Archive for month: September, 2012

We had a glorious, restful day which began with a lovely breakfast in our hotel. Toast and crepes with plenty of cafe con leche. We utilized the wifi to get some work done until 11am, letting our clothes finally dry thoroughly in the sunshine.

We hit the road around 11am passing out of El Pitu via a nice dirt path through the woods. We stopped at a truck stop for lunch sandwiches and stocked up on food at a huge grocery store. The path was quite nice until we hit a patch of construction. Apparently the superhighway flyover has been under construction for the past several years, so all the guidebooks seem to feature different detours depending on the state of the construction.

Following the signage, we ended up along highway 632 for a bit before we were directed to a side road, which curved pleasantly down to the beach. The view of the previous flyover and the new construction was quite amazing and futuristic. Spain seems to build superhighways that pass straight over valleys, rather than dynamiting the mountains or building tunnels. They are quite impressive and massive structures, looking rather out of place amongst the sleepy villages and grazing lands of the peaceful valley.

After navigating the detour, we enjoyed a pleasant country road and then forest path which lead us to Soto de Luiña, a very sweet little town that is surprisingly well-equipped with several bar/restaurants, a good grocery store, various other shops, and a large albergue with 20 beds on a donation basis.
A local cafe even has good fast wifi, so we are really set!

Around 7pm as we ate our grocery store dinner, hospitalero Pepe appeared at the albergue with several laminated topographical maps in order to talk us through tomorrow’s route. He was a very polite and formal character, and it was most useful to hear details about the route. It is always fun to figure out how to translate the message into the various languages gathered, e.g. I translate to English, a German guy translates my English to German, someone translates the German to French, etc. The hospitalero says “acantillado,” I say “cliff” and various other translations bounce about until we all understand more or less.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a fun day with sea views along the “acantillados.” 🙂 It should be around 24 kilometers to Cadavedo where we hope to spend the night. We’re feeling good knowing that we’ve walked over 800km so far (according to the GPS, which includes detours and walking around town in the evenings). We have under 300 more km to complete of the actual trail so are about 2/3 of the way finished with the approximately 830km trail (we will likely walk more like 1200km total with the detours and walking around towns).

We managed a relatively early start this morning and headed straight to the Post Office to mail away our extra weight. We left feeling much lighter after mailing over 5 kilos and were delighted to the find that the Spanish postal service offers a “paquete peregrino” special rate, so our package cost only €6.17.

The spring in our step didn’t last long, as leaving Gijón involves navigating some truly terrible industrial areas, including a huge carbon factory spewing smoke and steam. We had to cross a dicy highway with no crosswalk and suddenly a huge truck was barreling toward us, we sprinted out of its way, but a less spry pilgrim may not have been so lucky! The view, smells and sounds of the factories stayed with us over the next kilometers, but the path gradually moved into more rural areas and finally to Monte Areo, a pleasant recreation area with forests of eucalyptus trees and some prehistoric dolmens.

This pleasant middle section was not enough respite, however, as we entered Avilés via another industrial area full of fertilizer factories and other industrial complexes. The trail is marked along a highway for 5-6 kilometers of very uninspiring walking. We decided we would highly recommend for pilgrims to skip this day by bus, or at least take a bus to the outskirts of Gijón and from the outskirts of Avilés to avoid the dangerous and very unpleasant highway industrial walking.

The treat was arriving to old city Avilés, which is quite beautiful and bustling and friendly to pilgrims. The albergue is ok, very simple. The elderly gentlemen checking us in seemed to have a bit of a memory problem. As we checked in he complimented our Spanish, and a few hours later spoke with us again saying “There’s an American couple here from Pennsylvania who speak very good Spanish” not realizing that we were that couple!  The showers were wonderfully hot. We did some laundry and went to the town and get some food.

The next pilgrim albergue is over 43 kilometers away in Soto de Luiña. Most of us at the albergue are not interested in walking that far (almost 30 miles!). There are a few hotels advertised in the Avilés albergue which are about 28km away and offer very reasonable pilgrim prices, so we booked our space at Hotel Aguilar.  There is a youth hostel about half way in San Esteban, but it is 1.5km off route and also costs €16 a person with breakfast– more than our private room at the hotel!

This was a long day, over 30km by the time we finally stopped walking for the day. While the trail so far has been mainly flat or rolling hills, today there were two small mountain passes (around 450m) to cross.  We were sweating buckets in the very humid weather and were having trouble drinking enough water to keep up with our depletion.

We arrived at the Gijón albergue, which is located in a camping area abou6 6km before the city center, around 4pm. The camping has six small bungalows set aside as pilgrim accommodation for €5 per person. Campgrounds in Spain are quite elaborate, usually with big swimming pools, sports fields, restaurants, mini market, wifi, etc.  They are more like resort villages. The concept of simply tent camping sites (such as National Forest sites in the US, which often cost $3-10 per site) does not seem to exist here and camping in a tent at this place would have cost about €30 for Dave and I.

We dropped our bags at the bungalow, took nice hot showers, washed our clothes and then decided to walk the remaining 7 km into the Gijón city center to get dinner and in order to get the GPS track (so we could take a bus the next morning and have a shorter day to Avilés). The walk in to the city was pleasant, but there were only two buses back to the camping: 8pm and 10:30pm. We rushed and rushed, eating fast food and running through the streets to try to make the 8pm bus, but we ended up at the wrong bus stop (by about 2 blocks) and missed the bus. We were quite disappointed and not interested in waiting 2.5 more hours for the next bus. Instead, we took a different bus within 2km of the camping and walked the last 20 min. We were quite exhausted when we got in, and did a little work on the computer before going to bed. We shared our 6 bed cabin with four friends we have seen almost every day, 2 from France and 2 from Germany.  It was a nice night listening to the crickets as we fell asleep.

Today was a gorgeous day with lots of dirt paths and sea views. The weather was clear and sunny, though the 30+km day did drag on a bit and we didn’t arrive until around 5pm. The albergue at La Isla is outside of town, but you have to pass by the house of Angelita in town to pay and get your credencial stamped. When we approached Angelita’s house, she started shaking her head and gave us the answer that every pilgrim hates to hear “Está complete” (It’s full.)  We were so tired and very disappointed, especially since we knew that some of the pilgrims had only walked 12 km from the last town in order to stay near the beach in La Isla.

Angelita told us there was only one bed left, but she had already called a pension in the next town that was coming to get two other ladies (who were at the same albergue as us last night) to take them to a €30 room, so she kind of tried to hustle us into the car as well.  I asked her if we could sleep on the floor, she said no. I asked if we could share the one remaining bed, she said no. I asked if we could pitch our tent in the yard, and she said no.

So we went back down to the beach to regroup and decided our best option was probably to camp. We could rinse off at the outdoor showers by the beach and try to find a stealthy spot to sleep. We kept seeing pilgrim friends walking down to the beach and they all told us that there was plenty of space in the albergue, including mats to put down on the floor. So we decided to go see the albergue and see if we might be able to sleep there after all. When we arrived, there were at least two empty beds, five mats against the wall and plenty of floor space, as well as a nice green yard perfect for camping. We felt kind of bad to be defying Angelitas orders, but we were also frustrated that she was so unhelpful to us.

So we took showers, cooked up some soup for dinner, and had a nice evening with the other pilgrims. Angelita came to check in on everyone in the evening, but she didn’t seem to recognize us or notice anything amiss. We thought we might sleep outside, but there were two beds free next to each other so we slept great!

Rest Day. This morning we slept in in our luxurious room while the rain poured down outside, then lingered over our breakfast.  Around 11 we caught the train to Llanes and checked into Albergue La Estación. Our American friends we met back in Irún had bused ahead and met us there. It was fun to be reunited and catch up. As soon as we got into our room, I unfurled my sleeping bag and fell right to sleep for about four hours.

I woke up in time to eat a dinner of chicken noodle soup and to explore Llanes. The weather was not conducive to pictures, but there are a lot of interesting sites. Down by the marina, the huge cement blocks used to fill the breakwater are painted in all kinds of bright and cheery designs, a work of art called Los Cubos de la Memoria.  There are many historic houses built by Indianos, a term for Spaniards who made their fortune in the New World and returned to Spain.

I was afraid that after sleeping all afternoon, I might not be able to sleep at night, but I needn’t have feared. We all slept well in our quiet room, with no snorers or bag rustlers.