The church of Santa Maria de la Asuncion stands in flamboyant Gothic splendour, at the head of the harbour. Flanked, to seaward, by the sober square keep and round towers of Santa Ana Castle.
Today there was no dawn departure . Stargazer is cruising Spanish style. Instead there was time to shop for fresh bread and sweet plump tomatoes, before slipping lines.
The sea breeze arriving promptly, at eleven.
It is a head wind. Which increases the apparent wind to a useful ten to twelve knots. And gives Stargazer an excuse (as if one were needed) to nose among the inlets and coves.
Tacking her way east, along the Cantalabrian coast.
Dodging seaward around islands.
Drowned mountain peaks rearing vertically from the sea floor.
Closing shoreward into a deep bay. Its inner secrets shrouded in a heat haze.
First to be revealed are blocky granite cliffs. Ahead lies a nebulous grey form, silhouetted against the sun.
Slowly it resolves, like a mirage, into a spider web tracery, of flying buttresses. Shimmering in the sunlight before us. Supporting the mighty walls of a church built on the scale of a cathedral. Perched atop a wave gnarled promontory.
Stargazer stands close in beneath the cliff. Light and shadow play across the ancient stonework above. Like the involuntary flicker of a smile across two time worn faces ; greeting seafarers, from their vantage point, since the twelfth century.
The misty mountains on the skyline; The straight sided cliffs, rearing from the sea like stalagmites; And the lofty turrets of the castle. In combination, evoke the powerful sense that we have entered the pages of a tale, written by Hans Christian Anderson.
Stargazer has arrived in the historic Biscay port of Castro Urdiales.
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