Portugal – December 29, 2007

Nobody had any enthusiasm for exploring Bilbao that evening, so we headed on down the road, eventually stopping in the town of Castro Urdiales on Spain’s northern coast.

The next morning Pete and Andy skipped the ‘standing around at the car’ faffage with an impromptu juggling lesson. I’m not sure who was the teacher and who was the pupil, but with four hands they were really good at juggling two balls…

Upping the ante, and lowering the total number of hands, here’s Andy juggling, count them, three of those juggly things.

As you can imagine, there was still no sign of any rain…

At this point the other car had arrived – Satu had arrived in from Finland…

…joined by Mr. Satu (née Westgarth) from whichever country he hails these days. Be warned that if you click on this picture, it will embiggen. This is true of most of the pictures here, but it’s less consequential with the rest of them.

Eventually we get to the beach at Santoña and Jac gets another picture of Andy…

By the way, I forgot to mention that the photos on this trip come from no less than six cameras, so thanks to all the photographers for their contributions.

People head out into the surf – if the beach at Bakio is like Easkey Left, then the beach at Santoña is like Enniscrone, and like Enniscrone, it’s a bit of a way to walk…

Ferg seems uncertain about what he’s doing here – perhaps thinking about when the rain will come…

Completing our group of nine is Urpu, flown in from Norway. She works half the year as a raft guide and the other half as a ski instructor. She rock climbs for fun. Some people have it too good.

After the beach we headed to the town of Ampuero, a town with a good collection of local boaters and a number of excellent rivers, apparently. I say apparently, because we never got that rain, so we never got to paddle them. Next time.

The crew went for dinner: clockwise around the table there’s Urpu, Ferg…

Andy, Pete…

Kate, Jac, Simon…

Satu and Jim…

Short work was made of quite large servings of fish and seafood.

Then we headed out to catch up with the local boaters and sample the bars of Ampuero…