Camino del Norte part 2: 2019

• 

Okay the roadway narrows in 4.25 meters, about 15 feet. Can’t I just look ahead and see it? And accuracy to 1 cm, less than half an inch?

• 

Blue house. Blue sky. Blue ocean.

A little more on this. In Italy when we walked the via Francigena we hated the road walking. Busy highways with no shoulders and fast Italian drivers. It’s different here on th N-632, wide shoulders. More careful drivers. A car every 3-4 minutes. These “N” roads are for local traffic. The long trips are on the mighty A8, high above.

• 

In which TruePilgrim®️ goes road walking then trail walking and has to confront his values at the Slough of Despond and getting what you wish for is evaluated.

Track is here.

left Wynette at the FEVE station and started for Ballota, walking along the N-632a, that is, road walking. Road walking is anathema to TruePilgrim because we want the true pilgrim experience of walking along forest trails far from the highway. There you can think deep thoughts.

This continued for six miles into Ballota, a lovely little town with interesting buildings and a view of the ocean. I was thinking that I would be road walking all day and wishing for something different. Ominously, as I found out later, a ballota is a deep narrow valley.

Walking out on the N-632a I missed the Camino cutoff but noticed a few hundred feet later and doubled back. The trail went steeply down and was rocky and hard to walk on.

About a quarter mile and 380 feet down I got to this little beach.

The trail then switched around and went back up 380 feet ending maybe 300 feet from where I started down. Worth it? Maybe. I was pretty tired now, you feel the 20 pound pack more going uphill. The trail crossed over a bit and then went down to the water again. Now I’m pretty tired. Unfortunately it was sunny for once.

Besides the up and down there is the mud.

And the water crossing.

Okay, that wasn’t so bad but it is the principle of the thing that matters.

Over again and down the third ballota. Now I’m a lot tired but I have to press on to make it to meet Wynette for a late lunch. Also my phone battery is down to 28%. I am recordings the track and I don’t want to lose it so I can use to to complain to people about what a hard day I had.

After another mile I am back on the N-632a. I am now glad to be road walking but time is passing and my battery is going so I have to walk as quickly as I can. Finally getting into Cadavedo there is a long uphill into town. 15 miles for the day. I am hot and sweaty and it was great to see Wynette and the bungalow she had gotten us and have lunch (at 3:30).

They are continually changing the Camino Del Norte, getting rid of road walking and replacing it with “long cuts” where you walk an extra mile or two, go up and down a few hundred extra feet and go through some mud.

We turned in our TruePilgrim card.

Post by Wynette: My knees and feet were still complaining so I decided to take a break: took the cute little two-car local train (Feve) and a little bit more of the load while Charlie walked a longer day than usual (since I wasn’t there to slow him down). I sure enjoyed my easy day. After getting to our little bungalow apartment, I spent time having coffee and fried eggs and toast at bar next door (above photo) , then explored this sleepy little town, then sat in the sun on the patio reading a Campion mystery and kept up with Charlie’s progress via text. We are again glad to be able to do laundry tonight because Charlie came in from his long hike very hot and sweaty. When you have only one extra change of clothes you don’t pass up on a lavadora. Charlie is still recovering from his walk. I think he’ll post about his walk later.

Below, Charlie waving goodbye at Soto de Luiña train station. Can you find him? Both train stations were about a kilometer out of town so I did do a little walking today. But not much by Camino standards.

We took the easy way out of Cudillero and back to the Camino. Walking out of Cudillero we saw what a pretty little town it was. Unfortunately we were so tired yesterday after our long walk that we didn’t get time to explore it. It would be hard to live there though, so many stairs and hills.

This was the first day we saw other pilgrims and we saw about eight.

We saw a lot of horreos, most houses seem to have them. Some are almost wrecked but most are in good repair. One was even converted into a guest cottage. (See above photo.)

We are staying in an apartment tonight. In this area there are lots of “apartahotels” because this is a popular area for Spanish families to spend their summer vacation. The apartahotels are mostly vacant now but some are available for even lower prices than hotel rooms. They even have washing machines. What a luxury.

https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/2019-04-06-cudillero-soto-de-luina-34929979

Post by Wynette: Whew, Day 2 was a hard day for me. Charlie did fine except he was anxious about me. We thought it would be an easy 6 mile day while we got broken in. We thought we’d get to Cudillero, a cute little seaside town, with lots of energy to explore. We took a scenic headland-above-the-ocean detour, not realizing it took us a few miles extra and that there was some grueling up and down. By grueling, I mean walking about a half mile on steps. And the same coming down. There was more up and down in between. Steep up or down is no fun, but steps kill me. We finally made it to Cudillero at 4:00 just in time to eat a delicious restaurant lunch before the restaurant closed. After that … crash in the hotel.

It appears this section of the Camino del Norte, while never at very high altitude, is rarely very flat. Constant rolling hills, some quite steep.

Above photo looking down into Cudillero. A bit more downhill at the end of the day.

Our track:

https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/2018-04-05-soto-del-barco-cudillero-34905089

Post by Wynette: Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago often talk about Camino angels. Today we met our first on this Camino. We had a delicious lunch in the restaurant shown above. At that point we had walked 10 miles, about 2 more than our preferred daily distance. We had 2.5 more of a lot of up and down to get to our hotel. I asked the restaurant owner if he could give us the phone number of a taxi to call just in case my burning feet gave out. We really thought we could do the last 2.5 with no problem but thought it would be nice to have the taxi number just in case. Not sure how much I managed to communicate of that in my limited Spanish because next thing we knew he was hustling us to his car and saying he would drive us. He explained as we were getting into the car that the taxi would have to come from 10 miles away and would be too expensive. These Spanish people don’t mess around. And are so generous. He had a beautiful car with red leather seats and he drove fast. We were there in no time. Kind of eerie to arrive at your destination in 5 minutes when it would have taken over an hour to walk it.

We are still learning about the infrastructure for pilgrims on the Camino del Norte. On the Camino Frances (the “main” Camino) every tiny town has somebody who runs a little taxi service because there is so much demand for taxis there. Looks like that is not the case on the Norte.

Post by Wynette: We started in Avilés today and walked 10 miles. Weather was sunny, quite cool, and breezy. Most walking was through the outskirts of Avilés which is a cute town on the edge of a large urban area. We didn’t see much of the ocean yet but did get to walk along the long beach above. And finally came to the beautiful green countryside. Saw our first cows on this Camino in this famous dairy region and saw beautiful flowers. Both pictured below. And so you don’t think it was all perfect, will show some of the road walking we did. Here is our track: https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/2019-04-04-aviles-to-soto-del-barco-34878214

We had a little hail when we were at the Vodafone store (which took 45 minutes) We start going out an hour later, at 7:30 pm and it is pounding down hail, small stones but heavy hail. We wait about ten minutes and decide to go for it. Wynette is in her socks and sandals. There is half an inch of hailstones built up on the streets. This kind of weather must not happen much here because lots of shop people were looking out their doors and looked amazed.

It was slippery and wet. Not good walking conditions. But we did our errand and made it back to the hotel safely. Wynette’s socks were freezing and wet but the radiators were on and they dried quickly.