Swimming dogs and drinking chocolate!

For the next few days from Hendeye on the Spanish - French border the winds were very light so it was the iron sail that got us from place to place (God bless the internal combustion engine!)
We arrived in San Sebastian at fiesta time, lots going on but marginally more crowded than Oxford street on Christmas eve!

We were joined by Tim and his girlfriend Lucy for a few days which was lovely.

A little tapas fortified Tim to test just how quickly he could loose the potential energy gained by climbing some of the impressive local limestone and coming up with a new sport of dinghy surfing!

Woody has now taken to doing his Titanic bit in the dinghy as well as the bow of the boat, the only trouble is that he is rather enthusiastic when coming ashore or back to the boat and has a tendency to leap ashore or aboard from his position in the dinghy bow.





Melanie generally hangs on to him to prevent an unplanned swim but coming back to the boat alone with me after the morning bread run he got a little over enthusiastic to get back on the boat and leapt when we were a good 2' away...... when he landed the boat was not where he hoped it would be! I hoicked something of a drowned rat out of the water and showered him down but he was not allowed back down below until he had dried off!





On Sunday Tim and Lucy flew home and Melanie also left to go back for her next cough clinic and visit to Mum.

My friend Mark came out to join me for a few days as we continued west to our next port, Castro Urdiales where we moored alongside the harbour wall with these rather splendid old buildings as a backdrop.








We are now surrounded by some pretty impressive mountains; Mark and I donned walking boots to climb the local 2000' peak. The coastline is also very impressive with some mighty slabs of rock dropping vertically into the sea.










Like monks all over the world the monks here have found some pretty wacky places to get closer to their God!

















Yesterday Mark left for home and I was joined by Waddy, my first mate and chief chef from the Irish trip.

Unfortunately for him the trip suddenly turned a bit too Irish as the rain came in and the wind sprung up from nowhere. 

We had a hard beat in 20 knots of wind to Santander .

It has been so long now since I beat into a heavy wind that i forgot to close the sink inlets which, when the boat is heavily leaning dip below the outside water level and the sea comes back up through the drain


 - thats the drinking chocolate and olive pot swilling around at the back of a rather tipped kitchen worktop!

Fortunately there is a little window just above  - just in the right place to bail out through!