A walk along Spain's northern coast
We are spending the night in a tiny town named La Arena. The word arena means sand in Spanish and, no surprise, there is a large sandy beach here that is bigger than the non-beach part of the town.
We had picked out a place for lunch (the only place in town that offered more than tapas) and turned out to be just downstairs from our little apartment (the only place we could find to stay in town). They had a great menu del día.
What would you choose?
We actually stopped in La Arena (the sand) rather than Pobeña. We took the purple path.
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.
We have talked about this in previous blogs but yesterday we encountered the first ones of this trip. And what is better than a bathtub in a field? A burro drinking out of a bathtub in a field!
I am enthralled by little churches we encounter. Here’s one from yesterday.
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.
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.
We had trouble finding a place to stay here in Zumaia today. We didn’t realize when we were trying to make the reservation that there is a big festival in the town this weekend. But we did find a place to stay in kind of a rooming house way up at the top of the town. Not only is it clean and inexpensive, but we got a great workout walking back and forth, and, it turns out that just a few steps from the front door there are some beautiful views. Photos taken there this afternoon below. Also the young couple who run this place let us use their kitchen to boil some eggs for our trail breakfast tomorrow. They chatted with us while the eggs boiled and were friendly. The young man was so cute. He wanted to demonstrate the Basque language for us so asked his wife to have a short conversation between them. (She was a little more reserved and a little embarrassed, but she did it.) Basque is their first language and then Spanish and then English.
