We left the Camino de Santiago campsite to head in a north—easterly direction towards San Sebastian. We had stayed there once before when David was 10 and Paul was 7. Although it had been a beautiful city 20 years ago, we hadn’t appreciated the Spanish culture back then and had got frustrated with the tapas bars and late restaurant opening hours. We thought it would be good to revisit the city with our new knowledge of late eating and ‘proper’ knowledge of how to order tapas!
The camp site was 30 minutes from San Sebastian on the coast close to a village we couldn’t pronounce—Itziar.
The site itself was lovely, the owner very friendly and helpful, and the scenery magnificent. Beautiful green rolling hills/mountains with the sea to the north, very fertile and productive. The gradients in every direction were steep either uphill or downhill!!
We thought we would spend 3 nights here before crossing the border into France……(something I was biting at the bit to do!)…..The middle night we were planning to go into San Sebastian to sample a tapas bar or two and have a meal.
What makes you think it didn’t happen?
The day after we arrived we headed into town for some provisions, as we have got travelling light down to an art form.
As we drove to the larger of the two towns nearest us….Zumaia, we realised the Spanish we had learnt had no bearing whatsoever on the road signs or anything else for that matter. We were in Basque country and that was what was on all signs, it didn’t resemble any language we had come across so far. In fact we would go as far as saying it looked more like Russian to us!
Even looking at menus outside restaurants we couldn’t decipher what was on offer. And we remembered that that was the other thing that had made it so difficult 20 years ago.
Thinking back now it might sound as though we were a couple of wooses, but we wanted, needed something familiar, so instead of staying 3 nights at the site we cut our losses, forgot about San Sebastian and headed straight for the French border the next day.
How wonderful to be in a land where we can understand the language and the culture, in fact where we embrace the culture. We have now been in Vieux Boucau in the Landes region (the South-West corner of France) for a week and have just booked in for a second week.
From here we plan to go to St. Emilion for 2 weeks then back down to Cahors for a month. Roll over Peter Mayle, and get ready for ‘The Ebsworths’ adventures a la Lot, Dordogne et Loire!’
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