We’re finishing off our abortive Camino in a Bilbao restaurant.

Both of us are pretty disappointed that things didn’t go to plan. I suspect that if we’d stayed on the Norte we’d be still quietly making our way across northern Spain but c’est la vie.

We arrived in Logroño station yesterday in plenty of time after taking a post-breakfast (bacon and eggs) taxi from Navarette. We spoke to some Irish pilgrims from Belfast who were making their way back on schedule. They’d been out for a little over a week, had started in St. Jean and has made it as far as Najera before taxiing back to Logroño. The father had found it difficult but the two daughters and boyfriend were looking forward to returning some time soon. The boyfriend was currently working for Van Morrison as his sound engineer – pretty neat.

We met up with Tom. He’d somehow managed to completely screw up his phone but as of this morning, thankfully he’d somehow (he had no idea how) managed to unscrew it.

We all took the same train, the 11:25 to Bilbao which Tom left after an hour to spend two hours in the station environs before heading west to Sarria. We got to roughly 60km from Bilbao before the train broke down and we covered the remaining distance by bus. 😞

The hotel was fine (we’d stayed there before) and we managed to get a decent breakfast in one of the (very) many bars in central Bilbao.

The Guggenheim is only a short distance from the hotel and dominates the area with its impressive buildings

and (in my opinion) even more impressive Jeff Koons puppy.

There’s a neat statue of John Adams, one of the US’s founding fathers and the second president just opposite

because as you can read on the plinth, he complimented Bilbao.

Bilbao, like much that we’ve seen in Spain and Portugal has a much more egalitarian approach to public statues than we do in the uk.

We’d do well to emulate them.

The magnolia are blooming here,

but we’re returning to the UK and the total f___fest that is Brexit and politics generally.

Back to the hotel now to pick up our bags, grab an airport bus, hang about in the terminal for a couple of hours and then experience the unpleasant two hour bus ride from Gatwick to Oxford.

Back to writing books, playing viol and harpsichord and running with Eleanor. Got a half marathon to run in October, but not sure that’s going to be possible. In the meantime…

Buen Camino