Early-ish on the 23rd of June we embarked on our journey to Cantabria, Spain. As the whole drive would‘ve taken us more than 15 hours (not including breaks) we decided to have an intermediate stop in Bordeaux, France. Including breaks it still took us almost 13 hours – but we arrived just in time for the soccer game at the B&B hotel.
On the next day we stopped by Hossegor on the French Atlantic coast. After a short drive through the pine forests we arrived around noon time at the beach. Unfortunately the weather wasn‘t so nice so we just had a quick lunch, watched some (far more skilled than us) surfers tackle the 5 ft shore break and then hopped in our car to drive the remaining 3 hours to our AirBnB in Santoña. We were pretty exhausted after the two days of driving so we only went briefly to our „home beach“, Playa de Berria, located conveniently just 3 walking minutes from our apartment.
On Friday we had scheduled our first surf lesson. Not in Berria, but at the Playa de Ris. Sadly the conditions were not in the favor of us grown ups (just 1 ft) but it was perfect for the kids and they sure had a blast – and that was most important to us. Since we were the only non Spanish speaking students (not counting the remnants of our almost forgotten school level Spanish) we basically had one teacher completely to ourselves, while the other teachers had between 7-10 students each. Since we were so busy surfing we weren‘t able to take any photos, but we‘ll do that during one of our next sessions. At night we (of course) had to have some fish for dinner. There is nothing better than having fresh seafood, even the kids were super excited.
As the ocean was still not offering much more than a 1ft swell on Saturday (more is coming though!) we decided to spend the day with our other favorite pastime – hiking! The almost 5 miles loop trail took us to a nearby lighthouse, the Faro Del Caballo. The path was mostly just a narrow dirt trail with slippery stones and lots of mud. Thankfully the ropes next to the most difficult sections helped us to not fall too much. The lighthouse itself is at the bottom of a cliff and can only be reached by boat – or by descending 763 steep steps – so in total we had 1526 steps which we had to overcome. I never thought that I‘d do something like that, but it was indeed worth it. If the weather had been better we could have even taken a bath at the foot of the lighthouse, as the steps go all the way down to the sea. After 4 hours of strenuous hiking we got back to the car completely exhausted. We should probably take it slow tomorrow, we‘ll see… 😉
