Day 57 (Oct 25th) (7.92 km) - Barcelona to Bilbao: After having survived the Barcelona metro the day before, we decided to brave it again to get to the main railway station in Barcelona where we would catch the train to Bilbao. Success. We arrived with enough time for breakfast and a bag check. Yep, here you have to have a bag check, as you do at an airport, before you catch one of the fast trains.
It was rather lovely to have close to 7 hours doing basically nothing. I read a bit, played some games, looked out the window and did some of my blog. Pete continued reading Don Quixote.
We passed much drier country than we seen before and some parts with incredible topography. Hard to describe and the train was really going too fast for many photos. Enough to make me want to come back and visit the north-eastern part of Spain.
Once we neared Bilbao though, the countryside was noticeably greener. Apparently the climate in this part of the country is not dissimilar to England in that it rains a lot. One local told us that it rains every day. I'm sure that is an exaggeration but ...
The river was muddy with runoff when we arrived and it certainly looked as if it had been raining quite a bit.
We had been prepared for it to be wet since the weather forecasts had been pretty glum but Bilbao put on its best face for our arrival.
The train station had some pretty impressive stained glass to greet visitors.
After eventually finding our accommodation in a location very convenient to everything, but not where GoogleMaps said it was going to be, we headed out to explore. The host of our accommodation had given us a few tips for sightseeing and a travel card. He told us that the travel card would get us up a funicular for the cheap price of a local trip rather than paying for the tourist trap which is about 9 times the price per person! We decided, since the weather was good, to use the opportunity to go up the funicular to get an overview of Bilbao.
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| That’s the sea in the distance |
After we descended back down to the main part of town, we headed towards the Guggenheim Museum, the famous building designed by Frank Gehry. As the weather was half decent we thought it would be an opportunity to see its outside face properly.
On the way we passed a few interesting old and newer buildings.
Then you see an interesting bridge and behind it, the Guggenheim.
Another incredible building. The outside cladding is titanium and as such, changes colour as the light around it changes. This building changed Bilbao. In 1983, Bilbao suffered its worst flood in history, one that killed 43 people. The city had been in decline for years and the flood provided a catalyst for change. Committees were formed, plans were made and one thing that came out of them was the Guggenheim Museum. It was completed in 1997 and the money that the government spent on it was paid off within 3 years. It is now one of the most visited museums in Spain.
We spent quite some time watching it change colour as the daylight faded.
It has helped change Bilbao into a thriving modern city.
We walked over the river, viewing the Museum from a number of angles and enjoying Fujiko Nakaya’s ‘Fog Sculpture’, and Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Maman’ spider sculpture.
On our way to dinner we passed by part of the Bilbao tram. It is very cool seeing the tram tracks in grass. How much nicer than the concrete/asphalt alternative.
Day 58 (26th Oct) (7.43 km) - Bilbao: We woke up to Bilbao rain, a usual day in Bilbao. We had booked to go in to the Guggenheim anyway, so it was just the getting there that was a hassle. The hosts had lent us an umbrella which was handy. The museum was only about 1 km away so after a late breakfast we headed out.
We sighted an unusual sculpture on the way, only unusual because for once its not a Mary, a Saint, a mermaid, or a naked nymph. Just some women going about their business.
Even in the rain the outside of the museum looks good. There was even a dog to greet us!
When we first entered the museum, I wondered about how it would work inside as an exhibition space but I was very pleasantly surprised.
The actual exhibition spaces were large, light and airy.
We first visited the permanent collection and we were both most impressed with their collection of Spanish Expressionists, most of whom I'd never heard of. This photo was taken in one of the Expressionist exhibition spaces and shows the light of the rooms and how you can see even big paintings very well.
After looking at the permanent collections, we visited an exhibition of Hilma of Klimt's work. We had seen some of her work, mainly drawings as I recall, in Sydney and I'm afraid that her paintings do little to inspire me. Her drawings of nature are amazing, but I do not get her theosophical, spiritual paintings. These represent, the stages of a human life from childhood to old age (left to right).
This is one of her collection of sketches.
We were hoping for a break at this stage, but the coffee shop is outside the museum and there was no re-entry, so we went to the final special exhibition of Yoshitomo Nara's work.
His work is beautiful but mostly quite sad, his skill as a painter indisputable. The skin on many of his pairings is done with small brush strikes of many different colours and the effect is amazing, but hard to see in a photograph.
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Midnight Tears
While most of his work is of faces of young girls, he also does sculpture.
He is passionately anti-war.
Some times he has his own take on traditional Japanese art.
Lastly we went to a permanent exhibition called It's A Matter of Time by Richard Serra. This combats of huge content steel shapes that you can wander through. It was quite entertaining.
Thoroughly exhausted we left the museum to find somewhere to sit and have morning tea (at about 12:30!). It was still raining steadily so we decided rather than walk across town we'd catch the tram. That was still a walk away but we decided to catch it at the start and assure ourselves of a seat!
On the way, we went into an old wine storage building that has been reimagined as a cultural centre. The architect, Phillipe Starck had fun renovating the supporting structure for the building and created a series of 49 columns each of them different. Some designs are playful, others reference past architectural styles, and others the old wine storage facility itself.
We finally found the tram and did get a seat! It was good to see the Bilbao views through the windows, even if they were rather spattered by rain. We kept on the tram until the Central Market but then found it closing for the day. That was disappointing but all it meant was finding somewhere else for lunch on the way back to our rest time.
It was with going there though because the stained glass windows and called ceiling are worth looking at anyway.
It rains so often in Bilbao that people don't pay it much attention. By late afternoon, when it is have-a-drink-at-a-bar time, they just stand around with their umbrellas up!
We also found an old pavilion in need of restoration by the riverside. Could be beautiful.
One thing in Spain is that there are always two sides to a city or town, the daytime side and the night side. The same place so often looks different at night. We walked through this park in the afternoon, in the evening it had regenerated as a second hand book market. Peter walked me quickly past.
We found a place with Spanish cuisine presented in a more modern way. It was delicious and the meal was only spoiled when they drizzled chocolate sauce all over my ice-cream even when I had said that I didn't eat chocolate.
Day 59 (27th Oct) (7.43 km) - Bilbao to Potes: It was still raining when we woke up which was a bit of a bummer since we had to walk about a kilometre with our luggage to get to where we were hiring a car for a few days. I couldn't find the waterproof cover for my pack so a poncho had to do. Pete had no such cover for his bag. By the time we actually found the place (again GoogleMaps was less than helpful and had us wandering around in circles in the rain for a while) we were stuffed and just a bit wet. Oh well. Then the lady at the counter informed us that in Spain it is illegal to have luggage on a seat in the car and that we should therefore hire a bigger car. Ugh! But we did and ended up with some Mistsubishi SUV thing that was not very comfortable to drive.
Although we were headed into the mountains, we decided to go as far as we could along the coast, visiting little beaches along the way. It was quite overcast so we didn't get the wonderful sea colours we might otherwise have got but it certainly whetted our appetite for northern Spain! Here, we are on the Bay of Biscay. Much of the coastline is cliffs, but here and there are lovely little protected beaches. It seems though that tourist season must be over sometime in mid- October because so many places were closed and it was hard even to find a cafe or bar open in many of the villages. During peak summer and/or Camino season these places would be very busy I imagine.
In this last town of Laredo there is a walking tunnel that once allows access to the coast. It has been made a bit of a tourist attraction but was not as interesting as we had imagined it might be. Plus, you had to keep a careful eye out for doggy dunnits. Once at the end, the coast was magnificent in its wildness, the sound of the pebbles on the ocean floor lovely.
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We then headed up into the Picos de Europa range to a place called Potes. The road up is being repaired in multiple places so this part of the trip was very slow. But that did not matter - as long as you didn't look at the edges of the road too closely! The scenery was amazing! Despite the rain, we could see we were somewhere special.
Potes itself lies in a more open valley than the hills we had been travelling through. It has two parts like most places, the newer part and the older part where we stayed. The rain had stopped by the time we arrived and we were greeted at our accommodation by a lovely man who had a map prepared for us and lots of suggestions for things to do. We obviously needed a lot more time than we had - how unusual.
Our little studio apartment was just lovely and it had a view to boot.
As it was still daylight saving time, we had a bit of time to explore Potes.
Day 60 (28th Oct) (12.88 km) - Potes: About 750 m further up in elevation from Potes is a place called Fuenta Dé. There, there is a cable car that takes you up another 750 m to the start of a popular hiking track which, if you climb to the end this takes you up another 770 m.
The landscape is stunning and the weather was fine.
We rode in the cable car saying farewell to the sheep and horses below.
The country at the top of the cable car is a wild, harsh place but incredibly scenic. We started out on the walk. It is very hard to capture the scale in photos so here is a video of where we started out.
The walk took us up a glacial valley. No glacier exists here any more but we could see snowcapped mountains ahead. Pete had seen that some snow had fallen somewhere in the mountains the night before.
Although there is no breaking of ice off glaciers, there are plenty of rock falls. Some are obviously recent and we heard a few, somewhere in the mountains. I'm glad we weren't close to any. Walking past the moraine, I was a little nervous.
We visited a lookout early on in our walk where we could see down to the valley below and a mountain above.
We kept walking up and up into we got to the snow line. We kept walking for quite a while, but behind us the weather was beginning to close in a bit and we had not come prepared for snow-trekking, so we called it a day about 2/3 up. We probably would never have made the summit of the track anyway with too much snow about and I doubt the scenery would have changed a great deal in the next couple of km.
On the walk back to the cable car we saw the landscape from a different perspective.
I saw a few birds and saw a few wildflowers.
So, after 8 and a half kms instead of 12, we arrived back at the cable car. Once down, we enjoyed the view and the sound of the bells on the sheep. This must be one of the most scenic sheep paddocks anywhere. Make sure your sound is on for the video.
As our walk had not taken as long a we predicted, we had quite a bit of time to look around Potes some more. The old part is very quaint and even in some of the newer parts people make an effort with window boxes etc.
We had dinner at a place recommended by our host. It was a bit disconcerting when we arrived because the bar was full and we had thought the restaurant was meant to be open at 8 but it did not seem to be open at all. We stood there wondering what to do, with no one coming to our aid. Eventually, I asked if they were open for dinner, and the chap behind the bar said that opening was still 20 mins away. So we had a pre-dinner drink and waited.
The restaurant did open at 8:30 but for whatever reason the man at the bar was in a tizz trying to get some more help in the restaurant part as, upon opening there was only one person serving with almost all tables full. Within 15 minutes there were three waiters. Thankfully, after all the waiting, dinner was good.
Day 61 (29th Oct) (14.33 km) - Potes to Ribadesella: It was sad leaving Potes. This could be a great spot to base yourself for a while with a lot of hiking in this beautiful part of the world. However, we allowed ourselves the pleasure of one more round trip hike starting at a village called Allende and passing through a hamlet called Cabañes.
It was a stiff climb for the first 1 km or so but after that was a pretty easy. Unlike the hike of the previous day, most of this walk was done in forest with the exception of the area around Cabañes.
When we reached Cabañes the forest opened to magnificent views. Cabañes is a farming hamlet and so there were sheep and cattle about and some odd-looking little farm tractor/trucks. We'd seen these in Potes too.
From Cabañes we descended into a little valley and followed the creek back to Allende. There were lots of fungi on the way.
It was also obvious that autumn had finally arrived, with leaves changing colour, rosehips, chestnuts and autumn berries around.
A lovely walk to end our time in the mountains. On the way back down the slow road to the coast we were also lucky, at one of our stops, to see some Cantabrian Chamois, wild mountain goat's, standing atop one of the hills shaven to the road. Quite a long way off, but still exciting to have seen.
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