Post by Wynette on May 1: We had originally planned to continue walking past where the Ruta ends and on to the city of Ferrol, a few more days of walking along the Atlantic coast of Galicia. We decided not to do that for a couple of reasons: Since it wasn’t the official Ruta (or Camino for that matter) we didn’t have a lot of information about what the walks would be like in terms of difficulty. I was a little worried about that. Also we were starting to be satiated. As Charlie put it, it was like having 24 fabulous over-the-top meals in a row. Each day we loved the walks but we didn’t want to start taking it all for granted. We’ll probably return another year, armed with more information, and do more. I’m already looking forward to it.
Since we don’t return to the States until May 9, we considered doing a few days’ walking on one of the many Camino routes here in northern Spain. However, we eventually decided to settle in somewhere. It is nice to be in one place for a while. We decided on Gijón, the largest city in Asturias, since it’s near the airport where we fly home and we heard and read it’s a beautiful and fun city.
Spain has a marvelous train system. We’ve been told that the Spanish trains are pretty consistently on time. And that has been our experience. There’s a wonderful little train called the Feve that was never too far away from our walking route this year. It’s mostly used by commuters and stops in every town, large or tiny, that it goes through. It’s rare to see anyone get on the train with luggage.
On Monday morning, we boarded the Feve in Espasante. It is over a six hour ride on the Feve from there to Gijón. We went through about 85 stations. We probably stopped at 70% of those. (They don’t stop if no one is waiting or needs to get off.) We were expecting a long tiring train ride where we’d keep ourselves amused the way we do on airplanes: reading, listening to books or music, doing puzzles.
Turned out it seemed pretty fast and we got a kick out of going backwards through all the little towns we had walked through. We talked about what we remembered about each place. A few times we were able to spot the place where we had stayed or where something else memorable happened.
So now we are in Gijón and quite liking it. More details to come.
