Ribadesella on the north coast of Spain is a lovely holiday resort with something for everybody. There is a beautiful curved beach, lined with historic early 20th century villas, a fishing port and a marina as well as an attractive town that's on the Camino de Compostella. The name of the town comes from the river Sella on which it is situated.
The 2 headlands that face each other enclosing the beach have a beautiful house on the west and a lighthouse and chapel on the East. We watched a fishing boat come in through this entrance one day and the sea was pretty rough till it turned the corner here, in fact I could describe the boat as surfing in on the crest of a wave.
It didn't take us long to find a café bar we liked for our daily rosé before lunch and I did several sketches as we sat and sipped in the sun. The lamp posts in Ribadesella are particularly attractive with complicated curlicues holding on the light.
By chance on our first day in town as we sat in a restaurant finishing a delicious lunch, we got chatting to the couple at the next table, who turned out to be an Englishman married to a Spanish lady. Even more coincidental was the fact that they owned a house less than 5 miles from our old house in England and knew our road.
We soon made friends and arranged to meet again the next day to have our lunch together, after which Ian and Majee invited us to their home for tea and cake.
How amazing to discover that they owned that lovely house overlooking the bay that we had been looking at a couple of days earlier! We had another lunch together on the Saturday which lasted till 5 pm before we had to say our goodbyes as they were setting off for England on the Monday.
On Sunday, instead of walking into town, we set off for a walk around our campsite area and we discovered a lovely picnic area overlooking the whole bay and town. We took a couple of glasses of wine in the little bar there while I drew another view across to Ian and Majee's house.
On the return stroll to camp we found another little bar tucked in between a few houses only 3 minutes walk from our base so we stopped for another glass. In Spain you always get something to nibble with your drink and we were offered little slices of Spanish omelette here and after the pate on toast we had been given at the previous bar we almost didn't need any lunch!
The walk into town here was along footpaths and a country road, all lined with a wonderful variety of wild flowers. I picked a bunch of at least 16 and took them back to the camper car to put on our table and draw over the next few days.
The 4 in these sketches were the most unusual species I found and I managed to identify 2 of them but I would love to know the names of the other 2 if anybody can help?
Our next stop was at Cudillero a bit further to the west which I'll show you next time.
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