19th to 31st July Lilian’s blog of the Biscay and Pico de Europa Mountains Spain

We cross the bay of biscay which is 315nm and it takes 3 days and two nights, it gets a bit bumby the last day and Ruairi feels a little sick. We have good wind the whole way and our average speed was 6kts which mum says is really good.

Mum took a picture of when we crossed over the continental slope, that's when it gets really deep. You can also see the track that we took.

On this trip I did some navigation, we learnt how to measure distance on the chart from the latitude measurements on the sides. The longtitude is on the top of the chart, if you measure from there the distance will be wrong.

We arrived in Sada, Spain on the 19th July and it took 2 days to organise the boat, rent a car and pack all the camping and mountaineering gear. First we go to a surf beach, we brought my SUP board and Ruairi’s surf board, the surf was big and really good.

The next day we drove into the mountains, we camped at the Covadonga campsite near Cangas de Onis, when we arrived we had just pitched the tents when a huge electrical storm started, the lightening was everywhere, it was amazing. So we couldn’t cook dinner, we went to a restaurant instead and watched the lightening.

We walked high into a hut for 6 hours, it was our first day and we were all tired after it!. When we came back down dad booked a different hut high in the mountains, so the next day we walked for 4 hours up to it and stayed the night there. It was really hot walking, when we got there mum made us drink dioralyte as we sweated so much it was disgusting but it replaces the salts you loose in your body. We met another family from Holland and we played cards with them, that was really fun.

In the morning there were cows and bulls everywhere and a mule stuck his head into our bedroom! From the hut we walked up to the Naranja de bulnes, it was a really big rock face that Dad climbed with his friend James in 2004. We walked up to it and then all the way back down to the valley, it was a really steep decent in some places we have to rock climb.

We descended 1,700m in one day and sat in a river at the end to cool off. All our legs were sore the next day! Mum said it was a bit too much for us but I thought it was fine.

After 5 days in the Cangas area we move to Potes on the East side of the mountains, this is because our friends from Ireland will be camping there, I am really excited to meet my Ballylicky friends again. They are all from Dublin but we meet up every Easter in Ballylicky. There are lots of girls my age. When we arrive me and Ruairi are really excited, as the campsite also has a swimming pool!! Dad is moaning because there is lots of people and noise, we love it. Mum gets a special coffee for Dad.

We head up into the mountains the next day and get a cable car up 800m, Dad decides to run it. We meet him at the top and walk to hours towards a mountain hut but we turn back as its too far and mum doesn’t like the terrain, that’s the steepness and she calculates that we will be there at 10 at night. I want to go on but we turn back. We still have to walk back to the valley floor which is a long way. It’s a good walk and we see wild horses, and eagles and vultures. Also a dog tries to eat us as we go too near to the sheep he is guarding, we are lucky that there is a farmer there who whistles at him.

After that mum says ‘no more walking for a while’ so we go rock climbing, we have to do a river crossing which is fun. On the way back there is a Tyrolean which is like a tight rope to cross the river, mum points out that one of the ropes is missing, but Dad tries anyhow and kinda gets stuck so we all laughed. He got down no problem and we cross the river on foot.

Mum says she has a surprise the next day and we are going horse riding in the mountains. I am so so so so happy, it’s my best day ever. My horses name is Lemon; they are all boy horses and are well trained. We do some steep ups and down which I have never done before so you really had to lean back. Then we also did some cantering but not a gallop as there was no space. I loved it; mum was pretty good even though she was a bit nervous before. She said she really liked the horses and she got good confidence from them. Dad isn’t good on horses so he went running up some really steep mountains.

We got back for lunch and I was starving. Then we went to the pool and mum took all the tents down, but jumped in the pool half way as she was really hot.

Then Dad came back and we went to meet Auntie Dolo at a restaurant and Ruairí and I poured cider.