I love my garden

I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep. When I say woke up, I mean properly woke up - I was alert in the head, early in the morning for what must be a very long time.

I was thinking about a stroll along the front, but the sun doesn't rise until 7:30 or so. I settled on a cup of tea and watching my favourite Spanish TV series.

I felt distracted at uni all day, itching to go outside in the sun. After uni, at home for lunch, Fred came over and left his bike - so I borrowed it and went off on a little adventure while he went and surfed at Somo.

It's amazing how happy bikes make me - the freedom to explore huge swathes of land with such minimal effort and the wind in your hair puts it far above walking or cars in my books. So, I took the road to the Faro, then turned left and explored uncharted territory.

As soon as I'd taken a turn of the main road, Santander transformed itself into the rural Spain that I know from my summer working on farms around Alcoi and Valencia - horses and donkeys tied up against rickety shacks, children jumping up and down on a pile of freshly sheared wool - it was the sort of scene that you might have expected reading Don Quijote, and a happy mile from the hustle of the city.

Continuing up and down winding lanes though a labyrinth of streets, I found myself at the sea. This was no mean feat - navigating without a map proved fairly difficult, as what looked like a main road often fizzled into a dirt track, and what appeared to be a farm lane turned into the main road.

But when I finally found the sea, it was incredible. The geology here is limestone, for the most part - and so chemical erosion twists it into fantastic shapes - sharp points and pinnacles, smooth bowls, flat pavements - all while the sea pounds the cost, opening up fractures and carving caves deep into the side of the cliffs.

I trundled along the coast, stopping every now and then to look at the rocks - at one point I found myself confronted by one of these faults, that had come back into the rock about 40m from the sea, and was about 12m deep. There was a small bridge of soil and rock that traversed it, which I took without too much though as to what my fate would be with a foot in the wrong place.

All the way along the coast, fishermen were perched in the most crazy places - one man was casting off from a huge shear cliff, feet over the edge, and I once peered over a cliff edge to see a man standing on a sheer cliff, supported by a platform of rock about 1m wide. No idea how he got there.

I was travelling light, so no photos, but I'll be returning for sure.

Evening at Cora's place (very nice flat house indeed) before crepes back at home.