Month: April 2019

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GdZ9qz2oJ824JNUA6

Post by Wynette: We walked with Kate (I think really Katya or close to that) for a while a few days ago. She is from Poland but has lived in London the last 20 years. She is walking the Camino a week or two at a time, anytime she gets some time off of work. We met the morning after we all stayed in Luarca. We asked her where she stayed there. She laughed and said she would show us a picture. It was of her sleeping bag in a store doorway. It was in a covered alcove so she was protected from the big rain that night. She explained that she doesn’t like to stay in albergues because she’s terrified of getting bedbugs. She said she’d gotten them once and it was painful both having the bites and also having to take all the steps to make sure not to bring them home. I think she occasionally stays in hotels but mostly camps out.

We’ve been lucky not to encounter any bedbugs on any of our Caminos, considering we are in a different place almost every night. I don’t think bedbugs were a big problem on the Camino Frances or Portugués when we did those. I don’t think they are a problem on the Norte now, especially this time of year when there are few pilgrims. But we’ve heard there are now more problems on the Camino Frances. We haven’t stayed in any albergues on the Norte. Mostly pretty nice hotels and such. The day we met Kate we had planned to stay in a certain hotel that night, but when we started seeing that hotel advertising heavily to pilgrims on the trail (the first such advertising we’d seen on this trip) it kind of freaked us out, having so recently heard the bedbug story, and we ended up staying another place.

Hotel people always make us feel welcome, but I wonder if they wonder if we are bringing them bedbugs.

By the track: 17.8 miles. Let’s break that down: get up, walk 0.3 miles to the Feve station, take the train for 8.5 miles (16 minutes) to La Caridad, walk 9 miles (4 hours) to Tapia de Casariego. So a 9.3 mile day for us.

We decided to skip the walk to La Caridad and the stay there since it didn’t seem too interesting. Instead we got a vacation apartment in Tapia for two days and are taking a day off at the ocean tomorrow.

The apartment is very nice and Tapia is a good city for walking around in. Also we have a kitchen so we will be making our meals at home tomorrow (and tonight).

Being old-school we usually call for reservations but this time we used Booking.com some because it is so much faster than calling a lot of places. Reading the Camino blogs it seems that Booking.com is widely used on the Camino. We worry about the fees the hotels have to pay. Kind of like using credit cards, we usually pay cash in small places.

Several times we have been talking with a local about “maybe it will rain” and they have said “It’s Asturias”. This seems to be an explanation for any weather. We have been in Asturias for nine days and it has rained on almost every one. But never all day, usually only a few times a day, and often in light spurts of 10-20 minutes.

We have not been bothered by the rain much at all. The biggest bother is taking our rain gear on and off so often. In general, on all our Caminos we have been pretty lucky with the rain, maybe 3 or 4 days total where it rained hard all day.

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We have seen this several times now, this was the first. The saucer has the “spill” painted on. (The scum inside the cup is real.)

Speaking of credit cards we stayed in one place this trip and paid cash. They didn’t take our passport and we didn’t even give our name. No receipt, of course. I’m not sure the Spanish tax authorities will see that transaction.

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We have seen the poster numerous times. Each person can interpret it in their own way. I was captivated by it.

Normally on our trips we reserve the first and last day and nothing else until the day before, but right now we have the next 12 days reserved. Why? Two words: Semana Santa, which is a big thing in Spain. That’s a week the Spanish take off work and they like to go to the ocean.

Normally I am the cockeyed optimist in the marriage and Wynette is the Mistress of the worst-case scenario. She was worried about Semana Santa so, two weeks before we left, we tried making a few reservations and things were full. We eventually made reservations all the way through April 22. Semana Santa includes the Monday after Easter.

We will be in a medium-small town, San Ciprao, for Easter and we hope to catch some of the processions all during SS.

A few years ago we were on the Italian Riviera at Easter and Wynette literally called 30 places for a reservation and there was none to be had. We ended up staying in Bergamo, way inland.

Post by Wynette: On the first part of this walk, most houses had red clay tile roofs, but now they are mostly black slate. Sometimes they use red clay on the ridge lines. As mentioned before, we see dozens of hórreos every day. They were used in the past to store crops, to keep them dry and protected from rodents. The closest thing we have to these in the states, that I know of, is a corn crib. Now I think the hórreos are used mostly for storage. Many are very old and ramshackle. We’ve started seeing little dollhouse-sized ones that are close replicas of the big ones. Very cute. Note also in above photo the Camino shell on house wall and statue of St. James (Santiago). I imagine it is a source of pride to live on Camino.