The Bikepacker: Bikepacking 2024 - San Sebastian to Zarautz

Day #

State of Legs

:-)

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	18.4 miles	km	1545 feet	metres	1
Trip Totals	1025.5 miles	km	26542 feet	metres	1

Today's Route

Route So Far

Travelogue

Today, we cycled further west along the coast to the town of Zarautz. It's only 18 miles from San Sebastian but the route involved a fair amount of climbing. That and the usual issues with finding somewhere to stay led us to opt for such a short day's ride today.

We started by cycling to the San Sebastian old town, crossing the river by one of the bridges. We then cycled along the seafront, enjoying the views of the bay for one last time. There wasn't much more cycling on the flat to be done after this!

Immediately after reaching the end of the main bay, the self-planned route we were following turned off the main road and started to climb quite steeply. This was fine except that after a good deal of effort had been expended, we suddenly found that we could not continue any further. The steep, minor road we'd been following reached the edge of a park and the only way into and across the park from that point required us to get our bikes up a large flight of steps. No way José. And this was after a mere 4 miles of cycling.

This is the second time in two days of cycling that we've found steps on the planned route. We'll be scrutinizing the route in Plotaroute this evening to see if we can see why this might be. Did we accidentally plot a walking rather than a cycling route? Is the underlying map data to blame?

We looked at the map and chose an alternative way through the park. To get to the start of this detour, we backtracked and then cycled on. This took us back to the edge of the park but this time we were faced with a complicated barrier that was presumably intended to allow only pedestrians through. DISASTER (etc). Well OK, not quite. But definitely SLIGHTLY ANNOYING MINOR INCONVENIENCE!

We took the bags off the two bikes and M1 rolled each bike on their back wheel only through the weird maze of the barrier. Job done. Sort of.

Once in the park, we cycled onwards on the gravel and dirt trail. There were quite a few walkers with poles and rucksacks. Presumably it's part of the Camino del Norte. All was well for 5 minutes but then the wide gravel trail vanished and was replaced with a steep, rough and very narrow mud path. We couldn't cycle up it and could only just push and pull the bikes up. We worked up quite a sweat but mission was ultimately accomplished.

We got through the park and back onto a proper paved road which climbed up and up and then followed a ridge along the top. The views to our left of the mountains were wonderful. Sometimes we could see the sea as well. The weather was lovely. All good.

At the very top of this, our primary climb of the day, we stopped at a bar and had cold drinks and a few biscuits for fuel.

We then enjoyed a fast descent towards Zarautz, crossing a river on the outskirts of the town and following it for a while. After leaving the river, there was more climbing to do, sometimes very steeply but eventually we entered the town itself and headed for the beach! It was packed with people enjoying the great weather so we walked our bikes along the promenade for a while. After a rest, sitting looking at the sea and doing a bit of people watching, we decided to find our apartment, which was not too far away, set back a couple of streets from the seafront.

We were a couple of hours early and sat in a shady park for a little while, enjoying an ice cream. Happily the Airbnb host kindly allowed us to enter the apartment early though, so we crossed the road and got ourselves and the bikes into the ground floor apartment.

The Airbnb host knocked on the door a little later to introduce himself and we had a chat about the next stages of our route, which he said was a beautiful part of the coast which he had enjoyed cycling in his youth.

We've had a bit of a look around the old town, largely as a byproduct of looking for an open supermarket. That's probably it for us for today. There's football / soccer on TV and M2 is determined that we watch it. So that's the plan then :-)