I should have remembered that getting a spot in a campsite on the coast at weekends during the holiday season is virtually impossible in both France and Spain. Vanya tried ‘phoning a few but all were full. So, more in hope than expectation we made our way to the coast anyway, thinking to do a wild camp if we were unable to find an Aire. Our target was Lekeitio, a small fishing port in the Basque Country Region but our route took us through Bermeo first.
Bermeo is perhaps the most important fishing port in the Basque Country. So many small ports in the Basque Country have given up fishing for tourism but Bermeo remains primarily a fishing port. It was very much a whaler’s port and this fact is reflected in the town’s coat of arms which shows an open whaleboat chasing a whale
Sadly, we couldn’t hang around Bermeo for very long. We needed to find a spot to park the Van for the night. That was a shame on two counts actually because, just along the coast from Bermeo is a place I would have loved to visit – the beautiful islet of Gaztelugatxe which is connected to the mainland by a narrow man-made bridge. Gaztelugatxe featured as a film location in the HBO tv series ‘Game of Thrones’ when it became Dragonstone, the former home of Daenerys Targaryen.
And so we continued our journey towards Lekeitio.