Settling in and widening the net

One of the things we are beginning to appreciate about our new lifestyle is that whenever circumstances or events conspire we can just stop and explore a place in more depth. The circumstances in this case were a series of serendipitous events one of which occurred just as I was eating a delicious sandwich, a large filling ( upper seventh ) crunched and I spit out a big piece of amalgam. I knew I should have had this troublesome tooth crowned but we ran out of time.

 I quickly located the nearest dentist, literally 5 minutes away, he got the job because his was the first nameplate I came across. To cut a long story short, translating using google we established that the tooth was fractured and needed a crown. So a month of appointments and a big wad of euros. Our dental cover would only pay for emergency treatment, luckily this could be stretched to include a temporary crown as my dentist in the UK happened to agree with the course of treatment after I had emailed him a picture of the offending tooth, so I reckoned that would be about half of the cost. As it happens health care in Spain is very good, however there is no free dental treatment, l can happily recommend however the Clinica Dental in Getxo, and Dr Eduardo Terron. I am however less than enthusiastic about Google translate, at one point Dr Terron was trying to explain a procedure, luckily one I am already very familiar with having several crowns and a bridge, it was coming out as " after sleeping the proceed necrosis root canal after wrapping up of the wheel"

My translation luckily came out as " we will remove the humongous amalgam filling that's left and check the health of the nerve, depending on the result of the investigations we will proceed either with or without a root treatment ( root canal ) and place a temporary dressing prior to taking impressions and making a ceramic crown"

I didn't need a root canal..........

Here is the photo that Dr Terron gave me to forward to my dentist in the UK. You can see the rather suspicious cracks pointing to the pin, there is also the suspicion of cracking, " fractura" in the region of said pin.

I am under stern instruction from my new Spanish dentist to avoid holding ropes in my teeth in future........

So having sorted out treatment etc. It only remained to equip for some serious exploration of the immediate area.

First up was the acquisition of a barik card.

This is a kind of universal travel card, Bilbao being blessed with an integrated public transport system this card can be " loaded" with cash at several different outlets and then used to pay for trains, trams, buses, transporter bridges, funicular railways, for all I know donkeys on the beach as well! In short it's very convenient and also cheap. It also quite neatly circumvents the essentially "self service" ticket machines with their tricky Spanish and incomprehensible Basque menus. Just swipe and go!

One of our first trips together was to find Lidl which the cunning Badques had hidden in a warehouse.

But a more uplifting trip was to the end of the Metro line, a small seaside town called Plentzia.

Strangely enough the Metro doesn't actually run here yet and we were totally confused by fellow passengers urging us off the train two stops early until one lovely woman rung her husband who spoke English, then gave me her phone so he could explain the fact that the train didn't reach Plentzia yet and we would need to catch the free bus.

We enjoyed the bus ride as it gave us an opportunity to see the countryside, which is largely composed of very steep hills and forest, with local buildings which look very alpine in character. Upon arriving at the non operational station it is necessary to cross the river to enter the town proper.

We had entertained ideas of sailing here in Dark Tarn as it's pretty much a day sail from Getxo, however on this day it was very much not an option! It's a fantastic bay for surfing with a point break and a large bay that conveniently narrows as it goes inland which had the effect of steepening any swell to very nice 1-2 metre beach break, occasionally the waves would completely cover the left hand mole which guarded the entrance to the river.

What a beautiful place though....

We wandered along the front towards a hospital, and seriously considered getting ill just so we could recouperate here.

I think Lynne was a little surprised, pleasantly but surprised still, at just how spectacular the north coast of Spain can be and especialy the Basque Country. Wait until she sees Galicia!

We stopped for our habitual afternoon coffee at a beachfront café.

It had fabulous views of the whole bay.

We followed the beach to the very end, the only concievable anchorage behind the right hand mole still not persuading Lynne to bring in Dark Tarn, a quick check over the wall and I was forced to agree.

I'm afraid as usual the photo doesn't do justice to what we saw, the far point every few minutes had 3-5 metre breaking waves crashing over rocks and the point break on the right would regularly break hollow and send reflected 2 metre waves into the mole, tricky!

But a beautiful spot non the less.

One we would undoubtably visit again.

The river at Plentzia.