Month: April 2024

They seem to have a lot of ponies in Basque country. We saw several and remember seeing them in 2018.

I never really knew what a pony was exactly. I did some searching. They are different than horses but of the same species, like dog breeds apparently.

Charlie started this post but I (Wynette) will finish it. We were doing some road walking (albeit quite safe since very few cars came by on this tiny country road) and I thought, why not put on our high-viz gear? Can’t hurt to be a little more visible. I did not succeed in talking Charlie into donning his.

My mom helped me make these little hi-viz skirts before we left. She sewed the little edge for inserting elastic around the long edge. Thanks, Mom!

We didn’t bring these for sunny day road walking but for putting over our dark blue raincoats on dark rainy days should we have to walk along a busy road in those conditions. So far, we haven’t needed them for that.

We have heard that one can get fined in Spain if walking on highways without wearing something like a hi-viz vest. We’ve walked many miles on Spanish roads without one and no fines yet. But, we do have reflective tape on our backpacks and on my hiking poles.

Miles walked: 8.6 pretty much completely flat, a first, and welcome. Wynette didn’t use her hiking poles at all, also a first.
Foolhardy climbs attempted: 0, down from 1 in 2018.
Mexican food dishes eaten: 1 (chicken enchiladas, at the hotel/restaurant where we are staying)

As you can see, it wasn’t a very exciting day. But we enjoyed it.

Our hotel tonight has lots of interesting art and objects. This is one.

El Brusco is a steep hill along the trail today. We climbed it in 2018. Beautiful views, super steep, both up and down. You can check out our 2018 for photos. But we were still in our 60s then. This time it was “How could we have been so stupid as to try that?” and we went around. Here is the track and elevations. El Brusco is the big spike in the elevation map.

And here we are today, satellite view. We are the blue dot, walking the beautiful beach and being glad we didn’t have to climb El Brusco to get to the next beach.

When we got to the end of the beach we turned left. Missed the beach on the other side of El Brusco. All the rest of our walk today was inland.

I took freshman physics but I was never that good with waves. We were walking up a steep, paved street and the water coming down always made waves like in this video. Can someone with a better under of physics tell us why it does that?

Rain ponchos lost: 1
Rain ponchos found: 1 (see the post on this)
Transport: 7.0 miles walking, one bus ride, one taxi ride, no little boat across the ria.
Interesting characters and repeat meetings: several

We are staying in Santoña. There is a cute little ferry that crosses the ria but we missed it, it stops at 2:30 pm.

Surprisingly we met Kelly (the priest) and Christina again. See post soon.

It’s pretty wet around here. The trail led through the woods. Dozens of rocks were completely covered in moss like these.

When we were walking with the Irish guy we mentioned how green it was and asked if Ireland was greener. He gave us a sly smile and said this looks about as green as Ireland but maybe Ireland is a little greener. I could imagine Stephen Fry saying the same thing in the same way.

Today we walked about 7 miles from Castro Urdiales to Islares. The first half wasn’t wonderful: very close to a noisy highway, etc. But the last half was quite nice — see above photo. It rained most of the first half and then cleared enough for us to take off our rain coats.

Someone on the camino forum had suggested that Altus raincoat/ponchos can just hang from your backpack while they dry out. So, that’s what each of us did. At first I tied my sleeves in front in case it fell off but I had it tucked down behind my backpack and thought it would be fine without tying the sleeves. Charlie did the same. Every once in a while I checked to be sure each of us still had our raincoats. (Believe me, in this weather they were crucial equipment to have with us.) See how I was carrying it in above photo.

Well, we got to our walking destination, Islares, around 1:15. We planned to hang out in a bar there and then catch a bus an hour later into Laredo. (The walk there sounded horrendous. Either along a dangerous noisy highway or a very-too-long way around. We decided to skip it.)

As I was ordering coffee in the bar, Charlie said to me “where is your raincoat?” I looked and it was gone. After the initial shock I said, “Oh dear we are going to have to retrace our steps.” We went back a ways and met several pilgrims coming towards us and asked each of them if they’d seen the coat, but they all said “no”. They would have seen it if it were still on the trail. Clearly it was gone.

Of course, I felt terrible about losing it. These Altus raincoats are wonderful. Light as a feather and so easy on and off and they keep us and our backpacks dry.

We went back to the bar and I was still feeling upset and regret that I’d not been careful enough with it. I said to Charlie, “I guess someone saw it and said ‘Wow, what a nice raincoat. I can really use this.'” I added “I hope they needed it more than I did.”

Then after a while I thought, “hmmm, if a pilgrim found it, they might leave it at the next albergue.” I looked at the map and the next albergue was only about a 5 minute walk away. Charlie stayed with the packs and I walked there. As I got near, someone out front waved me over — a man we’d asked on the trail about the raincoat — and he said “I think someone found your coat. They left it in the albergue.” I went inside and the very nice woman at the desk had it.

Now I love that coat even more and I’ll never let it hang loose.

I’m so grateful to the kind pilgrim who took it to the albergue. I’ll probably never know who they were.

Charlie was amazed and thrilled to see me return with the coat. He had thought it was pointless for me to check for it at the albergue.

We were able to catch the 2:15 bus into Laredo. From there we took a taxi to our hotel in Santoña. (We had planned to catch a ferry from Laredo to Santoña but it had stopped running for the day. So taxi ride was longer than we had planned.) But, we got here in time for a nice menu del día.

Now we are sitting in a bar in Santoña, drinking decaf, listening to 60s rock (Pink Floyd), and blogging. It’s not a bad life.