Returning to the San Salvador--Last Day

 Hello, everyone.

View back toward Mieres in the dawn

Today's post returns to the pilgrimage for the last day of the walk into Oviedo.  This is a shorter day than many, but the middle portion was a very steep climb that was signed as a "greenway". The first portion was a gentle climb over switchbacks on the road and third portion was also gentle hill going through and around farms.

View of Oviedo in the distance

When we were walking through the farms, we met some of the farmers. They were very friendly and reminded us of the old saying, "He who visits Santiago and neglects to visit Oviedo, visits the servant and neglects the Master."

The actual entry into Oviedo was a gentle slope down suburban streets, passing the official albergue in Oviedo and arriving in the Cathedral square downtown. 

We had reserved a room at Hostel Fidalgo, the same pension we had stayed at when we bussed to Oviedo in 2018. This time, being mid October, it was a bit chilly in the room; the lady explained to us that the heat in the building is controlled for the whole building by the overall management. 

The tourism office wants everyone to know that Oviedo is the origin of the
 Camino de Santiago. Which it is, as Oviedo was the capital of
Asturias when the bones were found.

We paid our respects to the Sudario and the Cross of Victory from Covadonga when we went to the Cathedral to get our Salvadoranas.

The reliquary of the Sudario, the head cloth mentioned in the Gospel of John
 description of the apostles discovering that Jesus had been resurrected

The credencial for the Salvador, the bottom stamp is upside
down as the credencial is unfolded here and the
final stamp is on a different page.

The Salvadorana
It had to be weighted down to uncurl the shape of the carrying tube.

We took a rest day in Oviedo.

A long time ago, and still resonating today

Hello, everyone.

A long time ago, on the other side of the world, on a December night, angels appeared to shepherds, who were staying with their flocks in the night to protect the sheep.

The nights are long in December in the land of Israel, and the shepherds were excited to hear and see the angels. They went to see the Babe that had been described to them, lying in a manger, in the only reasonably private part of a house very full of company.

At about this time, wise men in another land, who observed the stars noted something odd in the sky. They interpreted it as the sign of a very important King having been born and set out to pay Him their respects. 

Later on, probably when the Babe was some months old, these wise men came bringing gifts.

And all of this excitement and visiting was because the Son of God had been born to the Virgin Mary. An event which continues to amaze us and fill us with happiness even today, two thousand-ish years later.

Merry Christmas to all of my readers. 

(Updated to fix spelling.)

A small break in our series of the pilgrimage: Christmas decorations

 Hello, everyone.

Today, as I become aware that time is creeping up on us fast, I want to take a small break and show how the Jingle All The Way quilt and some other things were used in the decorations.

The Jingle All The Way quilt, in the living room, next to "the egg tree"--the one that almost all of the decorated eggshells end up on, plus other small things. There are beaded ornaments in different shapes and some acrylic faceted sparklies to reflect light.

This was brought from the old house. The tree shape is made up of Log Cabin blocks and the star is appliqued on at the top. The sides were made from various pieced squares that were either in stash already or made from stash. As the curtain rods for these are new this year, a new hanging pocket was needed.

Both of these fabric hangings are using Command Strips (heavy duty) and the red "velvet" yarn I found at Hobby Lobby to stay on the wall.

Detail of the main tree, showing the ostrich eggshell nativity and various other treasured memories.

I keep meaning to decorate the other ostrich eggshells in the house, but never get around to making decisions and getting started. 

Recap of San Salvador, part 5

 Hello, everyone.

After our rest day in Pola de Lena, we set out bright and early in the morning en route to Mieres del Camino. This was a short day, because the "standard" day goes all the way into Oviedo from Pola, and that's over 30 kilometers. Mieres breaks the day in half, and has places to stay and to eat.

A view of part of the trail; it wasn't difficult and was pleasantly shaded for some parts.

Santa Olaya, a lovely church in a town just before Mieres.

The priest was in and he stamped our credenciales. He also said that we were welcome to visit the interior of the church.

There was a bakery near the church so we got to sit down for a little coffee and rest.

This is the info sign about the church. I believe the second language here is Asturian but I don't know for sure.




















When we got to Mieres, we had a pleasant walk through much of the town to our hotel, and then we went out for a glass of cidre. 

Recap of San Salvador, Part 4

 Hello, everyone.

We woke up in the albergue at Llanos de Someron, ate a bite of toast, and headed out. We encountered a sign at the edge of the village, just before beginning to walk downhill on a small, paved road. It had a map, with two routes on it, going down from Someron to the next village, Fierros. The left line was marked 5* on difficulty and the right line was marked 1* difficulty. We were beat, and so we began walking the easy way down. About 3/4 of the 4 kilometers down, we saw the cut-off for the hard way. It went uphill steeply and after the previous two days of hard walking it just looked like too much. Besides, we were on the easier way and they would both go the same place, right? Famous last words!

At the bottom of the mountain, we followed the arrows past the train station and through a protected sidewalk. The village looked like very few people lived there. There was no bar to stop and chat at if we had any questions. Arrows seemed to have stopped at the end of the sidewalk. At the end of the village we followed the road and one arrow. It pointed around the side of a little chapel.

We followed the arrows and they led us around a little house and began climbing up over rocks, then leafy dirt, and the path became very overgrown. When we encountered a tiny bridge over a tiny stream, DH asked me to wait as the route was becoming questionable to us. He found a missing board in the bridge--note well, you need to use poles! His poking the pole where he proposed to step prevented an injury--and after crossing followed the tiny path around a bend. A few minutes later, he came back and said that the path had grown more overgrown, seemed not to have been walked on at all, and possibly was an old, no longer used route. So we made our way back down and went back to the sidewalks, looking carefully for arrows. The arrows had fled. Or so it seemed to us. After much back and forth over the half kilometer or so of Fierros, we went to the train station. Which was one of the self-service variety with signs of the schedule and no way to go inside and pay the ticket. A man was pacing on the platform and he told us that the system is to pay when you get off the train when you board at a station like this. We decided that we would hop the train for a few stops and re-join the route farther on.

At the second stop we were at where we had planned to sleep for the night, Pola de Lena, so we got off, paid our tickets and strolled through the town down to the bottom. It was around noon, and we called it a rest day as we were still tired. 

We did remember to find the way out of town for the next morning before settling down to snacks and wine and watching the town enjoy their first fiesta in over a year.

Art of the last Station of the Cross on the front of the church altar. 

Ecce Homo statue in the church.

Finding the arrows for departure.

The bridge at the edge of town. Arrow sticker on the rail and painted on the safety rail of the bridge.

Recap of Salvador part 3

 Hello, everyone.

This is about the third day of our Salvador pilgrimge. We woke up in El Embrujo and had a bite of toast and a hot drink before departing. Then it was across the valley and up, up. 

The path approaching the Cruz del Salvador.

View of the cross, against a beautiful blue sky.

After that earlier photo, one might be excused for thinking this is a pic of the path. It isn't. It's just a pretty village in the distance, and some cows close up. The path passed them and at least on this day we didn't have to pick our steps between the cattle. 

The fall crocuses were blooming up a storm. Sometimes it was hard to step around them! 

It was mentioned earlier that there is crossing of wire gates. This is the gate behind Puerto de Pajares...we walked around the building with the bar (after our little break with coffee and restroom) and crossed the open bit (the crocuses above are a crop of that), passed the electric tower, and then encountered a mojon (cement marker) and the wire gate in the fence. We did remember to close the gate. On the other side of the gate, the path was unclear at first, though it was obvious where we needed to end up: at the bottom of this short descent in grasses with some damp mud. We found the most workable descent to the level of the road (very little traffic), stepped over the water channel and crossed the highway to enter the nature reserve. We still had a number of kilometers to cover, with mostly downs and some ups, before arriving at Sta. Martina and climbing the steep little road with the sign for the albergue at Llanos de Someron. Which was actually on the next mountain over, at the end of about 2 km. uphill we walked about .9 km. on a lovely woodland path. 

This was part of the nature reserve. There are peoples' farms in the midst of the reserve and the path pretty much sticks to some caliche roads that wind through it. 

The quoted distance for this day was about 18 km but they were tough kms. and it felt a lot more like mid to high 20's because of all the climbing.

Recap of Pilgrimage 2021: Salvador part 2

 Hello, everyone.

The last update brought us to La Robla. Today's update carries on through Poladura de la Tercia.

When we left La Robla it was easy for a while. Eventually, after going through some villages and stopping at a gas station (they do exist and sometimes they're on the route) we followed a side road into the mountains.

We walked along the side of a narrow road that was clearly marked "Mountain Road" so drivers wouldn't be surprised by snow. Or falling rocks. There were snow poles from time to time. We saw an insect sunning itself on the pavement.

We took his picture, and forgot entirely to take a picture of the small river/large creek alongside the road. 

We eventually arrived at Buiza, around midday, where there was no refreshment supplier. There is a lovely fountain near the entrance of the town, but our water bottles were still full. We followed the trail through the town, passing some windowsill art

and fairly quickly arrived at a pasture with some fencing. One follows the arrows and goes through wire gates and up the hill.

This day takes the pilgrim past the Forcadas de San Anton, a set of very interesting rock formations, which while we walked past them we aren't sure which rocks were the famous ones.

Where the trail split, we took the downhill side, which passes a cross, and goes alongside some water. Then the trail stays pretty level for a long time. The first village we came to was not Poladura. It was San Martin. We had to follow the arrows out the back side of the village, down a caliche road, and then turn at a small building and follow a mostly-unused trail into Poladura. The building does have a yellow arrow painted on the side. And when we walked this way someone had been walking there recently with their (cute) little dog and left trodden down grass that we could follow.

This was a day that is not listed as a huge distance, but all of those kilometers were hard ones.

Our dinner and room at El Embrujo were wonderful. And we met some really neat people at their patio, too. As I don't have their permission, I won't name names, but we learned a lot about the ensuing days on the Salvador from one of them. 😉 And were grateful for the advice!

A small interruption of the recap series: sewing

 Hello, everyone.

Today the birthday gift for DGS3 was finished.

 A backpack/tote sack for the young man's things

with his favorite theme embroidered on it

This is my second time working with Meshin' Around, a pattern from ByAnnies.com. I had bought it at my local quilt shop, along with the cool colored meshes for both of the projects, and found the cactus fabric there, too.

The directions are very good with this pattern. She even includes labels to put on the cut out pieces of fabric, mesh, interfacing, and elastic.

Recap of Pilgrimage 2021: La Ruta del San Salvador

 Hello, everyone.

It's been busy at Ye Olde Homestead, what with Thanksgiving Day and then prepping for Advent (at church) and Christmas (at home)--that last isn't done yet.

Returning to the pilgrimage, we woke up on October 8 at around 7:30 or so...it had been a very long day the day before...and because one of us (me) takes a while to get going in the morning we didn't get out until at least 0830...which was sunrise in León in early October. It was also around 8 degrees C. 

We put on all of our layers and started walking. The way out of town, which we had scanned a little the day before, was nice, only a little wandering in circles and a very friendly local pointed us the right way where the routes split, but after we got out of the subdivisions in the outskirts of the city, it got quite chilly.

Very pretty bridge, this was where we stopped and put on some more layers. Buff under the hood of the windbreaker, yes! And I even got out my gloves for a bit.

The way from León to La Robla is flattish for the first third, steeply hilly for the second third, and then flattish again into La Robla. Very pretty countryside.

We kept seeing other trail signs, all along the way, many saying "Via de la Plata" which confused us a little, but we knew to stick to our own trail. These VdlP signs invariably pointed to an extremely steep and difficult-looking stretch of trail when they indicated another way than our own.

We encountered a map of the overall trail.

There were a number of signs marked "Quatro Valles" showing the way.

This trail mark surprised me. I didn't expect to see the stacked rocks ("keep straight on") here in Spain.

When we got to La Robla, we asked a friendly lady for direction to a place to stay and she told us where to find both of the options. We elected to stay in the one at the exit of the town, very friendly folks, and learned that we were "chicos" (kids). At our age, being "kids" is fine with us.

We discovered that, probably because of lingering habits from the 'rona panic, it was necessary to eat dinner quite a bit earlier than we had thought was customary in Spain. Nonetheless, we found a restaurant that served dinner and ate. (DH told the waitress that I wanted "salad" for some reason, and I really should have spoken up and said, no I want meat and fat. I paid for that reticence the next day in spades.) Then we washing some socks and undies to keep up with our clothing usage. We had only brought enough for "wear one, carry one" and some layers for chilly mornings, so doing at least a little washing wasn't optional.

Recap of pilgrimage 2021: Leon

 Hello, everyone.

During our one partial day in León we did rather a lot of errands: we walked to the Oficina de Turismo and got a map of the downtown area. Then we walked across the bridge to the K2 Planeta store and picked up our (ordered in advance) poles. Then we went to the Benedictine alberbue near the French Way entrance to the city and picked up our San Salvador credenciales. And then we strolled around a bit and found the museum about the ancient Roman era of León's history.

The Centro de Interpretation, I think it was called, incorporates some of the ancient walls into the building. (Not the only building that does that.) This is a view of a part of the walls with some other remains. It's looking down from the walking space on top of the walls.

The museum also had an interpretation of what the Roman soldiers' quarters might have been like...give or take some curtains, pillows and mattresses, and electric lighting. It's not that dissimilar from a modern pilgrims' albergue in many ways.

As this was the first "puente" weekend in a long, long time, the folks were going in for some festivities. They had made a flower painting on the plaza next to the Cathedral.

They also had an outdoor festival of sorts, fenced in and with door-dragons making sure that everyone who entered the outdoor area of booths was properly adorned with a mascarilla.

When we sat down to eat, we had a tabla of charcuterie: various cured meats and some cheese, along with bread and red wine. 

After we ate, being dog-tired by this time, we went back to our room and collapsed into bed.

My Dirty Girls

 Hello, everyone.

Today I want to show off my wonderful sand gaiters: an outer layer that keeps rocks and sand from getting into your shoes.

This is one of my pair of Dirty Girls. There is a little hook, visible here, and a little bit of hook-and-loop, not visible, at the back of the shoe. The lady's shop has a number of different patterns in the fabric, I chose the Camino one as y'all can see. 

While on the Camino Primitive, we met a lady from Germany who also has Dirty Girls, in a black and red sort of splash or flame pattern.

They work. Aside from a couple of bits of weed that worked their way up the side once, I had no foreign objects get into my shoes. And there was a lot of dirt, sand, and gravel to cross! 

This is also a closer view of the Speedgoat 4 shoes that were written about in my last post.

The most comfortable shoes we have ever walked in

 Hello, everyone.

Today I want to talk about our shoes. We walked in Hoka One One Speedgoats. These were new, and we loved walking in them.

We had chosen them in the first place because (1) they have the Mega-grip soles and won't slip on wet stone, and (2) being trail runners, they weigh less than our previous shoes did. 

They also breathe--this was wonderful--at the end of the day my feet were not soaking in a puddle of perspiration the way waterproof shoes always worked out.

We had no blisters on the entire pilgrimage.

At the central milestone in Madrid, at the end.

At lunch time on the Hospitales portion of the Camino Primitivo. (Yes, that is a toppled marker stone being used as a bench. It was toppled when we got there!)

Winding up...

 Hello, everyone. 

The last post left off at the second day before our return home. The following morning, before checking out, we went to try the crepes place we had seen over near Calle Posta.

Two of the large variety of crepes on the menu.

We had thought that 8 Euro was a lot, until the server brought out these very full, plate-sized crepes. They had egg, meat, cheese...I couldn't finish mine!

They also had sweet crepes and assorted waffles (gofres) on their list.

After breakfast we went back and began loading up the packs. It went really fast and we realized that we were trying to get home sooner by packing faster! Obviously that was impossible. 

We walked the few blocks down to Atocha station and hopped onto the Airport Express bus. Then we waited until our appointment for the necessary rona test, waited a little longer until the results came into our email and took a taxi to our last-night hotel.

The next morning we flew out and eventually arrived home around midnight-thirty.

The days since we have been playing catch-up around the house and resting. Which is why this post was a little late.

After we upload photos into the computer there will be more discussion of this year's pilgrimage. 

Nineteenth update on pilgrimage 2021

 Hello, everyone. 

In these our last few days we walked over to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, a really wonderful art museum in Madrid, and also to the Museo Arqueologico Nacional, a cultural-historical museum. We have visited both of these before. We discovered that the art collections at the Thyssen have been rotated and that part of the MAN is undergoing "obras" and not on display now.

This painting of the Visitation (second joyful mystery of the rosary) is unusual in showing the developing babies in their wombs. 

There were a lot of Dutch paintings on display, but most of the beautiful still lifes that I remember and liked were not on display. My personal favorite,  Christus Resurrexit, was still there and it was interesting to reflect on the difference between the actual, huge, painting and my somewhat smaller print. The real one just glows more. 

I learned that ostrich eggs were a thing with the ancient Phoenician colonists, that built ports in Hispania in the centuries before Rome moved into the peninsula in a big way.

We didn't spend tons of time in the MAN this time, as it was late in the day, but it was interesting and educational.