Zumaia - 28 September 2018

28 September

Despite the motorway noise, being under street lighting, and the young surfers sat outside chatting, slept quite well!

This morning did another lot of washing, then I drove the 20 minutes to:

Zumaia - N43°17.580’ W002°14.810’ - free

Described as Aire in an industrial estate, adjacent to river. Lots of other mohos here, which is different from last night.

The weather today was more cloudy/hazy - so was good to see some of the coastline in full sun yesterday. Has been about 25° ish, but didn’t feel the need to swim!

Spun, rinsed and hung the washing inside Dave, had lunch (still on the digestives!), then rode into Zumaia. On the way saw the ship the Norwegian Gannet (Bergen) - Tintin googled later - it’s a new build, a salmon factory ship for the farmed salmon off the Norwegian coast, intended for the Asian market. It’s late on delivery date! Dry dock, slipway and production sheds area, and fairly large marina too.

Zumaia is home to the Basque Coast Geopark, where we saw the ‘flysch’ - 50/60 million years of geological history written in successive rocky strata. It was really impressive, hope the pictures do it justice! It’s probably hard to see the scale, was just as good to look down from the church at the top as it was to look up from the beach. The near vertical ‘slices’ look man made.

Most of the information boards are in three different types of Spanish! The only bit in English said the strata is made up of sediment and small shells from the sea that once divided the Iberian peninsula from European continent, and four stages made it what it is today. 1) dinosaurs and 70% of life on earth became extinct - this is the thin black line. 2) sea level dropped 80 metres, change between limestone and marlstones. 3) earth’s magnetic poles flipped polarity. 4) global warming!

Rode back through the town, but mostly closed as about 3.30. We will need to be in Bilbao in a couple of days, as we’re getting low on GPL, and that’s the closest place selling it!