Recap of Primitivo, Days 3 and 4 (updated: Days 4 and 5)

 Hello, everyone.

Today, since much of what was to be said about the walk to Campiello has already been said, I thought I would combine that with the following day from Campiello over the Hospitales route to Berducedo.

First off, the walk to Campiello was deliberately a short day. We got there about noon and immediately had a coffee with a egg-and-chorizo bocadillo tapa. Then we got with the people about a bed to sleep in and the washing protocols (bought tokens) and got after the laundry. Then we had a snack of "seafood-rice salad" from their little grocery and finished off the laundry. At suppertime we ate a pizza in their cafe and also got jamon and cheese bocadillos for the next day's picnic lunch. These turned out to be huge.

A bit of scenery after leaving Tineo. (By the way, Tineo had installed street lights on the walking trail out of town. By the time we ran out of lights there was starting to be walking light from the sky.)

I think pictures from the Albergue Casa Ricardo in Campiello have already been included in the en-route post about this stage.

The next morning, we left before actual light, but there was no traffic on the road and we were able to follow it.

The sun came up while we were walking. (Actually that tends to happen with us. Even more so when we walked this time, into the shortening days.) 

We passed through Borres and didn't locate the little bar. Well, we passed it, but after considerable discussion didn't try the door to see if it was actually open or not. After Borres we came to the split in the routes. A number of the people who were walking at that time had mentioned that they were going to take the low route, as it has a lot more facilities en route. They were still going to end up in Berducedo, probably as there is precious little in the way of lodging along this stage this year. (I think there may have been an option to sleep in Pola de Allande on the low route, but as we took the other one it didn't matter to us.) The low route has more kilometers and, significantly for us, a lot more climbs and descents according to the information we had. We went the high way because once we got up there is would be mostly ridge walking. Which is fairly even. And it was.

Y'all will note that while there is a real slope here, the trail isn't sloping a whole lot.

That little grove of trees in the background, and the famous ruins, are about the only place one could take shelter from a big wind up there. And with the said wind, the pine branches might fall on one's head. Other than that, it's a whole lot of open area.

This is an interesting bug that we saw along the way that day. It looked a bit like it was laying eggs in the grass. We had never seen this critter before.

Later we passed along the very dooryard of a farm in the hills, large friendly dog there, and through the village of Lagos, lovely water fountain at the church, no bars at all, and arrived 5:30 in the evening at Berducedo, for a 30 kilometer day. We were so tired. We ate the remnants of our bocadillo picnic sandwiches (most of them, we had only nibbled at lunchtime) for dinner along with a bottle of Spanish wine from the little grocery there and went to bed.

Recap of Camino Primitivo, Day 3

 Hello everyone. I had located photos for this day of travel at the same time as I located photos for the previous day of travel, so I thought I would get after it and make the post for the walk from Salas to Tineo.

One initial thought: apparently the meal served at the albergue in Salas was vegan. It had no meat, no cheese, and while there was some rice in the vegetable soup, there was no bean element so no complete protein at all. And it was awfully low fat for people who are hiking all day. I completely ran out of energy and hit the wall around 2 hours into our walk. But we made it into Tineo and it wasn't super late in the day after all. Though we did arrive during siesta time so not much was open until later.

This was part of the path towards Tineo.

We also passed black raspberry plants, some of the berries ripe, but didn't take pictures of them. The berry I ate had a sort of dark, musky flavor. (Pick your wild berry above the height of doggy investigations if you try one! Just saying.) I never picked a berry that appeared to be under cultivation, as that would be an utterly tacky thing to do.

We passed an amazing growth of mushrooms along the way. They appeared to be growing on the roots of some dead trees.

This sundial is on the outskirts of Tineo, along the hiking path. There is actually a sort of "parks belt" along there before you enter the town. The whole town is clinging to the side of a mountain/huge hill and they also have at least one terrace below the nearby street that is used for a vegetable garden by someone there. I saw large plants that looked like asparagus, busy storing up energy to turn into lovely spears in the spring. The little bar we were sitting at, through a little tunnel across the square from the Palacio de Meras, and on the left, had terrace seating with a beautiful view of the town. Also very tasty croquetas for a snack.

We stayed in the albergue space of the Palacio de Meras hotel which was quite nice. You go to the main entrance and ask and they check you in. Also ask for your sello! I did and DH forgot, so for that day I have 2 stamps and he has one (the little church dedicated to SS Saturnino and Justino I think their names were.) The albergue space there has little 4-bed (2 bunk-stack) cubicles with a heavy curtain across the door to somewhat contain the sounds of snorers. I remember lockers and electric plugs, too. The hotel offers a pilgrims' meal at I think 8 pm, for an extra fee.

We had a (really big) hamburger in their bar for dinner. Very nicely done and filling, too. We didn't think that we could do justice to a full 3 course pilgrims' meal so skipped that option. 

Recap of Camino Primitivo, Day 2

 Hello, everyone.

I had intended to post earlier, but after making "save for web" versions of pictures, got distracted. So here it (finally) goes.

We left Grado and walked to Salas. Salas has a museum in an old fortified tower and a church and several places to eat and to sleep. We visited the museum and the church was closed up before we emerged so we didn't get to visit that.

The fall flowers in northern Spain are nearly as impressive as the spring flowers.

Fuschia blossoms along the way

Nasturtium blossoms--nasturtiums are said to be edible in a peppery sort of way, but I have never tried them.

Entering the town of Salas at the end of the day. Rain was threatening but there wasn't much when it came.

From the museum, which is operated by a university if I remember correctly:

This was a model of the church that was build here in the ninth century.

A timeline of the history of the church, which as y'all can see was next to the model.

The museum exhibits were interesting and informative, at least if you like history as we do.

Beginning the Camino Primitivo

 Hello, everyone.

In the title of this post, I referred to the Camino Primitivo. This path has its name because it is the route of the very first pilgrimage to Santiago, by King Sancho the Chaste with his court. The remains of the saint had just been found, in the center of that Christian graveyard from the first century AD. Sancho on learning of this wish to pay his respects to St. James the Elder whose great love for Spain was well known and reciprocated.

There are a number of ways to get from Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, to Santiago. They could have gone along the coast, but that is not only easy for Norse raiders to attack and steal the pilgrims for the slave markets, it is also a lot of climbing up and down as many of the villages along that coast are in fjords. They could have gone the way that is now called the French route, but that was too close to the not-solid border with the Moorish kingdoms and the pilgrims would have been in danger from raiders from the south. Or they could do what they did: walk through the mountains and along ridges until it was time to turn south to Santiago. 

The 100 km town on this route is the city of Lugo, which goes back to the Romans.

We left Hostal Fidalgo in Oviedo in the early morning--early for mid October, that is!--it was still around 8:30 or so. But at that latitude the sun sleeps later as the month goes on.

We walked alongside of a river for part of the day.

We liked the many flowers at this house we passed.

Got a midafternoon glass of wine and a chance to sit in a chair at the Villa Palatina. This was also a lodging, but we were going on to Grado.

The front view of the albergue/pension in Grado was posted in the en-route discussion series. 

While we were there, we rested and socialized with some of the family who own it and discovered the amazing Spanish game show: El Cazador. This is a quiz show with various features, and we got to practice listening to the host speak *very, very fast* while asking questions. Fortunately the questions, in Spanish, were also subtitled at the bottom of the screen.

Since then, we have found some of the show episodes on the internet and we enjoy watching it.