Our final fortnight in Portugal was a blur of surf, fishing, barbeques, bonfires, good company and good bottles of wine, all crowned by three days of modest drives through Spain via the medieval university town of Salamanca to stormy Bilbao to await passage home aboard ‘The Pride of Bilbao’.
I had the best surf of the trip so far this morning; in fact, I’m at a stage on my surfing path where I’m able to say I had the best surf of my life this morning!
We should have seen the individual events as omens, portents of the approaching storm, nature’s way of warning there’s trouble ahead. First a flip lost its flop, rendering it useless except as a fly swat, whilst in the background Neil’s fridge was petering out.
Over a week and probably 1,000 miles have passed since my last rambling, time which has seen Spain, my first published piece in the Guardian and my birthday come and go. After Zarautz we swung by San Sebastian to find it was (pretty much) closed for winter; then we hoofed it across the top of Spain, speeding by Mundaka, Rodiles and other world-class waves as the drizzle descended, taking the swell with it.
Turquoise turned to jade green which merged with a deeper grey-blue sliding into seafoam green fragmenting into golden yellow, duck-egg blue and a cool fathomless green…
It’s a momentous day today: we threw caution to the wind and had our first non-van dining experience and ordered Steak Frites in Eauze town square as we broke the journey toward Oleron in the western Pyrenees.
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the Gods gave you and you didn’t use them… there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome), Meditations AD171
Ed Templeton
Leaving behind a successful design studio in Brighton, Ed has packed his life into a '91 Nissan Urvan Nomad and hit the open road - through France, Spain and Portugal onto India, Indo, Australia and Central America - in search of surf and his next business venture.
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