8th July 2017

All night there had been light rain and there was very low cloud / fog when we got up. We packed up and just as we finished hitching up it started to rain heavily. At 9.30am we turned right out of Camping Igueldo  even though the sat nav wanted to take us left and back the way we had come. The fog / mist was thick and the rain made for a slow run down into San Sebastian. Through all the traffic lights and then on to the A8 motorway heading towards Bilbao. We stopped at the first service area to fill up with diesel, 1.089 a litre makes this the most expensive fuel so far on this holiday.

Back onto the A8 continuing towards Bilbao and the rain stopped, the mist was gone and we saw some nice scenery. We stopped for coffee and a madeleine at a service area just after 11am. As we are so long we had to park amongst the lorries.

After coffee we headed back on to the A8 and the closer we got to Bilbao the greyer it got with low cloud again. Around Bilbao and on towards Santander. Once past Santander the weather brightened up and rose to 24c. The ACSI book recommended that we leave the motorway at junction 264 but the sat nav wanted us to leave at at junction 258. In view of the problem in San Sebastian we decided to ignore the sat nav this time, wrong decision, and follow the ACSI book. Unfortunately the roads had been renumbered and as a result the marker posts were different. We drove in to San Vicente de la Barquera and over a lovely bridge that reminded us both of crossing onto Hayling Island in the UK.

The sat nav took us off the main road and up a small road through some restaurants and then up a narrow steep hill and back onto the main road. We had a great view of the wonderful wide sandy beaches. Along the main road and then the sat nav turned us right along a reasonable road which then narrowed and became a single track but well metalled. It would through fields past houses and meandered up and down, a good job no other vehicles were using this road. We were then told to turn right and found ourselves in a campsite but it didn’t look like where we wanted to be. We asked at reception and indeed it was the wrong campsite. Luckily we could drive straight through and down another narrow road where we met a coach just wanting to turn up where we were coming from. A few hundred meters more and we joined a main road turned right and our proper campsite Caravaning Oyambe was 300 meters further on. We turned in and parked up and checked in. The owners son showed us around the site and the first pitch he showed us we selected. It was very large grassy area with room for car caravan and awning a real difference from our last stop. We set up had a beer and then some late lunch.

Why the sat nav took us on the blue route on the map below rather than the red one I have no idea.