A week is a long time in weather
Before we got here, a lot of people mentioned that it rained in San Sebastian. That’s OK, I thought, that’s what keeps the green hills green, and anyway, I’m from London, I can handle rain.
Well, last week it rained for four days solid. And, Londoner or not, I didn’t handle it very well. I could blame it on the fact that my boots turned out not to be waterproof. Or because our city-centre, first-floor flat means I can’t even sit and watch the rain bounce in puddles — that wonderfully meditative past-time. But mainly I didn’t handle it well because it emphasised the fact that we four have only we four to entertain us. There are no friends coming round for a play with the children. No after school clubs. No neighbours popping in for a boozy Friday night. No big family meals planned for the weekend. It’s all on us, to entertain each other.
We did play Monopoly. And Brainbox. And set up Netflix. But there we still were, we four in our flat where we can all hear each other at all times. I insisted we went out for a walk in the rain anyway. But a walk in city streets in the rain isn’t quite the same as a soggy yomp across a British field. I may have seen the sea, but it didn’t free my mind.
Instead the relentless wet weather threw into sharp focus a question I’ve been asked alot: Why had we come here?
We came for an adventure. So that the children could learn Spanish. So that we could live in a city by the sea... And therein lay the clue, that word live. This isn’t a holiday, it’s life. It isn’t going to be fun-packed all the time, it’s going to have its ups and downs — and it’s going to have its wet days and dry days too. Even with such rational thinking, it didn’t stop me slamming the occasional door and writing a list of all the things I miss about home.
Eventually, the rain did stop. And I felt like a woman reborn. Just being able to walk without an umbrella and soggy socks was a relief. But also, it meant we could plan a weekend excursion. We could escape the confines of the flat, explore the country we have come to.
We headed out to Tolosa — the former capital of the Basque region. It’s a pretty town with a river running through it, narrow streets of buildings with wrought-ironed balconies and a market every Saturday. We stood at a stall and tasted cheese until we found one that we all liked (J is missing cheddar). Then moved on to the next stall and did the same there. We bought a bag of beautiful looking black beans — obviously I rely on Steve to know what to do with those. We found a bar with pintxos for lunch: tortilla and chipirones (deep fried baby squid).
From Tolosa we took a scenic route through the green hills that lap up all that rain. It was a route of hairpin bends and steep drops, made that bit more fun by J in the back wondering aloud, “What if our car went off the side and slid all the way down there?” My response was to turn the music up. Cows clung to the hillsides as if they were goats. From the few glimpses I dared to take my eyes off the road for, it was very beautiful. We stopped in what I had thought from a map was a national park, but in fact was a botanical garden. It had a network of paths and an awful lot of well labelled plants. But we found a green expanse to run around in, some trees to play hide and seek behind and the blues of the week were gone.
And we still had Sunday. It was dry, but coat weather. We headed to the beach, armed with a pack of tennis balls. This is when we four is such a good thing: playing catch on a beach, no time constraints, just inventing new games and lots of laughs.
We walked to the end of La Concha, to a sculpture by one of San Sebastian’s most famous sons, Eduardo Chillida. Called the Comb of the Winds, it is three huge iron structures that emerge from rocks towering out of the ocean. On a still day, it seemed to bring tranquility to the always restless sea. On a rough day it would look utterly different. A little like my own mind, so much depends on the weather.
