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Published: April 27th 2006
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Llanes, 'The blocks of memory' - making sea defences fun....The intention for the afternoon was to visit the reputedly attractive village of Poo (any suggestion that this had any bearing on including Llanes in the itinerary is strongly denied), however the coast path had turned into a quagmire. Unfortunately I was therefore unable to ascertain; is Poo poo? Poo will have to wait for another time (no more gratuitous use of the word Poo follows). In the end both my intended day-trips from Llanes were thwarted as the weather was too unfriendly to take the funicular up to the hamlet of Bulnes in the Picos. Another time. It was just as well that I gave both a miss - after an improvement in the weather; wind dropping and even the odd patch of blue sky, the rain (and hail) came in even harder than before blotting out the Picos and the lower ridge of Sierra di Cuera. Retreat to the hostal to catch up on some reading was the order of the day.
Penance finally over, wednesday dawned calm and clear. The high peaks were finally visible and snow had crept all the way down onto the Sierra. However the 'wearing sunglasses' jinx almost ruined it, wandering up
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Stormy Day on to the harbour wall revealed a large black cloud bearing down from the west. It looked grim for an hour before the cloud grudgingly scraped over the top of the mountains disappeared.
Hopping on the little local train I went most of the way to Santander with both carriages to myself - apart from the absence of a minibar and a couple of attractive stewardesses it was a great journey, following the coast for most of the way. The sky full of birds of prey riding the thermals and making the best of the good hunting weather. To the south the snowfields on the high peaks appeared and disappeared between the more lightly dusted hills, while on the north side a green-blue Atlantic suddenly covered in rows of fishing boats - out to restock all those restauarant fish-tanks in Santiago...
Arriving in Santander I dumped the bags at the left luggage and headed into town with the intention of killing the hours between trains following the walk recommended in the guide book. However this quickly got subverted the moment I reached the harbourside - out in the bay were five tall brown sails moving en-masse at high
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Pico's d'Europa (from my window...) velocity. Closer inspection revealed the were Tornado catamarans, as used in the Olympics. To find five in one place, on a weekday, in winter with several attendant support ribs could mean only one thing - that they were teams training for 2008. I had a word with one of the teams (who conveniently enough spoke perfect English) and they confirmed that Santander was indeed the training base for the Spanish Olympic team. As they were packing up their boats a stream of rigged Laser Radials appeared from within the very elegant new sailing club, to be followed a few minutes later by several male and female 470 teams, while inside the building a row of 49ers were being readied. Add to this 25 beneteau first class 8s in the marina and some 40+ Vaurien dinghies for those setting their sights a bit lower than gold medals and it would seem that Santander is serious about its racing. Hardly a suprise on such a beautiful and varied waters - fabulous beaches, rolling green hills and yet more snow covered mountains - watching the 470s out practising against this backdrop...jealous? Just a little bit...
One thing I've been enjoying is the
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Llanes Lighthouse local version of a cornish pasty, instead of a oily stodge of potato and indeterminate meat that leaves you feeling faintly queasy the Spanish version has the same pastry with a tuna and tomato filling, yum. Meanwhile, it's alleged that the Spanish are the shortest and slimmest people in Europe - it bears out on the height, I feel quite at home for once but slimmest? Maybe it's something to do with the weather in the north as they don't seem to be big into functioning central heating here. An extra insulating layer - assisted by all that seafood - maybe comes in handy?
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