Author: charlie

Post by Wynette: We walked 7.6 miles today, most of it along this headland. Another ooh and aah day. Some of it in light rain that didn’t bother us too much. We ended the walk scrambling through and over some boulders on a little beach and then walking the final two miles on wet sand on a very long beach. A great day of walking.

From the beach we took a cute little ferry across the bay into Santander. The 3 or 4 mile ferry ride is considered to be part of the Camino, as was the one we took a few days ago from Laredo.

In our 2013 and 2014 Caminos it was clear what a bad economic state Spain was in. Maintenance was neglected. We saw literally hundreds of abandoned buildings and lots more that were completed but empty. People were depressed about it.

This trip has been very different. Maintenance has been excellent and we see lots of building. But as we got into Cantabria we did start noticing more “for sale” signs and abandoned buildings. For example, Laredo has a large beach with block after block of high rise condos on it that are 95% empty. I don’t know if Cantabria had it worse or recovered slowly or what. But still things mostly look pretty good, even in Cantabria. We are glad for Spain.

Switchbacks are a great invention, widely used in the US, and, we have found, underused in Italy and Spain. Trails often go straight up the hillsides.

Yesterday on the steep hill between two beaches it was too steep even for the Spanish and the side we went up did not exactly have switchbacks but the trail sloped up along the slope essentially making one long switch that went all the way to the top. Then, on the other side, learning nothing about the value of switchbacks, the trail down was pretty much straight down. Fortunately this side was not as steep but many parts of the trail were scary to walk down. It really helped to have hiking poles.

We have had some beautiful walks the last few days. Ocean coasts provide a succession of amazing views. It is hard to stop taking photos. We are very happy with the Camino del Norte. It is more beautiful than we had imaged. Today we walked inland and it was very pretty and pastoral but it was a bit of a letdown after the spectacular ocean views. Check out the daily photos for the ocean views.

We have had this dessert three times so far by different names. Today it was “fried milk”. It seems to be a custard of some sort fried. It is a bit like French toast. Pretty good.

This is a new thing we just started seeing. Normally the yellow arrows are on more permanent things like buildings and poles. I guess the cans are always there.

We have seen several overgrown buildings but this is the first motorbike.

We have seen three or four surf schools along the way and yesterday we saw what seemed to be a surfing class off a beach we were on. Surfing is definitely a big thing on the north coast of Spain.

We have seen a lot of palm trees. I guess that means it doesn’t freeze here.

Is essential on trips now. I can’t stop taking photographs, usually 100 or so a day and we need WiFi to upload them. In the past the fast places would upload photos in 20-30 seconds, the slow ones in 1-2 minutes, and the really bad ones not at all — just wait for the next day. The second day here we were in a casa rural (photo above) and I started up google photos and 120 photos uploaded in about 2 minutes. I was amazed. The new phones use a faster WiFi (“ac” I think) so maybe that is it. It is great though. We have had 3-4 like that since then, basically one photo a second. And several in the one a minute category.

We took the bus into Deba and the bus had WiFi that uploaded at one photo a second. I was very pleased about that.