The winter in the Spanish north shore

Winter will come soon here in the spanish north shore, and cold temperatures too. I was having a talk with a friend of mine a couple of days ago just after a freezing kite session in Laredo about the weather conditions (kite/wind and surfing related of course) we use to have here during winter time. In just one word: tough.

 You know I'm from italy. I used to surf along the mediterrenean coast. Windsurfing and kitesurfing (as well as surfing, believe it or not) is still ok in winter time since there are a lot of storms hitting the west shores and conditions could become pretty gnarly. You still have the option, if the sea becomes too dangerous to sail out, to go to some internal lake for you session.  You can sail almost all year long if you can stand the cold then. There I was used to sail with almost all wind directions (the only exception was when the wind was blowing from the east... but the east shore is not far awawy from where I was living). There are almost 30 different spots in a 100km radius, pleanty of different options, from wave to freeride. And even when there seems to be no option to sail, when the conditions permit it, you still have the opportunity to sail in particular places like this...

 Now the situation in the spanish north shore, and particulary in the basque coast, is quite different. First, this is The OCEAN, not a SEA. Everything here is amplified: bigger storms, stronger winds, huge waves. The basque coast has lot of cliffs, and most of the beaches are within bays or even coves, meaning the conditions here are almost onshore (see my previous post here). There are few exceptions, like in Mundaka (southern winds, offshore condition), but the wind is still incredibly gusty there, making your session a potential nightmare. Lakes ("pantanos" here) are not an option in winter time because of the chilling temperatures.
Considering that with onshore winds the the ocean become messy, waves are mushy or huges... you have the complete picture.

If you take the book "The kite and windsurfing guide - Europe edition" there are only 7 surfable spots in the Basque Country - merely two pages, pictures included. Hondarribia, la Zurriola, Mundaka, Gorliz, Sopelana, Arrigunaga and Ereaga. There are at leat one missing ("La Arena" beach) which is not mentioned by the book, but at the end we're still under the "two hand" count.

Of course, if you take the car and travel to the west, in Cantabria, you'd have better options. But that's a different story, I will come back to it in a later post.