Wednesday 1st October 2014 - Torrelavega, Spain

Ian got a reasonable night's sleep whilst Les remarked that he had found the softest part of the steel deck. In other words, he slept on the floor and got some sleep. Our cabin was very comfortable!
It was great spending the day catching up with Les and Ian's trip so far and we got the details of the "interesting(!!!) off-road cycling" that Ian mentioned on day 2. Apparently, Ian asked if there was an alternative route that they could take to avoid the busy main road out of Pimperne and the B&B owner described one. Either, the description was incorrect or it was incomplete or there was some incompetence in following it. I will let you decide which applies! Anyway, the track that they followed soon ran out and they ended up following a footpath over fields that involved taking very heavily laden bikes over two styles and a locked gate before they reached another track. Then came Blandford army camp where there was no way through and they had to follow the perimeter fence. All of this added a large extra distance to their journey and meant that they were very late meeting up with Alan, Inga, John and Peg. Both have expressed a desire to avoid any more off-road experiences on the rest of the trip!
When we arrived at Santander, Les and Ian set off for Torrelevaga, a journey that involved considerable climbs, the toughest so far, and they had to use lights, arriving at the hotel in the dark.
Meanwhile, we drove to our very popular aire at the Cabarceno Nature Park. Our pitch had a view over a small lake where hundreds of egrets gathered and roosted in the trees that surrounded it.
And now for the bad news. My laptop has died and I have no method of accessing the photographs on any of our cameras. Hopefully, I will be able to add photos from my phone in later posts.
Photos: The aire at the Cabarceno Nature Park with the lake in the background. Unfortunately, I lost the photographs of the egrets when the laptop failed.