Art, bike lanes and wildlife

Arriving in Spain in the sunshine, a little bit behind schedule due to the ferocity of the wind we admired the port of Bilbao from high up in the boat, or so we thought. It was not until we looked at a map that we discovered that our destination for that day and home of The Guggenheim museum and of course Athletic (not to be confused with Atletico) was 15km away. However the tourist office pointed us towards a waterside cycle path which fairly shortly ran into an industrial cul de sac. Not unlike our experience between Fareham and Portsmouth where the signposted route ejected us into a dual carriageway where we were abused by a local motorist.

Escaping from the motorists´ delight of the outer edges of Bilbao we headed towards the futuristic silver multi-domed arresting sight of the Bilbao Guggenheim. So taken with this were we that we immediately took a tour, around the outside, by bike. And that´s as close as we got to the artistic delights of its interior. Our excuses are that we were still recovering from the spin cycle of the boat and our train left for Asturias at midday the following day.

After 6 1/2 hours on the train, and around 60 stops we arrived at Infiesto just west of the Picos. On the journey up to Mark´s a massive wild boar ambled across the road and I am still staggered by the size of the beast. A lucky sighting - Mark has now only seen 3 in 2 years. On the crossing we were also fortunate to see dolphins leaping through the waves.