Zierbena (Ciérvana)

The first thing you see after twenty-four hours on the Bay of Biscay is a wall of orange cranes. Brittany Ferries noses into the new terminal, the gangway drops, and everyone hurries for the passport queue convinced there is nothing here but tarmac and freight lorries. Half an hour later most Brits are already on the A-8, sat-nav set for San Sebastián or the Med. They miss the beach five minutes up the road, the cliff-top path that lets you watch the same ship leave again, and the small fact that Zierbena is one of the few places on the north coast where you can stand with one boot in the Cantabrian surf and the other almost underneath a container gantry.

A port that refuses to apologise

Zierbena—or Ciérvana in Basque—never pretends the harbour is someone else’s problem. The town cemetery sits on a bluff above the oil terminal; Friday evening football matches at the polideportivo are played to the soundtrack of reversing trucks. Yet the juxtaposition works. When the afternoon light catches the white houses along Kalea Nagusia and a bulk carrier glides past, the scene feels like a postcard that forgot to crop out the real world.

La Arena beach, shared with neighbouring Muskiz, is wide, open and mercifully free of the pay-to-rent sun-lounger culture that infects Mediterranean Spain. Lifeguards raise the flag, wind-surfers rig in the car park, and locals walk dogs straight off the promenade into knee-deep water. On summer Sundays the sand fills with extended families and portable barbecues; come October you can have a mile of it to yourself, the only company a few surfers in 5 mm suits and the distant thud of the port’s grain loader.

Climb the wooden steps at the western end and the industrial backdrop drops away. A dirt track threads along the cliff edge, sometimes no wider than a supermarket aisle, sometimes disappearing altogether into bracken. You can walk as far as Punta Lucero, the iron-ore loading pier that feeds the Arcelor blast furnaces across the water, but most people turn back after forty minutes when the path narrows and the wind starts to feel personal. Even on calm days keep a light jacket in the rucksack; the Cantabric has a habit of switching from benign to brutal in the time it takes to unwrap a sandwich.

What the guidebooks leave out

Zierbena is tiny. The sort of place where the bakery, chemist and fishmonger occupy three consecutive shopfronts on the same terrace. You can cover the grid of streets between the church of San Miguel and the harbour railings in fifteen minutes, less if the church is locked and you don’t stop to read the plaque honouring local sailors shot during the Civil War. That brevity is either disappointing or refreshing, depending on what you need after the ferry. If the Bay has been rough, simply being on unmoving ground with a coffee and a tortilla slice at Café Bar Waitaki can feel like sightseeing enough.

There is almost nowhere to stay. The municipal albergue has twenty dorm beds and a donativo honesty box; it fills most nights with Camino walkers who started in Castro Urdiales and want an early start across the Ría de Bilbao suspension bridge. Anyone wanting a private room is pushed towards Santurtzi, ten minutes east by metro, where business hotels cater to port reps rather than holidaymakers. The upside is that restaurants keep normal Spanish hours rather than tourist ones—lunch from 13:30, last orders 15:30—because they are feeding dockers, not coach parties.

Eating between ships and salt

Taberna Eloy, opposite the port gate, is where ferry passengers collide with men in hi-vis vests. Grilled prawns arrive head-on and sizzling; a half portion is still generous for two. Staff speak enough English to explain that chipirones are squid, not some exotic shellfish, and they will happily open a bottle of txakoli even if you only want a glass. Expect to pay €22–25 per head for a no-nonsense meal, less if you stick to the daily menú which might be hake in cider or simply steak-frites with mustard.

If you’ve driven off the boat with a dog and children who need to run, La Arena’s beach bars open at eleven for bocadillos and hot chocolate. Showers are free and clean, plastic bags are provided for the inevitable sand-coated croissant, and there’s enough parking for a camper van provided you don’t mind reversing between concrete blocks designed to stop the Atlantic stealing the tarmac every winter.

Practicalities you’ll be glad of at 08:00 the next morning

Brittany Ferries usually docks around 07:30 Spanish time; disembarkation can take another hour if customs decide to scan every boot. The terminal has no ATM, so queue for the cafetería cash-back if you need coins for the bus. Bizkaibus A-3247 leaves roughly hourly for Santurtzi metro station; from there Line 1 reaches Bilbao-Abando in twenty minutes. A pre-booked taxi to the city costs €35–40 and drivers prefer card payment—handy because the port’s only cash machine is often out of order.

Returning northbound, check-in opens four hours before sailing. If you have a night crossing, most people leave Bilbao after lunch, kill time on the beach, then sit in Eloy with a caña watching the loaders stack containers four-high. Sundays are the exception: the tavern closes at 20:00 and the neighbouring restaurants follow suit, so stock up on water and jamón bocadillos beforehand or you’ll be relying on the ship’s vending machines.

Should you linger?

Honest answer: probably not for long. Zierbena is a palate-cleanser rather than the main dish. Use it to stretch your legs, rinse the Biscay salt off the dog, and remember what Spanish coffee tastes like. Then point the car south before the motorway tolls increase at noon, or jump on the metro and be admiring the Guggenheim’s titanium curves before lunch. But if the weather is luminous and the wind has dropped, stay for the hour it takes to walk the cliffs, watch your own ferry shrink towards the horizon, and admit that sometimes an industrial shoreline can feel oddly like the edge of the world.