2nd April 2024 - And so it begins

 

A wet and blowy Portsmouth harbour

Spending a lot of time organising and supervising trips for other people and with starting to get on a bit, I felt it was time to go on a trip with my peers and floated the idea to see if there was any other interest.

Fortunately Tony and Mike were like minded and post caving pints began to focus on the details while the odd free bits of days became filled with the finding of surveys and descriptions.

Finally Mike, Tony and I piled into a car with shiny new caving suits, slick new ropes and an inflatable rubber ring or two and headed down the motorway in increasingly grim weather to Portsmouth.

Our Bilbao bound ferry was delayed, allowing Tony and I time for a pint or two, but eventually at 2 in the morning we set sail for the Bay of Biscay. While others settled into their cabins Tony, a veteran of the crossing, found us some cosy benches to bed down on and we were soon dreaming of caverns measureless to man.

After a fairly ropey breakfast (what had they done to the bacon?), the daytime section of the crossing was spent looking through descriptions and deciding on a hit list of trips we'd like to do and the order to do them in. Anticipation was now running high but Amy MacDonald covers sung by the on board entertainment lulled me to sleep on our second night of the voyage.