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We treated ourselves to a wonderful continental breakfast, excellent coffee, fresh orange juice and apricot marmalade on the first toast we’ve had since leaving England.
The Spanish lads that had returned noisily to their tent at 5.30 in the morning slept fitfully as we packed up, carefully making as much noise as possible. I managed to find three or four things to throw into the bin next to their pitch, having to repeatedly slam the lid to make sure it was shut. The sun was shining as we left the site but the peak of the mountain had cloud rolling across it above us. I joked with Kez that our road was going up there and we laughed at the absurdity of the notion before realising a little further on that our road was indeed taking us directly up to the top. We cycled some and pushed some as masochistic health nuts puffed their way past in sweaty lycra, but before too long we were high up on the peak of Igueldo in a completely different climate from two hours ago. Clouds swept across the ridge driven by the cold wind sweeping up over the craggy coastline from the Atlantic. Horses with thick manes huddled against the weather as we passed, and occasionally through the rolling grey murk we could spy little points of glinting light that were sunlit yachts floating serenely in the ocean to the North, like faint apparitions from another dimension. We continued along the ridge enjoying the dramatic views and introducing ourselves to furry faced donkeys before the descent started. Pretty soon our brakes were being tested to the limit as we carefully cruised down out of the cloud, around hairpin bends, past noisy streams rushing down the mountain, through cold dark rocky clefts and views across the valley to the South where the motorway took the more sensible route around the mountains. By the time we reached the bottom my hot brake pads were squealing like a sick violin hurting my ears, and our hands were aching from holding the brake levers. Soon we found the turning to our camp site which hilariously swept steeply up to the high cliffs above the town. Halfway up, taking a breather, we spied the towns other camp site far below, just round the corner from where we’d started the climb. We decided to continue up anyway having come this far, and we were pleased with our pitch once we’d finally checked in. A sheltered grassy corner with a wall just the right height to sit on with a bottle of wine.

we took the main road out of Hondarribia and over Monte Jaizkebel. Being Sunday the traffic wasn’t too horrendous, and the steady gradient of the highway made the long climb more manageable. Even so Kez was less than ecstatic about reaching her first proper mountain pass, demanding breathlessly that it should definitely be the last. The long descent did nothing to cheer her as we coasted at fair speed down the dual carriageway taking heart from the fact that other cyclists were taking the same route, but still a bit unnerved at having to negotiate sliproads with traffic joining from the right. Things got worse when getting confused by the signs, lane changes and flyovers we coasted merrily through a tunnel and found ourselves at the start of a motorway with no obvious way to get off. The crash barriers were too high to lift the loaded bikes over so there was nothing for it but to remove all the panniers, roll them underneath, throw the bikes over the top then squeeze through ourselves, and down the spikey slippy verge beyond. The place was a maze of new roads and roadworks that left the GPS totally confused, but the mild peril of finding ourselves on a motorway seemed to cheer Kez up a bit as I took us back and forth on a cycleway trying to find our way down into the streets of Donostia-San Sabastian. Eventually we made it through the industrial outskirts and towerblocked suburbs finding ourselves in the smart bay area and stopped on the busy promenade to gaze at the beautiful bay. Kez had had enough of the traffic and hubbub though and the realisation that camp site was near the top of Mount Igueldo didn’t really sink in until we’d heaved and pushed our bikes upwards for three miles, albeit with wonderful views of the dramatic rocky coast and sparkling blue ocean that heaved and foamed around inaccessible boulder strewn beaches hundreds of feet below us. Drinks and tapas in the camp site bar were well deserved after a tough day. A short one tomorrow, hopefully all downhill.

The night wasn’t one of the best apart from teenager racket, the annoying noise of squeaky airbeds and snoring from tents right next to us, there was some very heavy rain that caused various commotions as campers tried to batten down their hatches at around 3am. We tried to lay in since we weren’t leaving today but the sudden loud woosh of an airbed being uncorked in the tent next to us woke Kez with a start that made her swear out loud about peoples lack of consideration for others. We cheered ourselves with superb espressos from the bar and were just eyeing up two large glazed and chocolate dipped croissants that were sitting on the bar next to us when someone beat us to them, and we sadly watched them being carried away to a table at the back of the bar. We walked back into town and spent some time looking at the items and prices in the ‘Dia’ supermercado before finding the rest of the town busy with open shops and heaving cafés. A small bookshop had our camp site guide and we sat on the side of the bay to study it while people swam, sunbathed and tried unsuccessfully to net the fish that swam around them. We walked up into the old town enoyed views of the mountains through ruined fortifications and lunched on a nice salad with an assortment of Iberico meats in a restaurant at the top of the town. We managed to avoid sitting in our tiny pitch with the noisy campers all evening by making full use of the camp site bar until we were too tipsy to care.

The cycling was lovely along the cliff tops this morning. Fantastic views of the Atlantic, craggy rock faces and striking violet blue flowers as we trundled towards Hendaye and Spain just beyond. We shared the road with quite a few racing cyclists out training in the hills and enjoyed a descent with views over the Baie De Chingoudy, the huge bay that seperates France and Spain at the atlantic coast. Our arrival in Spain was a fairly low key affair. No flamenco fanfair, border photos or free straw donkey, we just bumped over a dodgy patch of road that presumably neither administration consider their problem then I noticed the signs were different colours and that I didn’t understand the road markings. We stopped on the pavement of a tree lined avenue to work out where we should be heading.
‘Are we actually in Spain now?’ Kez asked.
‘Errm.. Yeah’ I replied.
Being the land of siesta at around lunchtime the place was very quiet. Shuttered shops and silent offices mainly but I managed to find a small corner shop that was open and bought a carton of Don Simon grape juice and a packet of chocolate biscuit things that were like eating a large mouthful of sawdust covered in a micro layer of chocolate that served only to make your fingers sticky. Still without a camp site guide we decided to head for the nearest indicated on the GPS hoping it would be suitable. We heaved our bikes up a narrow concrete lane that wound us needlessly over a good portion of Mount Jaizkibel before arriving at the site which thankfully had space and was a reasonable price. I say space, but actually we were shown to a narrow strip of grass crammed with tents and managed to pitch in what could only be called a gap. Noisy drunken Spanish teenagers sought the attention of everyone by being generally annoying and messy in the corner, but it was the weekend and the site had a bar we could do some sitting in later. We took the shortish walk down into the town of Hondarribia where we enjoyed the view across the bay to France and discovered that we could have saved ourselves a lot of effort by catching a small ferry boat across the mouth of the bay for pedestrians and cyclists which might have been a nicer way to cross the border, but hey ho.
The girl in the tourist office explained that the town was having some kind of fiesta to do with fishermen, so all the shops would be closed today. We didn’t find any sort of festivities that would force shops to close, but I like their style anyway. We decided to eat in the bar tonight and stay tomorrow to explore the old part of town and find a camp site guide if the shops could be bothered to open on a Saturday. The site bar provided cheap beer, a relief after the extortionate price of a small frothy lager in France, and we ate a good ensalada mixta with patatas bravas, albondigas and redondos de ternedo which wasn’t too bad considering the overworked, curly haired sweaty barman did all the cooking.