As seen in the Game of Thrones (apparently)….

My partner Jane works at the Dyfi Biosphere reserve in Machynlleth, which has links to the Urdaibai Biosphere near Bilbao, in the Basque Country. So we decided to have a short holiday there in September. We’re both keen on train travel and it was a chance for me to use the Interrail pass which I had bought last December and which expired this month. So we took the sleeper train to Bayonne in France and then onward to Hendaye on the Spanish border. From there we transferred onto the narrow gauge (but electrified) line towards Bilbao. I can’t say I would recommend the latter. It took three hours and stopped at fifty-one stations! At each one the doors slid open and clanged shut, with numerous accompanying beeps. Think a three hour journey on the Tube and you’ve just about got it. But arrive we did, eventually. There is a very good network of local trains and buses in the Bilbao area so we used public transport exclusively while were there.

I knew little about the Basque Country before leaving and even less about the language. It’s fair to say that the distribution of letters in a Basque edition of Scrabble would be very different to the UK version……. X, Z and K would only score one point each, for starters! It is hilly and heavily wooded country with a dramatic coastline. One of the most well-known features of the latter is the islet of Gaztelugatxe – complete with a chapel dedicated to San Juan on its summit – linked to the mainland by a stone bridge. It is considered to be a pilgrimage site, and has always been a popular destination for visitors. It was used as a location in The Game of Thrones, and now, at busy periods, you need to book a ticket online before visiting. And there can still be queues. I knew nothing about this, of course, and was disappointed to discover that no passes were available for the day that I could visit. It took me a while to discover that in late September there were no longer any restrictions. Lucky me!

My visit started with a bus journey from Bermeo (the nearest town) well before dawn on a showery morning. It was still dark when the bus left me at the side of the road above the island. By the time I had reached the coastline it was light but no sun lit the island. A passing break in the clouds allowed a few sunbeams to hit the chapel but the camera was still in my bag. I then discovered that I had left my polariser in the hotel. This was becoming a habit!

However, when I got to the bridge and looked along the coastline things started took a turn for the better. Talk about moody! Stormy skies, rock stacks, skerries with white water breaking over them, and rain showers passing across the landscape. I decided that long exposures using a neutral density filter would make the best of the conditions. Without a tripod I had to brace the camera carefully against a stone wall and rely on the image stabilisation for which Olympus kit is renowned. I took a series of exposures in the region of 1.6 to 4 seconds long and hoped for the best. Short breaks in the cloud even allowed the sun to illuminate the most prominent stack, leaving everything else in shadow. All my extremities were crossed at this moment! And the islet with its chapel was illuminated for short periods of time too.

I spent hours processing some of these photographs on my return home to the UK. Most of the long exposures needed some serious sharpening, but taking into consideration how long they actually were, that’s not surprising. Without the latest technology they would have been virtually impossible (without a tripod), say, ten years ago. Thank goodness I had arrived early because by mid-morning the area was thronged by visitors. And thank goodness it hadn’t been a blue sky day!

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