Author: Charles Crowley

You see these plastic wrapped rolls of hay all the time as you are walking. It seems like a good idea. I haven’t tried to lift one but I imagine they are pretty heavy and it seems very unlikely that one might roll away in the wind unless they had one heck of a storm. We have never seen one weighted down until today when we saw these.

Worst case scenario: a freak wind pushes one over and it starts rolling down the hill towards those buildings in the distance. It goes faster and faster building up a tremendous momentum and smashes into a building completely destroying it. Could happen.

Miles: 7.4 miles, from 3 to 374, 915 feet up, 735 feet down
Dogs in bars: 2
Dogs Charlie played ball with in bars: 1
Rude pilgrims who hogged a whole three-person bench for him and his backpack and warned us not to sit there while we sat on cold cement steps: 1, but we are definitely not bitter about it, we just shrugged it off and forgot about it (until now)
Stunning churches: 4
Number of hotels that were not yet open for the season that we called before finding one for tonight: 4
Lentil stews for hungry pilgrims: 2, one each

A fairly short day but that is fine with us. Lots of up and down, as usual.

We stopped at a charming local bar run, it seemed, by a middle-aged couple. They made us fried eggs and toast. Their two dogs were in and out looking mournful like dogs do implying they really aren’t fed enough. One dropped his tennis ball at my feet so I had to play with him, rolling the ball on the floor for him to fetch. The ice cream middle man was there talking to the owner. He brought a new ice cream sign to display. Several other pilgrims stopped in while we were there.

The only downside was that the coffee was a bit watery. We do not have high coffee standards but some are too watery and others have a rich full flavor.

The rude guy story speaks for itself.

We stayed in Cóbreces in April 2018 and it was fairly busy but this time every hotel was closed for some reason and there were no bars open. We made those calls two days ago so we got a place in the next little town, Trasierra, 1.5 miles away.

Trasierra has only one bar (tiny). It advertised food but only had tortillas. We are staying in a hotel-restaurant but the restaurant is closed and we are the only people in the place. Nonetheless we are currently sitting in their closed restaurant because the host told us to make ourselves at home. And he gave us some delicious lentils with sausage. So we are quite happy.

We were on a walk yesterday and came upon this little playground.

I remember teeter-totters but not one made of a log. And, of course, the universal playground sign in the US has a teeter-totter on it even though no US playground has had a teeter-totter in many years. Far too dangerous for our delicate kids.

As it happens we were in a town a few days ago and we actually saw two kids playing on a teeter-totter. European playgrounds still have them, but, curiously, don’t use them on their signs.

This playground also had a swing.

The old kind, with a flat board seat that you could stand on and swing really high or sit on and jump off of at the top of the arc. The fun, exciting things that are too dangerous for modern kids to try.

We have a couple of apps that help us follow the Camino but when we get within a mile or so of our hotel we switch to good old Google maps directions. This is the road we were on:

I was getting spoken directions and it said “continue on California 340”. We did some searching and are not sure exactly what the “CA” is, possibly Cantabria, maybe carretera, but definitely not California. I assume there is a look-up table somewhere deep inside the Google Maps code that translates “ca” to “California”.

I use the photo identification app built into my phone. Usually it works fine, although not as well as Google Lens. For example, I took this photo yesterday:

and it said “Asian knotweed”. Great. Then we saw this cow with unusual markings that we had never seen before and we wondered what breed it might be.

and it said — it’s a “cow”. But wait, there’s more! It also noted that it is a “large, domesticated, cloven-hooved herbivore”. Thanks Apple, I guess that settles that!

No short items today. We walked 7.5 miles, up 950 feet and down 830 feet, actual altitude ranged from 46 to 466. In an early blog, 2013, I noted that the pleasant phrase “rolling hills” is actually not that much fun to walk. Some were quite steep.

But today was a very nice walk. The whole way we were walking through rolling hills of green pastures dotted with farm houses. And lots of cows today. They say that walking in nature makes people happy and that was the case today. We both felt at home and in harmony with the environment. It was a good feeling. We always feel energetic and invigorated at the beginning of the walking day. That is an advantage of our short days, we get the good part at the beginning and by the time we are getting tired we are just about there.

It is a bit ironic really since these landscapes are not the least bit in their natural state. They are farms. But still, it feels so good to walk through them.

We saw a few pilgrims today. We chatted with two women from Ireland who were resting on a bench as we passed. They had started the Norte in 2017, got delayed by the pandemic and are now finishing it. They are slow walkers also, although not as slow as we are, who is? But they were saying they liked to go slow and enjoy it.

We are staying at a cute little pension in Oreña, a tiny town, looks like fewer than 100 people. The pension has only six rooms. The owner said that starting soon and through September she is full every day and she could rent every room six times over every night. This is quite a popular vacation area. As it gets hot the Spanish people like to come to the north coast where it is cooler. One reason we like to go in April is that you can actually find places to stay. It can be a bit cold though. We just discovered that our radiator is actually hot. I think this is the first one on this trip that was.

There are no services here so, on the way, we stopped at a supermarket and picked up food for a picnic lunch, a WynChar menu del dia: olives, salmon, two kinds of very good bread, crab salad, a packaged Caesar salad, a chicken empanada, strawberries and some little dessert cups. The pension owner brought us two glasses of water. It was delightful. We had as much fun picking things out at a “Lupa” supermarket as anything we did today. We carried out packs in the grocery cart. Fortunately we are easy to please. 😉

Note: I typed the old-fashioned happy face, ;-), there and it converted it into a emoji, because if I use an actual emoji in one of these posts it fails. It took me a while to figure that out because WordPress just said it couldn’t save and it didn’t say why.

We are fond of the cafe con leche in Spain. In Italy having coffee with milk after breakfast marks you as a child or a tourist. In Spain there is some of that but it is not as strong.

In Basque Country you just order a cafe con leche and that’s that. As soon as we got into Cantabria they started asking if we wanted a regular or a grande. We noticed that on other Caminos as well, part-way through they started asking.

We have started a ritual where we go out around four of five and settle into a bar, grab a table and do our daily blogging. That is too late for coffee for us so we get decafs. Every time the decafs have been very good, as good as any of the regular coffees we have gotten. Of course, we are coffee heretics anyway what with the milk we use, so don’t listen to us.

Also, once we got into Cantabria, we started getting cafes in glasses instead of cups. In one place only the grandes were in glasses. This works unless the coffee is very hot. We like these regional differences.

Another thing we like is that every bar is unique, there do not seem to be any chains. No doubt private capital will swoop in soon and ruin that.

Train stops missed: 1
Kind Spanish women who tried to help the rookies but was a few seconds too late: 1
Miles: 7.1
Rain: a little but we were already inside
Early morning walks through Santander: 1
Hot and cold pipelines wondered about: 1

As careful readers of this blog know, we are “short-haul” pilgrims who like to walk 7-9 miles a day rather than the 15-20 miles a day that the young whippersnappers like to do. This means we have to plan more to make sure we have enough stops. One solution is to plan a longer leg but take a taxi the first few miles to cut the daily walk down the WynChar size. We did this for today’s walk.

Since we like trains better than taxis we found the perfect train leaving at 7:50. We walked the half mile to the train station around 7:15, right at sunrise. The streets were mostly empty. First we went into the wrong train station, the one for longer distance trains. The local trains were next door. These are really more like metros and we got tickets from a machine and tapped our tickets to get through the turnstiles.

The train left at exactly 7:50 and arrived at the stop exactly at the scheduled 8:15. The train stopped and we were at the door ready to alight. But the door didn’t open. Turns out they only open when you push the button, which we didn’t find in time. A kindly Spanish woman saw these naive innocents stand at the door and rushed over to push the green button but was a few seconds late. The yellow blinking light indicated the train was leaving WITH us.

So, on to the next station, 2-3 miles down the line, where we got off. What to do? We were only 5 miles from our hotel, short even for us. We caught the Camino and decided to walk a mile in reverse and then back. Kind of a weird complete-ism for short-haul pilgrims but we were rattled and didn’t think everything through.

We felt kind of funny walking the “wrong” way. The Spanish people are always being helpful if we miss a turn or are off the Camino. Sometimes they are right and sometimes we have to explain that we are going to a bar or a hotel. Today was no exception. We were walking along and two guys in hi-viz jackets told us we were going the wrong way. Wynette told them we were doing it on purpose and they asked why. She just said it was a long story. (Wynette added: they had the nicest smiles and were laughing with us about us going backwards.) Afterwards we thought we might have explained that we missed a train stop but that really doesn’t explain it without more details.

This is kind of like when a Spanish person stops to chat, which happens often, and asks if we are going to Santiago. We’re not, but we always say yes, it’s easier than a long explanation about our half-caminos.

So, up a mile and back, we still got to the hotel at 11:45 but the room was ready even though check-in time was hours later. Rest, then lunch at the hotel which is also a slightly upscale restaurant. Now we’re down in the bar, a happening place.

On our extra back and forth walk, the path had a pipeline, actually two, beside it. We felt it, not sure why we decided to feel it, and it was hot. The other one was cold. A mystery. We have no idea what was in the pipes. Would like to know.

They used to say about the Camino that “cash is king” because few places took tarjetas. But the pandemic and technology changed that. Touchless was in. We had about €280 in cash from our last trip and now, after two weeks, that is getting low. The exchange rate, which becomes relevant later, in the rant part, is about $1.07 per euro.

We pay for just about everything with Apple Pay. It is very convenient and we have an easy way to look at a record of everything we spend. Our pizza dinner was one of the few meals that required cash.

Anyway, time to get more cash. We chose a bank ATM that doesn’t charge a fee. After you ask for an amount, in our case €300, they ask if you want them to convert it or have your home bank do it. I have blogged about this before also, always have your bank do it. They offered a rate of 0.8455 euros per dollar. Actually it has four more decimal places, presumably to give you some feeling of exactitude. A quick calculation revealed how bad this was. They wanted $354 for €300. I tapped the button for no conversion. Then they did something I had not seen before. They asked again, saying are you sure you don’t want us to convert it for you. You can count on our rate but you don’t know what kind of rate you bank might give you. I declined again. We got the cash and the email from the bank in about three seconds. They charged us $320 for €300, a little better than the rate of $1.07 that google said of the going rate. That was the highest markup I have seen on any cash machine.