Trapped in San Sebastian

I'm reporting in from soggy San Sebastian, where it's been raining for the last few days. We're staying in a nice Pension, which we're regarding as being pretty cheap at 40 euros a night. Most places here are at least 45 and they're nowhere near as spacious and comfy as this place:)

Picking up from where I left off in the last blog, we did actually start riding. We left Irun the day after we arrived, and after not really bothering to work out a route or buy a map or anything like that, we received a powerful lesson in the virtues of proper planning. We'd been riding for about 5k, along the shoulder of this highway, when we were stopped by some highway workers, who told us that we weren't allowed to ride along there. Fair enough, we were happy to take another route. They directed us to another highway, where the cars weren't driving quite as fast, and we rode along there on the shoulder quite happily for another 5k, enjoying the sudden absence of clouds and rain. (That wasn't the lesson, it comes later)

At that point we came to a fishing village, and had a little rest break there, taking a few snapshots while we were there.

There was a lovely path around the bay that we rode along until it petered out at the base of a steep hill that we couldn't resist climbing. So more pics from the

site of an automated lighthouse.
























After fixing a few mechanical problems that resulted due to that climb (flat tyre, disc brakes rubbing), we continued on. I saw a road up into the hills, and forced Luke to ride up there (well he had to walk his bike) and wanted to keep on going off into the distance in that direction even though I had no idea whether there were any towns or anything at all. A local guy out walking his dog led enough weight to Luke's protestations that I agreed to go to San Sebastian instead, so we went back where we'd come from and after worriedly looking around for a few minutes, got back onto the highway. "The highway workers said it was ok, right?"

Wrong! What followed were the most terrifying 15 minutes of my life. The cars were barrelling along at 100kph, my bike wasn't riding properly and I couldn't see Luke behind me and was too scared to turn around to check he was still alive. At one point we went through the 'tunnel of death', where quite a few cars beeped at me and I thoroughly agreed with them: I wasn't meant to be there! It was with a certain amount of relief and also chastisement that I saw a police van pull up at the next feed-in road. They wore grim faces, and shook their heads. They spoke a little english, and told us what we had long suspected: bikes don't belong on the highways! They were very nice and blocked off the road so that we could get back to the relative safety of suburban roads without being killed and didn't give us a fine or anything, so I'm thankful for that. We've definitely learnt our lesson though: stay the hell away from highways!

I think we both wanted to go to a bar somewhere and have a nice, stiff drink after that but it was nearing 5pm, and we hadn't any idea of how to get to San Sebastian nor a place to stay in the meantime. So Luke led the way, and after scouting around the town for a while, we found a quieter suburban road with a footpath next to it, which led us all the way to San Sebastian and a Pension.

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The next day, I was pretty eager to get moving, but we both slept late, and Luke had an issue with his pannier rack that needed a bike mechanic's (or just a decent spanner's) attention. Annoyingly, just as we got to the bike shop, we saw the guy walking out on his 1pm to 4pm siesta break. There was no question of him postponing it for five minutes to do a little repair, so I had to reconcile myself to the fact that we weren't going to get out of San Sebastian that day.

To kill a bit of the white line fever, we rode around the city for a bit, finding a decent sports complex with an aths track; soccer stadium (apparently where the San Sebastian international marathon finishes); and velodrome. Having no better way to kill 2.5 hrs, I rode laps around the whole complex in the rain (Luke wasn't as thick headed and read his book in the shelter of a staircase).

At fourish, we went back to the bike shop, where the owner was apparently so obsessed with keeping his shop clean that he refused to let us come in:P Well he let Luke go in after a while at least, and they sorted out his problem with the rack, so we were now ready to roll!..just not until the next day because it was gettting to be a bit late by that stage.

We stayed in a different Pension that night whose proprietoress kept on laying the back of her hand on my cheek every time she saw me. A bit weird, but oh well.

Now for a non sequitar: I should make a mention of what we've been eating. The pensions don't have kitchen facilities, so we're just eating store to mouth, but my god, the fresh produce here is amazing. I absolutely adore oranges, and I have seriously never had oranges this good before. They're just so sweet and juicy:O And the apples too. Pretty much everything from the ubiquitous fruit and vegie shops is fantastic. The bread is a bit disappointing, but add some avocado to it, and you've got a recipe for a great breakfast (we go through half a loaf each at every sitting:P). The other awesome thing are these treats called Palmeritas made of puff pastry and sweetened with golden syrup. They're amazingly cheap, and scrumptious. Oh and to top it off, I found rice milk in the supermarkets (it had been there all along, I just hadn't known the spanish word for rice). I do have to say that it's a bit of a hazard being adventurous when you can't speak the language. I bought some snacks today that I thought were corn puffs but later realised were PORK (porca) puffs when Luke pointed out that they smelt fishy:S Yuck:(

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After sleeping obscenely late this morning (8pm til 10am wow, we must've needed it) we rode off to try and finally get out of San Sebastian. We'd bought a map, but it wasn't sufficiently detailed to use, so we just kind of used our intuition. Buh bow. After seemingly being on the right track for a while, we ended back up in San Sebastian, and after trying another road, we wound up on a massive highway intersection. So back we went, and here we are spending another night in San Sebas. Hopefully tomorrow will be different. We've actually planned out the route in Google Maps, so hopefully we'll be spending tomorrow night in a different part of the world.

Sweet dreams