Iruzubieta Auzoa or not far from Guernica

 Iruzubieta Auzoa or not far from Guernica 

It was raining and I had to get a taxi or a train to Beda to ick El Camino, but whilst checking the timtable, I discovered that the train passed within 13 kilometres of my next stop. The taxi would be about EUR40 but the train was just EUR2.90 so I took the train, got off ay Ermua and walked just 13 km instead of 23km. 

Before I left Zarautz, I did one last tourist visit. I found the monument to Frntzisko Eskudero, a music composer born here in 1912. He died in San Sebastian in 2002. 

The statue stands in the grounds of Villa Mundako Lehoiak. It was built in the late 19th century and is impressive from the outside and I was told by the groundman that it is impressive inside. It housed the library until they moved into more a modern buiding just down the road. And it last lain empty for at least the last ten years until a new purpose for it is found and funding is available. 

I went shopping but didn't find what I wanted, such as a new small digital camera, a cambio to exchange some foreign currency left over from a trip to South America (everyone would trade major currencies like euros, dollars and sterling but turned their noses up at Brazilian Reals and Venezuelan Bolivars). 

Then I caught the train to Ermua, a modern, clean, quiet train for a one hour and one minute ride for the cost of EUR2.90. I was planning to get a taxi, but it had stopped raining, so I decided to walk. 

Then it was a 13 kilometre walk to Iruzubieta Auzoa, but the map with which I had planned the route didn't show contours and it was a long slog over a high pass in the mountains. The views were good but much of it was alongside a busy road. I had checked a satellite image and I thought that there were pavements on either side but had misread some wide, shallow concrete gutters for a avement so I was walking along the tarmac of the road, listening out for traffic to step into the gutter to avoid being hit and the draught caused by passing lorries.

The Casa Ikestei where I was going to stay was a great place but it is up a steep drive and it is the last thing a walker wants at the end of a long day.