2018 Camino del Norte by WynChar

Post by Wynette: The Spanish call lunch “la comida” which translates to “the meal”. We had lunch today at the only restaurant open in the little town where we are spending the night. (We didn’t make it there till 3:00. They closed at 4:00.) We were lucky how good it was. Above was their menu del día. Each person gets one from each category (a first course and second course), plus dessert, bread, and water or wine.

Post by Wynette: We rode a 2 Euro ferry across a channel between Laredo and Santoña. (Notice the Camino arrow on the front.) We shared the ride with four other pilgrims: a young woman from Lithuania, a young man from China (!), an older man from France, and a young woman from ?. Everyone was very friendly. Here is the Chinese man helping Charlie with his hat as we were about to disembark:

This was during a lovely beach walking part of the Camino. Firm sand since the tide had just started to go out.

Post by Wynette: Note the bump called El Brusco. It looked pretty steep but was only 83 meters up. How hard could that be? Well it was amazing. A high hill we went over between the sandy beaches. It was much harder and scarier than we expected. Going up it was actually fun. Going down, well, we were glad when it was over. It took us about an hour to walk what was probably much less than a half mile of trail.

Previous post shows a photo of Charlie going down one of the easier sections of the downhill side. Below is Wynette going up.

Post by Wynette: We walked 10.6 glorious miles today after bussing 10 of what would have been scary miles on a busy, narrow highway with frequently-absent shoulder. (We saw it all from the bus and couldn’t believe people actually walk it, several of whom we saw. Maybe if we were 30 years younger we wouldn’t mind being miserable for hours and risking our lives.)

But after that we walked along a beach sidewalk then took a fun ferry ride then walked along a loooong beach on the wet sand and then had an amazing steep climb up and over a hill back down to another loooong beach walking on the wet sand. Yes, in the photo above, trail and then beach below is actually the official Camino. Then on town streets and country roads to where we are spending the night. What a day! One thing I love about the Camino is you never know what to expect.

Another example of what we see all the time here. A few animals in a big field of lush grass. I don’t know what makes cows happy but I am confident that these cows are not suffering like the ones in huge agribusiness operations. I want milk from these cows. These might be outliers even here, I don’t really know.

Post by Wynette: We walked 7 miles today. (Plus about a half mile to beach, photo above, near where we are staying tonight.) We wanted to go a bit further but there didn’t seem to be any place to spend the night without having to walk about 8 miles further, 15 in all, much further than we wanted to go. There was one albergue two or three miles up the Way but apparently it is the albergue from hell, complete with bedbugs. (Thank goodness even albergues get reviews these days.)

So we are in a nice, but inexpensive, business hotel (with lousy wifi) on a highway. They have a popular bar and a huge restaurant and we ate a good lunch here. There must have been 100 other people eating along with us. We’ve noticed that good places to eat here are mobbed by Spanish families eating out on Sundays and when we arrive we are told they are “completo”. This time he said we could come back in an hour. We planned to eat at 1:30 and had to wait till 2:30. So we were plenty hungry when we were served our first course dishes of white bean stew and cooked vegetables with ham and then second course dishes of grilled bass and pork ribs (so tender) and dessert (layered cakes). We usually get the menu del día (around 15 euros) and there is so much food. We probably should start sharing one.

Post by Wynette: We walked 7.8 miles yesterday. We left early and started the day walking up the stairs shown above. (Only about a third of the steps are visible here.) Then we walked along this path:

Then we climbed down to see the top of an old castle.

Then we walked along the ocean path some more and then along a quiet highway:

And then along a green headland:

Then along the beach to our hotel in the old town in Castro Urdiales.

We walked by this today. A class was in session. And here is the view back on it from the terrace of the bar we stopped at soon after.

The bar had great coffee. I had two.

These cows and a burro were in a pretty narrow space. The steep hill went right down to the water. There was a steep path to get down to a slightly bigger area.