The last day of the year could have been a perfect spring day except for the fact that we are in winter. Of course the weather helped to make our excursion to see what plants were in flower all the more pleasant and certainly the twelve of us who took part were in good spirits. There were perhaps fewer flowers than previous year, probably due to the period of bad weather at the end of November and start of December, but it was clear that the recent spell of warm weather was starting to bring out many of the flowers. Nevertheless, many of the flowers that might have been there weren`tthere because the grass verges had been cut not too long ago. To make the walk a little more interesting each partcipant was given a chart to tick off the flowers they saw.
We didn`t discover any new flowers and most of the time was spent explaining the differences between the various species we saw, particularly the yellow ones which are so easy to confuse. Thankfully, our friend and expert at identifying flowers, Gorka Basterretxea, took the time to be with a couple of us before the outing to help us on some of the more difficult flowers to identify. His web-page on Bermeo flowers is a must for anyone interested in knowing what the most typical flowers are on the Bizkaia coast. As well as benefiting from the help of Gorka, during the excursion Mentxu Amunategi helped to explain some of the medicinal properties of some of the flowers and Aitor Urrutia was on hand to share his knowledge of some of the birds along the way. And last of all, a big thanks to Ana and David for once again organizing this event and to everyone who took part in it and made it so enjoyable. So, it was with great satisfaction that we ended the outing with a drink and a bite to eat in the Surfing Bar in Bakio but with the intention of repeating the outing in spring, a more appropriate time for plants to be in flower!
