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Published: April 2nd 2016
The sun still continues to shine on the BBA V3 although we wonder if by saying this we might jinx ourselves soon and the cold and damper conditions of those early days of our travels in France return again.
We are still getting used to the sun rising so late in the morning for us. Today it is 8am as the sun makes it appearance over the highest hill to the east of us.
The city are of Santander didn’t seem to have what we wanted in our sightseeing today so we plan to spend the time on the coast north of the built up part of the city instead.
We retraced our path towards Soma as the shortest way around the Bay of Santander to get to where we wanted to be.
On the way we encountered an interesting traffic signal that so far as we know is peculiar to Spain.
The odd thing was that on a road that has a speed limit of 60kph a traffic signal post with 3 lights is placed where there is seemingly no other road entering.
I could see from a distance that the light was red
and I prepared to slow down and stop. There wasn’t any traffic light controlling the cars in the opposing direction which seemed a bit odd as traffic lights usually control both directions of traffic.
Slowing down but getting closer to the traffic light I picked up a narrow lane that joined the road we were on from the right.
With my speed now down to 35kph and only metres from the red light seemingly only wanting to stop me it suddenly changed to two alternate flashing orange lights which I interrupted as allowing me to proceed with caution.
It seemed an overkill to have this traffic light slowing traffic o a main thoroughfare for what could only be the very occasional car joining in from what looked like no more than a country lane.
Heading past Soma we encountered a couple of more instances with the ‘red then orange flashing lights’ but even though there were no cars around I still proceeded with caution despite in one instance a local car almost running into the rear of us as he probably used this road daily and knew the way how to drive to the condition of
this light.
We negotiated our way past the city centre of Santander and headed for a car park that had shown up on Gina that looked like it was adjacent to the sea shore.
Quite where it was going to be we were unsure but we persevered onwards.
The GPS took us through a maze of narrow, virtually one way streets made so because of the homeowners parking on the street as the houses did not have any garaging.
We were clearly in the suburbs as the apartment blocks that the majority of people live in the city centre were away in the distance.
As the land drooped away we found ourselves at the coast and as expected a car park was ahead of us.
We had come a reasonable way out from the city but that had worked well for us and we could see there were a couple of walking trails to take us around the coastline.
Calling in at an information centre that appeared to be established for learning purposes for school children a young man gave us information on the historical points in the area and also some of
the bird life that might be around if we were going to hike the coast. He pointed out both the old fort and a grinding mill but then said that unfortunately as both were now occupied as homes you couldn’t actually go inside to take a look.
We had spotted what looked like some other ruins on the other side of the small harbour and so set off to discover more of what it actually had been.
With the air temperature around 20C it was a great day for walking and we cut out the distance relatively quickly only to find that we couldn’t actually get access to the ruins we had seen as it was beyond a fence that looked impenetrable.
We had noticed while walking the number of young teenagers in small groups of2’s or 3’s who were also out getting fresh air either walking, cycling or running and it was good to see that they weren’t at home during their week of midterm holiday break playing on electronic devices.
Our main aim today had been the main beach for the city and on return from our walk we headed off east towards where
the apartments were in the distance realising that eventually after traversing the narrow suburban lanes we would get there.
Eventually we found a road wide enough for buses and we knew we must be making progress and surely enough the beach at Sandinero came into view.
There were plenty of cars parked on both sides of the road as well as down the middle of the wide carriageway along the lengthy and slightly curved beach.
There was a smattering of people on the beach and even a couple walking in the shallows. The school holidays probably bringing more people out on this spring morning than might normally be here on a week day. Although in saying that, there were also plenty of older, perhaps retired, people strolling the esplanade enjoying the sunshine and warm temperature.
We are always searching for a beach that matches our #1,Mount Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty, and while Sandinero came close, we couldn’t give it a score higher than our ‘10’ for the Mount.
It was lunchtime and we figured there should be a number of places to find a lunch of pinchos or sandwiches around the beach area.
We walked up over the small hill taking in the view of the beach from a bit of height and then down the other side to a smaller beach, still searching for somewhere reasonably priced to eat.
One of the activities people were doing on the beach in several places was what looked like a game of pat a tennis where the people had a small batman bit bigger than a table tennis bat, and hit a tennis ball to each other. It all sounds simple but what was amazing was the fact that the people were hitting the ball quite hard and yet their opponents were able to stand in one place rather than ducking and diving to hit the ball back. We were very impressed by the accuracy of the players even though we couldn’t make out if there were points on offer in the game or whether it was just exercise. No wonder Spain has some very good tennis players!
We crossed the road and walked back towards where we had started from and found a bar/cafe that had a reasonably priced menu and chose sandwiches and a beer for lunch.
Now we
had thought we would not hear a lot of ‘Pommie’ voices until we got around to the other side of Spain where we expected to hear phrases at bars/cafes such as ‘do you do chips with that?’Our apologies to any readers from the UK but this is a phrase we have heard often when watching TV shows about Britons abroad, especially in Spain.
Well I fell for it didn’t I! Here I was asking the very same thing ‘do chips come with the sandwiches ‘and all done without even thinking about it. Gretchen did give me a ribbing as we sat down outside taking in the beach view and started our beers waiting for the sandwiches to arrive with their chips alongside.
The sandwiches were enormous. Four slices of toasted bread filled to almost overflowing with all the ingredients the menu had stated was in each we asked for. Gretchen’s, Habernaro, even had a fried egg on top!
The leisurely lunch over and we headed back to the car to drive to the Magdalena Peninsula, a small promontory of land that juts out into the harbour entrance.
Passing by a small marine zoo we walked to the top of the small hill upon which stands the Palace of Magdalena which was built in 1912 and has been renovated a couple of times since. King Alfonso XIII used the palace for summer stays until Spain became a republic in 1931.It is a grand looking building, well maintained, and used today for conferences and a meeting place.
It had been another good day out with plenty of exercise and lots of seascapes viewed in different forms from rocky coastline, to a splendid swimming beach and then the harbour entrance.
Back home we were ready to put our feet up and enjoy a glass of wine before a light dinner as we were still relatively full after lunch.
Tomorrow its further west along the northern Spanish coastline.
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Miltonrabbit
Chris & Marilyn
Traffic lights, oh boy.
We had the same experience with the traffic lights four years ago. We came to the conclusion that it was a way of slowing the traffic down at regular intervals, especially driving through villages. It obviously works. Can you imagine the same system being used between Auckland and Tauranga. You would have to add another hour onto your journey.