Day 9: Mon 2nd July 2007
Ride: Esterencuby to Santander - 248 miles
Today was our final day in the Pyrenees and saw us heading to Santander. Nobody wanted to stay in the hotel for a minute longer than was necessary and Pete and Gaz left a good time before anyone else. The rest of us left at intervals and stopped off in St. Jean Pied de Port for fuel and some breakfast. The route to Santander was straight forward however over coffee we decided to get one more pass in before jumping on the motorway.
Leaving St. Jean we turned left up the D933, and over the Puerto de Ibaneta to Pamplona - a very nice road where the old bad bits have been completely resurfaced. From Pamplona we just followed the motorway past Gasteiz Vitoria to Bilbao and Santander, arriving with time to spare. We didn't actually all arrive together, traffic was heavy into Santander and those with wider panniers couldn't filter through as quickly as others. As a result we got split up just before the ferry terminal and arrived in dribs and drabs, not actually meeting up again until we were on the ferry.
Pulling out of Santander
One by one we "checked-in" to our cabins and then headed to the bar to meet up. Except we appeared to be short to the tune of two - there was no sign of Pete or Gaz.
Now there are three sides to every story: yours...mine...and the truth, however this is the version that the rest of us were given by Pete and Gaz. They had decided to miss Pamplona and take the direct route to Santander via Biarritz and the coastal motorway. Somewhere between the hotel and St. Jean Pete's immobiliser button fell off his key ring so when they stopped for fuel and breakfast in St. Jean they couldn't restart his bike. It took them 3 hours to remove the bike plastics, find the wiring loom and remove the immobiliser from it. Now St. Jean isn't a big town but the rest of us had managed to miss them because we'd turned left up the D933 and they'd stopped a couple of hundred yards after the turning.
They didn't leave St. Jean until midday however this still left them enough time to get to Santander before 3.15pm to catch our 4.00pm ferry - it was 185 miles and 150 of that was motorway and they were both riding Honda Blackbirds which will cruise at 100+ without a problem.
Somehow they had got it into their heads that the 4.00pm departure time marked on the ticket meant 5.00pm local time. At 4.25pm Phil got a call asking where we were and where was the ferry? The answer was that we were in the bar, on the ferry, that had left 25 minutes ago. "Oh dear" was the response - "I suppose we'll have to stay the night and catch the next crossing tomorrow". Phil informed them that the next sailing wasn't until Thursday. There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone before a "we'll speak later" and the line dropping.
Cat trying to spot Pete and Gaz as we leave Santander
In the event after a bit of phoning around they managed to get themselves booked on the next day's - Tuesday - sailing on the P&O ferry from Bilbao to Portsmouth. And they were lucky to get on that crossing because Europe's biggest gay festival, held in Madrid, had just finished and virtually all the bike spaces had already been booked by the UK attendees who were returning home. Mind you Pete and Gaz looked a lovely couple with their matching silver Blackbirds.
The moral of the story: probably take a spare key...definitely read the ferry ticket properly!
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