From Potes to Laredo on the coast near Bilbao
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, my towel, my clothes, the teatowel. Its now that you yearn for those simple pleasures of a nice bed, bathroom, clean 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.
Here's the trail of my route from the entrance to where I eventually pitched and parked up. What suprising detail was stored of my whereabouts.
I shall stay put today, maybe walk down the road 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. Here's the entrance to the campsite.
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, he said, 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 (which made me rather jealous), though he came over and 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.
Here's my Pinacle Soloist which I was very pleased with particularly after I worked out that a can of gas fits neatly inside. There's my staple supper, pasta, chorizo and peppers. 
The last campsite probably at Laredo. The ride was fine, just under 100 miles, first off 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 fully plumbed but just coming out of the ground which I have never encountered before 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 from here 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.