We set out for Bilbao mid-morning on Monday 21st so that we could stay the night there before hopping on the ferry home…

The drive from Oviñana was really nice – following the A8 past the mountains including the Picos de Europa, a National Park that we would definitely like to visit another time. The weather wasn’t great to begin with – overcast and very grey skies / damp when we left Oviñana but brightening with every mile towards Bilbao.

The road was a bit busy as we neared Bilbao and made our way up Mount Artxanda where our hotel was for the night – a small, family run place with lovely views over the City. As we arrived around 2.30pm, we had enough time to fit in a walk and, seeing as we started this whole trip with a surprise cable-car ride in the French Pyrenees, we decided to finish it off with a trip on the nearby Funicular de Artxanda down to the City Centre where we had a quick walk around… what a great place Bilbao seems – would be good to spend a bit more time here too in future! So we are definitely considering coming back to the North of Spain that’s for sure 😁

Our walk around Bilbao took us along the Nervión River and past the Guggenheim Museum which has a large sculpture of a spider outside. The sculpture was created by Louise Bourgeois (a French American artist) as an “ode to” her mother… hence why it is called “Maman” – her mother, like a spider, was a weaver, very clever and friendly (she says that spiders are friendly because they eat mosquitoes that spread disease – therefore, the sculpture represents her mother as being helpful and protective!!) Whatever, not being a lover of spiders, at almost 9 metres tall, it’s a bit eerie! The internet says: “The creature has a sac containing 10 marble eggs located at its underbelly (representing fertility) and its abdomen and thorax are made of ribbed bronze. It is the largest of a series of spider sculptures that Bourgeois created, based on a motif that she first depicted in a small ink and charcoal drawing in 1947. Bourgeois began sketching spiders then, and continued depicting them until the end of her career. By the mid-1990s, the spiders held a central place in her work… the silk of a spider is used both to construct cocoons and to bind prey and embodies both strength and fragility. The spider evokes awe and fear, yet its massive height, improbably balanced on slender legs, acts at once as a cage and as a protective lair, conveying an almost poignant vulnerability”. So there you go!

Maman wasn’t the only sculpture / artwork on show during our short walk:

Anyway, we had a great few hours in the city and look forward to perhaps returning sometime in the future!

22nd October marked our last morning in Spain… we had breakfast at the hotel before packing up the car and heading to the port (Zierbena) – the weather was terrible which made the 20km journey from hotel to port a little bit tense! Check-in was easy and we were directed to a waiting point, in row 8… sitting in our car, we noticed the car in front had a “Help for Heroes” and an 80th anniversary sticker for D-Day and wondered whether the British driver and passenger were ex-squaddies… we continued to wait to be called forward to board our ferry which was not leaving until 1pm (we were at the port just before 11am). The driver of the car in front got out to stretch his legs… would you believe it, it was an old neighbour of ours (Tim) and the passenger, his partner Helen! What are the odds!? 🤣 Talk about a small world 🤣

A brief catch up ensued before we were instructed to drive onto the boat… it turns out that our old neighbours have a house in Tijola – the market we went to way back in September when we visited our pals Jane & Kev and about 7kms away from where they live in Seron! In the UK, Tim and Helen live about 2 miles away from us in Whitley Head, near Steeton!

Oh, and here’s a mindful moment for you – a minute long video taken when we were sat on deck yesterday afternoon! Enjoy 😉

When we awoke this morning, we had been on the boat for just over 21 hours and had another 8 to go before arriving in Portsmouth at 5.30pm… Our journey through the Bay of Biscay has been largely uneventful – pretty smooth with a few lurches / wobbly bits every now and then! 🥴 Despte this, we both slept well (me for about 9 hours – although the Fitbit only says 2 for some reason!). We had a leisurely breakfast / brunch (somewhere in the start of the English Channel), walked a few laps of the deck, did a bit of shopping and considered foregoing our stop tonight just outside Winchester and driving straight home… but the thought of spending 4-5 hours in the car and perhaps not arriving in Yorkshire until midnight was not appealing, so here we are, in our Days Inn room and the last stage of our journey will be completed tomorrow (24th October)!

Here’s some stats from our trip:

• Miles driving = Approx 3300 so far with another 250-odd tomorrow!
• Ferry = 493 nautical miles (32 Dover to Calais / 461 Bilbao to Portsmouth) = 567.3 miles
• Miles Walked = 276
• Steps taken = 676,635
• Staircases walked up = 2806 – if each staircase is 15 steps, that’s 42,090 steps upward which, according to one website is just 2000 steps short of the top of Everest! 🤣🤣
• Countries visited = 2 (including France)

It’s been a blast so far this retirement lark! Night night xx