We tore ourselves away from San Sebastian, again, and headed west, initially on the inland toll roads, later, well into Cantabria, along the coast. We stopped at Santillana de la Mer for me to go into the Alta Mira gift shoppe and buy a fridge magnet I had missed in 2009. We were not so happy there in 2009, cold, and worried about our ability to drive (legally) in Spain and also about where we could purchase LPG. Those matters got resolved, and our memories are pleasant, now even more pleasant. (Funny how memory works, dimming the bad, highighting the good). We continued on west, looking for an aire or a lay-by, preferably right on the beach. As one might expect, in August, the place was crawling with RVs, everyone doing just exactly what we were doing. At length, we found an aire of sorts, at the Playa de Gerra, near the beautiful town of San Vicente de la Barquera. The aire was actually a farmer's field, just across the highway from an evidently popular beach. We stayed there two nights, touring the Picos de Europa by day. The beaches along here--miles of them--are the best I have seen: fine sands, a hundreds-of-feet-deep beach area, surf just rough enough for beginner surfing.
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| Playa de Gerra, looking east |
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| Looking west toward San Vicente |
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| Beach volleyball, of course |
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| A bit of the aire |
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Here we began seeing rather more of the pelerins, pilgrims
on the Santiago trail |
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Some 200,000 do the trail annually; twice that number in
special feast (whatever) years; only 20,000 do the much
shorter but infinitely more scenic Tour du Mont Blanc;
I just don't understand... |
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| Interesting beach rocks along the way |
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| Surfing at the Playa de Gerra |
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| Sunset |
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