So nasty little Anna, delayed us for almost four hours. That was storm Anna, not the lovely Anna Carrol from Galway

Traffic had built up in Cherbourg with the rush hour, and about twenty miles from the city the rain came on. Driving rain, dark unlit sixty five KPH road, car head lights cutting the eyes out of me, and them all driving on the wrong side of the road.

It didn’t help progress, but we made it down the road after a four hour drive. 

We’ve stopped at a fire station in a very small town called Heric, free parking overnight, and the local Christmas lights are very fetching.

A couple of drinks and then bed for me alas, because we ‘re driving 360 miles tomorrow to get to Biarritz, which is allegedly on the edge of sunny days….

Well we arrived in San Sebastian, Spain instead of Biarritz France. This was because it was only around twenty miles down the road, and as we were dead keen to get to the sun, on we went.

The drive down had dozens of kilometres of road works, two major snarl ups, Nantes and Bordeaux. Tens of thousands of forty footers, which we used in the worst driving conditions by staying pretty close to them, assuming they knew the roads.  

Anyway we arrived safely without incident and made dinner in our new home for the night. We were about sixty meters from the pounding waves of the Bay of Biscay thundering fifty feet below us. 

A quiet stroll around the old town promised good things to come tomorrow, as it really is a fine city.  San Sebastian, or the part we were in is called Donastia. 

When he set off to relocate to another part of the town, a kindly local informed  us we had a flat tyre on the back. The one that I thought might have a slow puncture. Luckily enough I carry a compressor, and got it inflated enough. We eventually found a repair shop, via Google which turned out to repair scooter and motor bike tyres only. He told us of another place, and we drove all round only to give up and get out of the crazy traffic. We have seen parts of San Sebastian that even God hasn’t! 

The Spanish do things like ram the vehicle in front gently to extend the parking place! Just pull up 

and double park, there was one time, and a cigarette paper might not have fitted between Helga and some dollars! All while the driver of the errant van just looked on, like a retarded  marshmallow. Still, we made it out unscathed.

Getting the book out, Margaret found a promising spot. And it is. Even the radio station has no narrative, just music that we know and love from the seventies on. S.Amara 108.0 MHz lovely jubbly. And on that note, we are still getting UK TV, even BBC NI and UTV.

    

We now find ourselves in a small town called Lekeitio. N 43 21 29 7 W 2 30 25 5. Where we sit Is a free council run Aire about five minutes walk into the town centre. spotless, with Euro Relais and just slightly sloping.

Having walked around in daylight we decided to come back later and try the tapas, called Pintxos, pronounced pinchos, because the ones we tried were very good. Margaret had field mushrooms with garlic bacon and parsley. I had octopus, when the girl said “tentacles” I misunderstood, thought I was getting something totally different. Like in the jungle

The Baque country seems to be very proud of their heritage, Street signs and road signs are written in Basque, and we found the language to be well hard to understand. More grunting and waving was needed, and that was just to get a puncture repaired. 

They are a happy looking band except for elderly ladies who, without exception walk around scowling. 

The coastline that we’ve seen so far has been amazing, more like Ireland or Cornwall than Spain. Lots of green fields and healthy looking fauna, but of course this is all helped by the amount of rain the place gets.