31.10 - Day 290 - San Sebastian, ESP to Lusignac, FRA

Thursday 31st October - San Sebastian, Spain to Lusignac, France (Day 290)

My early walk from Palacio D’Aiete takes me down to the seafront where a handful of keen joggers run alongside the beach. The bakeries - our source of breakfast - don’t open until 7:30 so I grab a coffee inside Cafe Luis, a typical narrow room with the bar running down one side. 

Locals come, neck their espresso, and go, some settling in a little longer to watch on the TV non-stop coverage of the flash flooding that has hit the Valencia region in the last 24 hours leading to a 3 day period of mourning. 

Once the bakery next door is open I return to the hotel for breakfast and schoolwork. 

Bron’s house keys remain in Madrid so we leave without them and trust the neighbours to arrive in time from the UK to let us in with their spare keys. 

It’s a motorway heavy 4.5 hours drive and we leave the gastronomic city of San Sebastian and follow it up with a picnic in the car park of a Burger King. Not that the kids give a hoot when it means an ice-cream for dessert. 

At Mussidan we turn North, after skirting around Bordeaux driving up through the small towns dotted along the main road, through Riberac (brief stop at Aldi for some supplies) until Verteillac and Lusignac our final French destination. 

The house is one of five, crafted out of a single large U-shaped barn. Luckily Pauline and Alan had arrived from Winchester not long before us to give us the keys and show us around. 

We open up the locked shutters to reveal farmland all around, the house looking down over the swimming pool and tennis court. Talk about landing on your feet. Again we’re very grateful to Mair and Ray (and Bron) for letting us stay, sight unseen, as we fall into bed.