Champagne Sailing, Fiesta Fiesta & Camino
We had planned to stop at Laredo for its beautiful sandy beach and stunning coastline, to spend a couple of days in the sun and hiking in the mountains. As always, the weather in the end decided that it would be a slightly longer stay than we had anticipated and to a certain extend also wished for.
First things first: La Salvé beach in Laredo stretches for five kilometers, making it the longest beach in the region and the town was also used as a backdrop for Sergio Leone’s film, “The Colossus of Rhodes” funnily enough.
We arrived when the town was celebrating its local tourism boom from the 70ies / 80ies with a sort of hippy festival. It reminded us of cologne carneval with Spanish music and in significantly warmer weather. The following days were spent hiking a very small portion of the famous Camino de Santiago along the coast and obviously sunbathing on the beach. Laredo did live up to its promises, so that André claimed “we would never on this trip have a more perfect beach again” and our legs were sore from the steep but superp hike.
It was time for us to move on further west, as we realised there were only so many “sailable” days in this region, that one either has to decide to stay and get “locked in” for a couple of days bad weather or continue to jump in small sails further west and risking to miss some of the coast’s beauty. Thus, when sailing to Laredo we had already treated us to a champagne sail under lightwind sail just to enjoy the short and precious moment that the wind shifted and the waves eased up. We had learned already in the English Channel that one usually gets locked in by bad weather in places that were not on one’s travel itinerary for extended stays and we had thus decided that we would pick periods of travel when weather allows but also pick locations regardless of good weather to stay instead enjoying some slower days onshore instead of always jumping ahead.
