Author: Wynette Richards

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.

We stopped at a bar on our walk today. Charlie remembered it from 2018. I didn’t till we actually got there. We left Basque Country on today’s walk and entered Cantabria. Charlie remembered that the great pinchos (Basque tapas) were missing from this bar. We went in and, sure enough, they had hardly anything to eat since the kitchen wasn’t yet open for lunch. They didn’t even have the ubiquitous tortilla. But … they did have olives (aceitunas in Spanish). We ordered some. They were so good. Total bill was 6 euros for two coffees and the olives.

We started today’s walk on this boardwalk. Way up ahead you can barely see Christina and Kelly, the couple Charlie mentioned in today’s diary. They walked about the same pace as us so we ran into them several times, passing each other.

About half way through the day, Kelly spotted a restroom for all of us. It was in a tiny government building in a tiny town. I was starting to despair. I think they were, too. Kelly decided to go in and see if there were “facilities.” There were. What a relief!!

But, I digress, I was going to talk about how great it feels to set out in the morning. You are fresh and rested and caffeinated and excited about what may lie ahead. I love the feeling of setting out in the morning each day.

Later in the day is different, of course. Feet starting to burn. Just wanting to “be there”. But, always a great feeling of accomplishment when we arrive at our place for the night (usually around 2 or 3 — just in time for a great Spanish lunch).

Charlie and I’ve come to appreciate soccer more since we watched Ted Lasso. Of course, Spain is soccer-crazy. And, of course, they don’t call it soccer, they call it fútbol.

When we got to our hotel yesterday we noticed red and white striped flags along the front (photo above). When we checked in we asked about what they were for. The young woman took us over to see a newspaper. The local soccer team (Bilbao) had just won the Spanish King’s Cup (Copa del Rey) the Spanish championship match. Later we noticed the flags all over town and saw this in the bar where we had breakfast this morning.

Today we had our first tortilla of this trip. It’s what we had for breakfast in a bar between Portugalete and La Arena. A Spanish tortilla is not like a US/Mexico/New Mexico tortilla. A Spanish tortilla is sometimes described as an omelette. It’s made from eggs and potatoes and onions. A bit firmer/thicker than an omelette. The one we had this morning also had ham and cheese. Quite yummy with the good bread you get here. Holly, I know how much you liked these when you did the Camino. Thought of you.

Last night in Portugalete we splurged on a four-star hotel (still less than $100). Would you say the towel is big enough?

It was heavy, too. I couldn’t bring myself to use another of these (waste all those resources to wash and dry it) so I just dried with Charlie’s towel.

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.