Day: April 15, 2024

Some random photos

Waiting for the train from Deba to Bilbao
Few pilgrims have commented on my backpack patches. But a day or two ago I got two comments almost simultaneously. One was from the husband of a woman who was wearing a t-shirt with a Zia symbol in front. They were from California but her father had lived in Dixon, New Mexico. Another person commented on the arrow and said “well. I’ll just follow your yellow arrow all the way to Santiago.”
There was no place to stop for breakfast or coffee on the walk from Zumaia to Deba. But, we found a good bench to have our breakfast of boiled eggs, apples, cheese.
This was a street mural in Zumaia. Zumaia is several days walk from Guernica but very close by car. I’m sure the people of this town and all this area have a heavy heart for that time.
This it Saturday walking into Zumaia. We saw a lot of locals walking as well as pilgrims. They were loving the beautiful sunny weather.

Signs

Few out there are not tired of my sign posts, but still he persists!

This was on the door of the train. I’m a little unclear about the third one.

Many of these towns have hills but Portugalete decided to add outdoor moving sidewalks to help. They also have a sign and again not all are completely clear. Not being able to take a baby carriage seems bad. I would think that would be a common use.

4/14,4/15 WynChar Diary

Diary days missed: 1
Brass bands at 8 am on Sunday morning: 1
Bath tubs in fields: 7
Portugalete outdoor moving sidewalks ridden: 4
Irish Stephen Fry look-alikes encountered: 1
Public transports used: 3
Same hotel as 2018: 1

Northern Spain had a great weekend, sunny and warm beach weather both days. On Saturday we enjoyed the San Telmo celebrations in Zumaia. We got up and out of our room around 8 Sunday morning and heard a brass and drum band starting up. They marched around the town with people dancing behind them. That was fine with us since we had gotten to bed early but we worried about the San Telmo revelers. We saw a lot of beer being consumed on Saturday. No one seemed upset though.

The way out of town was quite steep, as was the whole day, and it was warm, only 76 but very sunny. A beautiful walk through farming country. We passed a camping area with dozens of vans fitted out with beds in the back.

On the walk into Deba

We encountered a lovely man from Ireland and walked with him for a mile or two. His name was Dermot, that he pronounced Dermosh. At one choice point in the trail he mentioned that you don’t need to look at the signs because the Camino is always the one that goes up. We had noticed the same thing.

We were chatting and I asked him if he thought Northern Ireland would ever be united with Ireland. He said that theoretically Ireland would like that but practically it would ruin Ireland financially. Apparently Northern Ireland is poor and Great Britain pours a lot of money into it. That was new to me. I have not checked how accurate it is but it seems possible. West Germany was in the same position when it merged with East Germany. But Germany is fairly rich and Ireland isn’t.

We parted ways with Dermot in Itziar where we had previously decided to take the bus into Deba and avoid a long steep downhill. We were glad to stop as we were both very hot, tired and dripping with sweat. We caught a tiny bus into Deba.

In reviewing the next day we realized we had four similar days ahead. Walks with no services and lots of up and down, so we made an executive decision to skip them and add the days at the end in a flatter and more populated part of the Norte.

So today (4/15) we took the train to Bilbao and metro to Portugalete. We could have negotiated the train ticket machine ourselves but a kindly woman helped us and did it quickly whereas we would have taken much longer.

By an amazing coincidence we saw the Irish guy as we were approaching the train station in Deba. He had spent the night in the albergue and we in a hotel and by chance we met where the Camino passed the train station both arriving there at 8:30.

So, about 2 hours on the train and metro (pretty slow trains with numerous stops) saved us 5 days of walking.

I am particularly happy to be staying in Portugalete tonight because it is my favorite Spanish town name to say. It rolls off the tongue and I love saying it.

We are staying in the same hotel we stayed at in 2018. We are trying to mix it up but this plays quite nice. We skipped the part after Deba in 2018 also but intended to take it this time but the hills stopped us again. However we didn’t skip 3 other days before Bilbao in 2018 like we did this time.

Tomorrow will be rainy but we have our chic Altus ponchos so we are ready! We needed them today walking around Portugalete also. Of course no one else we saw was wearing a poncho. Everyone had umbrellas. But we assume that they were all envious of our stylish rain gear.

Walking in Portugalete in our stylish rain gear.