Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Castro-Urdiales

Bike Route: Santona to Castro-Urdiales, 25 miles, 3300 feet of climb

Our day started out easy with a ferry ride to Playa de Laredo. Boarding the ferry, we met a group of young guys from four countries who work together in Barcelona and are hiking the Camino de Santiago for a week; getting off we met another group of young guys from Washington, DC, who are doing the same. The nicest young men. Almost everyone we meet is so nice.

After a steep climb out of Laredo, we were on a quiet, pretty road through farms--cows, goats, corn. Then we hit our first little mountain with about 1.5 miles on an unpaved trail, at a 14-21 percent grade, which we walked. Four hours after we started the day, after the second mountain--about 2.5 miles on unpaved trail, walking--we hopped on National Highway 634 and sped through the last 12 miles to Castro-Urdiales in less than an hour.

I'm so excited. I think I've finally figured out how to get our mapping software, Ride with GPS, to avoid at least some of those crazy hike-a-bike stretches. I discovered that an Avoid Highways checkbox is selected by default in one of the map views, and by deselecting that we get fewer unpaved miles and more highway miles. We'll see if that helps going forward. Stay tuned...

Castro-Urdiales is another coastal city with lots of fish and seafood restaurants. When we pulled into town, a young woman and her son stopped us and asked where we were going. She seemed so eager to help, and to guide her son (about age 7) in helping, that we stopped and told her the name of our hotel and that we also wanted lunch. She and her son spoke just a tiny bit of English and we speak just a tiny bit of Spanish, but we did understand each other, and she confirmed the information we had in our mapping software. It is just so fun to connect with people along the way!

Even after having a light lunch on the way into town, we were too hungry and tired to wait for the sit-down places to open at 8:30 or 9:00, so we went looking for pintxos between 7:00 and 8:00. We walked from our hotel near the arena at one end of the promenade, to a tavern recommended by our receptionist in the Old Town at the other end of the promenade for dinner, and back.

These signs are on all the highways. Every once in a while we get brushed a little close, but for the most part, if we hold our line, we feel safe.

Castro-Urdiales has a busy inner harbor and small beach.

The church and fort at the edge of Old Town are undergoing renovation. We did not explore them; it was getting late and we were tired from our day of bike hiking.

On the way back from dinner, we passed a churros y chocolate stand and of course had to share a large order. That's hot fried donuts dipped in dark hot chocolate. Yum.