Camino 2016 Day 30

After completing our trek from Irun to Santiago de Compostela, today was a rest  and travel day. We have decided to do another Camino from Ferrol; this is called the Camino Ingles. So we caught a bus and sat for an hour and a half out to Ferrol. Everything was going well until we encountered a glitch while trying to acquire our new credentiales in Ferrol.  We arrived at the tourist kiosk as described in the guidebook just after 2 pm and had to wait until they returned from siesta at 4 pm.  Unfortunately no one arrived at 4 and eventually a local told us that the tourist kiosk was closed even though the sign indicated open hours. So we walked to the alternative office where we were told that as of April 1 only the cathedral was selling credentiales and their hours were 6:30 - 8:30 pm.  After we told the clerk how long we had waited already she made a few calls and found us some at a major hotel. By the time we walked to our hotel and checked in it was 6:30 pm.  Nevertheless there is always a silver lining if you look for it.  Ours was a pedestrian overpass; it was a cable stayed structure in the shape of an S.  It was really a work of art.

Camino 2016 Day 29

What  a great start to the day.  We had a nice breakfast at the pensione and hit the Camino in dry weather. The terrain was relatively flat so we covered more ground than we had in the mountains. By the time we got to Pedrouzo, we were running on empty so we stopped at a bar for hamburgers and drinks. The hamburgers weren't great but somehow they tasted really good. As we left town and were passing another bar we heard a shout from our Swedish friends. Later we saw our Alaskan colleagues and also a couple from Brazil. They were all a lot of fun to walk with. By mid-afternoon we had decided to push through to Santiago de Compostela and got to a hotel near the bus station between 4 and 5.  We then cleaned up and walked into the cathedral area.  After a nice dinner we got back to our hotel to enjoy some of the perks it offers such as hot beverages in the breakfast area.

Camino 2016 Day 28

After spending last night in the new municipal albergue, we set out for Arzua in classical Galecian weather; that is to say that it was giving us liquid sunshine.  About 2 km out, I realized that I had left  hiking pole at the albergue.  After going back to retrieve it we made our way into Melide by about 11 am.  We made a bee line for Ezekiel Pulperia, which we had been told about 4 nights ago.  Much to the surprise and delight, Susie tried it and liked it.  That made my day.  Traffic on the path was much heavily after Melide because that is where the Camino Primitivo and Camino Frances meet.  Arzua, where we stopped tonight is where the Camino del Norte joins in.

Camino 2016 Day 27

On leaving Lugo we had rain immediately and it rained all day with a few periods of dryness interspersed.  On arrival in As Siexes we checked into the albergue, which is new and really nice.  Now we are about to have supper at the only restaurant in the village.

Camino 2016 Day 26

Today we walked into Lugo, which is a city as opposed to the towns that we have been through recently.  The day was pretty easy in spite of it being 30 km to cover.  Everything was great  until we got to our hotel room, which I thought was a 3 star hotel at a great price. It is very basic; it' s saving grace is its location right on the Camino Primitivo.  Lugo itself is very interesting because it still has its city walls from centuries ago.  And of course it has a wonderful cathedral with several ornate chapels.

Camino 2016 Day 25

Yesterday in Fonsagrada was a little weird because the town looks big but had only 2 pensiones an 2 albergues.  On our walk out this morning we saw a 4 star hotel that had been closed.  This is a bit of a ghost town. Our next stop is Cardavo Baleira so we got the albergue owner to call ahead and book a room for us and the Swedish couple in a pensione.  Today's walk was unusual in that there was fog in the valleys below us and sun above.  It was cool but dry; In Galecia we will take that over the rain for which it is famous.  We hiked up one ridge and got right next to the wind turbines then descended into the next valley and gradually worked our way over a lower ridge.  All day we were close to wind turbines.  About mid-morning we stopped for coffee with a bunch of people that we met on the Camino. It would be interesting to know what portion of Spain's electricity comes from wind and solar sources.  Tomorrow we will hit the city of Lugo.

Camino 2016 Day 24

Galicia here we come.  Today we leave Asturias and enter Galecia. It was a nice walk, which took us up on a ridge with  line of wind turbines.  It kept threatening to rain all day but only sprinkled on us a few times. The valleys were interesting because they had low lying clouds, which made them look as if they had fires burning.  Fonsagrada is full in the pensiones, so we are in the Albergue Cantabrica.  It is very nice and well equipped.  Dinner tonight was special because it featured pulpo aka octopus. Actually I started with a nice soup, then had pulpo followed by beef and finished with grandmother's cake.  Very nice; it incuded both red and white wine since there were 3 of us to start and a 4th joined us.

Camino 2016 Day 23

After a good night's sleep we set off in the direction of Grandas de Salime.  The guidebook led us to believe that we would be walking downhill immediately and that could be hard on the knees.  In fact we had to climb some and the roll up and down for quite a way before our descent occured.  We saw this deep valley, with reservior lake and electrical generation station.  Today we saw many other peregrinos that we recognized from the last few days. The hotel in Grandas de Salime wasn't available so we are in the Albergue tonight.

Camino 2016 Day 22

Today we had perfect weather to walk the highest segment of the Camino Primitivo. It was quite cool as we started; Susie wore gloves and my hands were cool.  A cool day is perfect for this segment because there was a 16.5 km part without any source of clean drinking water.  The temperature kept our sweating to a minimum and ensured that we needed a small amount of water. We climbed to over 1100 metres, and dropped down about 600 metres.  We thought that the descent would be tough on the knees but the steep part was short so it was fine.  The views up top were fantastic as we stayed above tree line for about four hours.  An Italian fellow that we spoke with here in Barducedo said that it was the best day of hiking in his life.  A bonus was finding a pension in Barducedo that wasn't mentioned in our guidebook.

Camino 2016 Day 21

Last night a weather front came through La Espina bringing rain overnight and cool air this morning.  In fact it was 9C this morning and continued to be cool all day.  In fact it was one of those days where we were changing continuously- jacket on jacket off umbrella up umbrella down.  We gained a bit of altitude but not a lot today.  About 2 pm we rolled into Campiello and checked into Casa Herminia where we got a really nice room with a nice shower, dinner and breakfast.  Our dinner was incredible, starting with soup, followed by vegetable stew and then chicken and trout entrées. Then they brought dessert.  We couldn't eat all that they brought.  Of course there was the standard bottle of wine.

Camino 2016 Day 20

Today we felt that we were in the movie "Those magnificent men in their flying machines" because we went upiddy up up  then down diddy diddy down down.  Between a down and up we saw some really in bridges being built across a valley, which must have been a good km across.
After an early start at around 7 am, we walked quite well in ideal conditions reaching La Espina at 3 pm.  We checked into a pension, which looked questionable from the outside but was clean and roomy after all.

Camino 2016 Day 19

We had an acceptable breakfast at our hotel then got out about 8:15 in dry overcast conditions.  While there was some vertical today, the trek was not tiring.  We reached Grado after 2 and went to the sole hotel in town only to be told that it was "completo".  After much gesturing and confusion they took us to another building and put us up in a room with shared bathroom.  It's fine for our purposes; we can wash clothes, eat and sleep.  Today we saw beautiful small valleys, some interesting trails and various livestock.  One horse came trotting to us as soon as I talked to him, so I picked grass to feed him.  He followed us to end of his pasture so I fed him again.  We took pictures.

Camino 2016 Day 18

Our hostesses at the hotel were great this morning. We were offered various bocadillos and we took chicken with blue cheese; it was excellent.  As we went to leave they offered us a bit of fruit for walkie; it turned out to be 8 pieces.  Then they gave us hugs and sent us on our way.  The walk into Oviedo was very pleasant, mostly on single lane country roads and foot paths.  As we entered the city we found 4 star hotel at half price, so we are in a very nice hotel tonight.  Since we arrived at noon, we are touring this afternoon. We decided to have a short day today because walking to the next town with a hotel would have been pushing our bodies too much.  We ate our major meal about 3:30 today.  It was phenomenal with a chicken salad to start; it was loaded with white meat.  Then we had generous servings of roast beef. Our drinks were a large glass of beer and a bottle of red wine.  We had to leave some wine.  Afterwards we visited the Oviedo Cathedral and museum.  It was fantastic but constituted information overload.  It was 9 centuries in the building so they had time to carve all those ornate figures.

Camino 2016 Day 17

We can now say that we are on the Camino Primitivo as we split off from the Camino Del Norte this morning.  About an hour later we had a choice of a higher shorter route or a lower longer one.  We chose the high route and followed the Camino markers.  After some descent we realized that they had sent us down to the other route.  Someone had changed the route.  Well we will just chalk it up to extra conditioning.  The guide book said that El Berron had all facilities but we found that it had no accommodations. We had to go to truck stop where we are staying for night and eating dinner and breakfast tomorrow.

Camino 2016 Day 16

We knew that today would be s test of our spirit and bodies as we have 37 km to walk to our destination, Villaviciosa.  This is the last town before the Camino splits into the Primitivo and Del Norte. Fortunately the weather cooperated with an overcast cool dry day. We made decent time and arrived just after 4 pm, which was pretty good considering that we missed a turn.  At La Isla we saw the ocean for the last time on this walk.  A little bit later we met a German fellow, Horst, who spoke good English; he walked the rest of the way in with us.  We took 62881 steps today.

Camino 2016 Day 14a

We left our excellent and inexpensive pension in liquid sunshine.  It was not raining hard, just a gentle mist that required pack covers and umbrellas. Actually we were continously putting them up and taking them down. The so-called scenic route was not so scenic today as the forest had been clear cut. 

The most entertaining aspect of today's walk was the town of Poo.  The Camino didn't follow the road into Poo, so we didn't see the sign for Poo.  All of sudden, we were there and hadn't realized that we stepped into Poo.  Before we knew it, we were right in the middle of Poo, so we stopped to take pictures.  We got one of Boppa standing in the middle of Poo; actually Gramie was standing in Poo when she took the picture.  Even though we both stood in the middle of Poo, our shoes stayed clean.  Also the grass was no greener and the trees were no taller in Poo than just out of Poo.  Not long after we walked out of Poo and to our amazement there wasn't a speck of Poo on our shoes. Does this mean that Spanish Poo is really different?

Camino 2016 Day 15

Today was different from the last three as the liquid sunshine disappeared. It was warm enough to walk without jackets but cool enough to make walking easy.  We walked on all kinds of surfaces today- roads, trails, gravel roads and city streets. The terrain was rolling so made good time covering about 27 km by early afternoon.  This gave us time to wash all our dirty clothes and hang them on the lines behind our hotel by mid-afternoon.  This is good because tomorrow is our most ambitious leg of the trip- about 36 km.

Camino 2016 Day 13

Today was just excellent for walking. We were treated to cool albeit damp weather that kept us from getting hot even when walking up hills.  After about two hours we found a bar that served bacon and eggs, which was a nice fuel up for the day.    Most of the walk was through farmland with rolling hills the tops of which had nice cool breezes.  As usual, there were lots of churches, some in excellent condition and others in ruins. We ended up in a pension beyond Colombres, which meant that we covered over 30 km by 2:30 pm.  We must be getting our walking legs.  Susie's counter said that we have over 50,000 steps.

Camino 2016 Day 12

This was one of those days that we anticipated as rained overnight and continued to rain all of the morning.  It was good day to have a shortened destination because I developed a blister on my left heel.  We arrived in Comillas early and were working on my bad heel by 2:30.  Fortunately almost all of today's walk was on hard surfaces because the rain would have made dirt paths into very wet ones.  The forcast for tomorrow is a bit of rain in the morning then clear for a week. We had washed some clothes and wondered if they would dry; then our host brought us a space heater.  We are in good shape.

Camino 2016 Day 11

Today you might call a travel day as the walk out of Santander comprised a lot of city walking.  It got more interesting as we approached Boo and then had to consider how to do the shortcut across the river. Some people suggested taking the train for one stop but the timing was wrong for us as the next train was an hour wait. So we walked across the bridge. It was not a problem as there was space on the side.  As we got off the bridge freight train came and the engineer tooted and waved obviously not concerned that we had ignored the prohibido paseo sign.  After passing through a number of villages we arrived at our destination town of Santillana de Mar.  It was unbelievable in that it has been preserved as medieval village, at least as far as the streets building exteriors go.  Functionally the businesses are mostly places to eat, sleep or buy souvenirs.  There are a couple of church and museums here as well.

Camino 2016 Day 10

Our day started like most others with a snack in the room because their toast and coffee just doesn't hold us.  I thought that we would find a bar for morning coffee but that didn't happen. About 10 am we stopped at Albergue la Cabana del Buelo Pueto in Guemes. It is unique because of its own library, chapel, dining area and fire place not to mention the volunteers. The rooms and even the dorms had an airy spacious feeling.  It would have been a great place to stay but for our timing.
After that we walked for about an hour into Galizano where we opted for the longer coastal route to Somo.  The views of ocean and several fantastic beaches were awesome and the cool ocean breezes felt wonderful.  We took the ferry Santander where we started looking for accommodation.  The first two hostals (type of hotel) were full so we started walking towards the third one in the guide book. On route we saw a sign for a hotel and got a room at the Picos De Europe. What luck!  It was just what we needed; moreover the price was modest.

Camino 2016 Day 9

After a nice rest at great hotel, we got 7 o'clock start and took the short path into Laredo.  While the walk was on roads, it was very pleasant with a bit of vertical to keep our legs in shape. The beach at Laredo was incredible as it was 5 km long and very wide with the tide out.  The ferry ride out of town was really interesting as boat nosed up to the sand and they dropped a gangway.  From Santona we walked another beach then over a headland to Noja beach.  The few locals there were out tanning everything.  Noja was very quiet and our hostess told us that the tourist season only starts on July 15.  As we were having supper at a nearby restaurant, it started to rain so I ran back and brought in our just washed clothes. That was lucky because it really rained hard. For supper, we shared a 50 cm long sandwich that was filled with an interesting variety of meats, scrambled eggs and vegetables.

Camino 2016 Day 8

We left our very nice apartment just after 7 and walked across the beach then up the stairs to a track with fabulous views.  There is something special about walking along the ocean and feeling the breeze. At Onton we took the long route by mistake, which added 5.3 km to today's trek.  In Castro-Urdiales, we saw an interesting church that had a commanding view of the bay.  We bought some food at a supermercado; the oranges are fantastic. Much of the walk into Islares was along the ocean again. We walked through the town and asked a lady for directions to the hotel. With her help we got in about 30 seconds before a cloud burst. The room is very nice.

Camino2016 Day 7

Leaving Bilbao was easy after getting directions from the locals. The walk along the left side of the river was great as it comprised a lawn and lanes for walking and bicycling. As we walked through Portogalete, talked to a man who escorted us through the town and onto the Camino as it left town.  In the early afternoon we arrived in Playa del Arena and got an apartment complete with mini kitchen. Lots room to wash and dry some clothes. We are back on the beach again. It's wonderful.

Camino 2016 Day 6

Today was the first day that we saw rain. It was really light so we put away our umbrellas after about an hour. Walking into Bilbao was nice as the last part was all downhill.  As we walked, we talked to a local lady who took us to the old city for food and pointed us in the direction of the Guggeheim Museum. It is a phenomenal structure. The city was just alive with people everywhere in the streets. Wet didn't find a hotel nearby so we are in an albergue with 10 others. The shower was just perfect.

Camino 2016 Day 5

Today was not as spectacular as the previous few days although the Camino gave us a wonderful walk through mostly pine forests.  The walk into Gernika-Lumo was easy as it was mostly down at a gentle grade. There was one section where they were installing wooden stairs along a half km section. It is quite obvious that they are making an effort to make the  Camino del Norte into a well serviced tourist attraction. From Gernika-Lumo to our albergue at Eskerika, the path was a gentle gain in elevation.

Camino 2016 Day 3

After our 6:45 breakfast, I paid our hostess and was pleasantly surprised to find that the total was just  €50 for everything. It was sunny and cool as we started our walk and warm before noon. After a short walk we were through Zumaia where Matt from Philadelphia caught up to us at a stop after the bridge. In the tiny village of Elorriaga, we broke from the Camino to take the coastal alternative which was described as more difficult but more scenic.  It was really scenic with fabulous views of the Atlantic for 2 hours.  We were welcomed into Deba around 12:30, which involvèd an elevator ride. This was probably the most scenic dayon either Camino. After lunch, we checked a very nice hotel, the Aisia.  The room was very spacious, but the best part was the spa area. It was very well equipped with sauna, steam room, cold shower and a warm salt water pool; the latter all sorts of jets and water falls. We were entertained like two kids.

Day 4 added here because of technical problem.

We were up in lots of time for our 7:30 breakfast, which was a nice surprise; they gave us a wonderful continental breakfast with all the trimmings. Today we left the ocean and walked up and up.  I certainly perspired today as the temperature got up to 33C according to the locals. Most of the walk was through pine forests on trails and not on roads. It's a good thing that we had a good breakfast because we needed the calories today. There was an abundance of views of groomed farms and low mountains. After Markina we continued on to the monastery Monasterio de Zenarruza where we stopped at the private albergue. 

Camino 2016 Day 2

Today started with a little hitch as Susie forgot her walking poles in the pension and left the keys in our room.  After waiting at the door for 15 minutes, she rang the doorbell and another tenant opened the main door. The walk out of San Sebastian was nice with the ocean on our right. Even after we got up into the trees, we had wonderful views of the Atlantic all the way into Orio.  We had a late breakfast there around noon. Orio is just as beautiful San Sebastian. We had a nice walk into Zarautz then walked by the ocean into Getaria.  Since it was too early to stop, we continued on to Azkizu. By the time we got there we were more than ready to stop for the night.  We are checked in to the Agote Aundi albergue. It's very nice.

Camino 2016 Day 1

We slept very well and got going about 8 am.  While walking through town, we hesitated at an intersection for 10 seconds and a local came running to give us directions. We walked through woods over a hill to next town, Pasai-Donabane. Matt from Philadelphia joined us for the walk into San Sebastian. The day was glorious with sun and 15C temperatures. San Sebastian is beautiful with long beaches, nice streets and interesting architecture. As soon as we walked into the city, we took to the beach and cooled our feet in the Atlantic Ocean.
I picked up a data plan at  Vodafone and we walked around town for a while before supper.  They don't have kitchens open until 8 pm so we had to wait a bit. Susie had a very interesting quinoa burger and I had a good Basque beer, oatmeal stout they called it.

Camino 2016 Day 0

The trip was great. We walked through to the bus station and caught the Megabus to Pearson. We were there with enough time to clear security and board without rushing. The flight to Paris was on time which gave us time to purchase tickets on the TGV to Irun with a change of trains in Bordeaux. After arriving in Irun at 1840, we picked up our credentiales to collect stamps each day. After that we checked into Pension Bowling and walked out for dinner. The room is clean and large enough for two.  We are looking forward to starting the Camino tomorrow.  The photo is the bike rental system in Bordeaux.  The bikes have a drive shaft in place of a chain and are economical to rent.