 miles down the road and a diversion which got me completely lost. I knew the name of the town I was aiming for, Ribeira. In my lostness I got swept onto a motorway that I could see on the map but wanted to avoid. In the end I made it to Ribeira, which is the kind of town that guidebooks describe as ‘a gritty port town’, hot busy, big trucks and tricky to navigate around, but a few stops to look at the map and u turns later I was leaving town. I managed to stay on the right road back, the only event being my arrival, along with others, at a recently occurred accident. A bright yellow delivery truck and a car were severely smashed and it was impossible to work out what had happened but everyone seemed safe and completely unhurt.
Today is more humid and a little overcast. The other Brits left this morning and I think I may do the same tomorrow. Its very pleasant here but short of spending tomorrow lying on the beach or swatting flies at the campsite, I think I have exhausted things here. But I still haven’t decided where to head for tomorrow. There is a medium-sized looking town Leon about half way toward the region I want to end up at on Sunday. I might see if I can find a hotel there. There are no Alan Rogers recommended campsites there, though apparently a great many.
This holiday has been so much more successful than previous camping trips and I put that down to two things so far: I have got the right guidebook to chose campsites, so for the most part I have avoided the nasty ones which can just feel uncomfortable. Here, as in the first site I stayed in, there is a thankful variety of travellers, young couples, even the odd single person, apparently gay couples, all in a variety of tents. There’s something about the barrage of families and the slightly affluent retired folk in motorhomes that feels alienating because there is no point of contact. With the unusual travellers there is, or at least the possibility. The other ingredient – again so far – has been the weather, warm, sometimes hot, dry. There’s nothing worse for the spirits than rain, particularly when you don’t know how long it will last. The other difference is that I’ve stayed in one place if I like it rather than move on every morning in a distance-covering operation. In fact, this trip is a few days too long, a result of the hugely different ferry prices.