Memories from the Camino del Norte

Hello, everyone.

Someone we know is going to walk along the Camino del Norte ("the Northern Road") to Santiago, and it brought back to us memories of that walk in 2018. 

The morning after we slept in Tapia de Casariego--at the very scenic but very basic municipal albergue in an old school house--we walked along beaches and stopped for breakfast coffee at a small hotel. As we didn't stay there, we probably forgot to get a sello in our credencial to remember the visit. Thus, we didn't know the name of the lovely place with the gorgeous beach view! Until today, that is, when I was prompted by the memories of our walk to look into Gronze.com and study the detail maps. 

Then I found it! The giveaway was the porch fence visible in the window of the photo on Google Maps.

One of our photos of the beautiful Playa de Penarronda, lots and lots of sand with a collection of interesting rock outcrops

On the porch of the Hostal with a glass of Aquarius sports drink

Someday I want to go back to that little place and spend the night there, enjoying the serenity and the views.

The hostal is exactly along the walking path of the Camino del Norte.

Reverted to "classic Blogger" and now photos work

Hello, everyone.

I tried again with the new Blogger setup. The photo upload was still not working. How these people managed to tangle up photo upload with google docs is beyond me. Maybe they should try proofreading their work.

I reverted the blog to the older format, which worked.

Now I can upload the photo of the two new Camino walking guides. They contain maps, suggestions for lodgings, brief descriptions of towns and areas of the path.

In this case, the path is the Camino Frances, which is the second-oldest of routes taken by pilgrims that begin roughly near the western Pyrenees. We walked it in 2014, going over the high route in the Pyrenees, called the Route Napoleon. (Blog posts from 2014 discuss this walk.) We would like to return to it and walk the lower route through the Pyrenees, called the Valcarlos route.

The very oldest Camino route to Santiago is the Primitivo, first taken as  royal progress/pilgrimage by the court of one of the Kings Pelayo when the relics were first rediscovered. It began in Oviedo, where his court was, and took a mountainous route to Santiago. We have not walked this route, but would like to in the future.

The oldest route from the Pyrenees (at least I think it is the oldest!) would be the Camino del Norte, which runs along the edge of the ocean. The villages are in little fjords and the path goes up and down a lot. Steeply up and down! (We walked this in 2017 and 2018, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.) The older routing connects to the French route at Arzua, and that is the way we walked.

I am not sure of the age of the Camino Portugues--interested readers can chime in their advice in the comments--but it used to run from Porto north to Santiago. Lately quite a number of people have been starting out in Lisbon. Like the Spanish routes, there are various walking options that allow one to either go inland or along the sea. We walked this in 2015, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.

Another old route is the Via de la Plata, the way of the platted road. (These days everyone remembers that "plata" means silver in Spanish and some call it the Silver Road.) This one is longer. We hope to walk it in the future.

As y'all can see, the go-slow retreat/pilgrimage on foot becomes an addiction. Also I have been privileged to visit Our Lady of Covadonga, the cathedral at Oviedo, and many other edifying churches.

It is not too much to say that I long for the days when we can walk the Camino again.

Remembering Sobrado dos Monxes

Hello, everyone.

In my post last year, when we got to Sobrado, there was only the one photo. It showed the carved dome in the old monastery church.

Nearing the town, the trail (peaceful road, actually) passes a lake full of waterlilies.

The old monastery, now occupied again by monks, was partly despoiled by the interim owners, who sold some of the dressed stone for construction. In addition to the old church and some dormitory space, much of the old cloister remains.

At one time there were sculptures visible here. If you go there, there are old paintings that the monks  are restoring.

An angel? They have been cleaning the accumulated dirt from the image.

The town also has more modern things. We stayed in a private albergue. It's a couple of blocks away from the monastery.

We did go to Vespers, though, with the monks. It was peaceful to sit silently and join our prayers and meditations with the readings. If you haven't been to Vespers before, you know it's coming to the end of the service when the monks all recite "Padre nuestro,...." The silent hours descend for the monks then, and the visiting pilgrims all leave without chattering or side wandering.

The people's flower gardens along the sidewalks were in bloom.

This pinwheel blossom is apparently an actual variety.  I had never seen them before. Since then, I have occasionally seen it mentioned on various gardening pages on the web.

Gazanias? So pretty.

After Vilalba, and Baamonde, there is a split in the route

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned, after Baamonde, as one walks, one enounters a decision point.

 The helpful map explaining the different routes.
Y'all will notice that someone has added helpful crayon-like notes to one side.
We took the longer side, because we could stay at about the midway point on the way.

These are the paired way marks, telling which one is which. It is really important to keep an eye out for this kind of paired mark, as otherwise one walks to a place that was not intended. We met a very friendly young lady in Tapia who had missed the paired signs and ended up walking at least 10 km extra as she had a great desire to visit the famously scenic albergue in Tapia.

The shorter-appearing route here is to be done in one day, while the longer-appearing route can be split.

Witericus feels like it's in the middle of nothing. (Possibly there is another access that the walking pilgrim doesn't notice.) This was our morning break on the second part of this walk. As usual, I had manzanilla and DH had cafe leche.

It was starting to feel like going downhill here--not yet at the rush that is the Frances when the Norte joins up with it, but still a definite feeling that we were approaching the end.

Camino memories: Vilalba and some nature

Hello, everyone.

I would put up pictures of flowers, but it's been really hot--no, really? July in Texas?--and it's not been inspiring to take photos of the blossoms.

Instead, some photos of Vilalba and the following day on the Camino del Norte last summer.

The town has a lovely little map pole to study. 

Carvings around the church area. (This is not the church dedicated to Santiago, it's another one.)

The next day, we encountered the ants' mating festival. They were all gathering on the log to fly out.

More Camino memories

Hello, everyone.

As we walked, we took pictures of interesting (to us) things.

Horreos are famous for being found in Galicia, but they are also found in Asturias. They were developed to store and dry grain in the humidity of a high-rainfall climate.

This slate-roofed horreo with the pointed stones on the top was along the "alternate"--read older--route before Mondonedo. It has the rectangular shape we saw on many of the Galician horreos.

This one is a square instead of a longer rectangle. The owners have hung their corn (maize for the Brits who might be reading) on the sides to dry.The roof appears to be made of tile.

These are some of the interesting things one can see if one is willing to walk through the villages instead of trying to find the remotest paths available.

About those Windows 10 updates again...

Hello, everyone.

A little while ago (like a week or three) Microsoft sent around a new cumulative update to Windows 10. Do they tell you they're going to break things with it? No-o-o-o. They just do it. And honestly if they were doing their jobs right they'd make sure that they weren't re-breaking things that they already broke once. (Or notify people, and maybe also software companies whose products are being trashed.)  Like Adobe Photoshop Elements. Which is unable to save a file.

The last time The Windows update broke Photoshop Elements, there was a lot of fussing on the internet about this stuff. A few weeks later, there was a sudden update to Adobe Photoshop Elements. And, lo and behold, the save function was working again.

Until this Windows update. Now it thinks there is insufficient RAM to save a picture. Again.

Really people? 😡

Anyway, I wanted to share a picture of a video game machine we encountered while walking after we left Tapia de Casariego. It was at snack time, and while we were sitting and having our cafe leche or whatever (I forget now) we saw this machine across the tiny bar.

The theme of the computer-pinball machine is "F-B-I" and the screen has a rotating series of silly pictures in the theme.

It was a surprise to see a game machine on this theme in Spain, on the other side of the world from where anyone would even think about that agency. But it's a small world and we never know what we will discover on the Camino.

Camino del Norte memories: Ribadeo

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned in the last post, we walked pretty-much straight from Tapia to Ribadeo. Ate tortilla at a tiny hotel on the way, which overlooked a beautiful beach, and kept going.

This is a view of the bridge we crossed entering Ribadeo.

It's a long one, isn't it? But there is a pedestrian walkway and it's not scary. Just don't look down if you're afraid of heights. The bridge is solid and it didn't rumble or sway with traffic. And you come into Ribadeo at the height of the town, too! They did seem to have one of those elevators in the town, but we didn't wander over to check it out. The harbor is much lower than the rest of it.

This is the church bell tower from across the park.

We were glad to have a short day and the opportunity to rest a little, along with using the washateria (lavandaria) for our clothes.

Camino del Norte memories: Tapia de Casariego

Hello, everyone.

I was playing with picture files on my computer, trying some of them in grayscale, and thought I'd see if a picture from Tapia had been posted on the blog already. 

Possibly not. The visit/pass through at Tapia was included in a note about Ribadeo with very little detail.

Tapia has a municipal albergue. It is famous for the scenic view. (Otherwise it is quite basic. And heaven help you if you are there on a Sunday when fewer things are open. Tapia is a very small place.) It is one of the albergues where, if you start your day with fresh tape, you have to go outside and hope the sunlight is enough.

We got some photos of the sunrise from the albergue before we left. I converted one to grayscale and cropped out the invisibly-dark grass at the bottom. This is what was left:

So, if you're very visually oriented, this is what you can see on a spring morning in Tapia as the sun comes up.  The little flash in the rock is a tunnel carved there by the waves.

We met a very nice lady on our way out of Tapia. She told us about roofing styles (being in the architecture business and concentrating on roof design) and after that we were more aware of the slate vs tile roofs of the regions as we walked. She said that the old Camino had not gone straight to Ribadeo, but south along the river through various villages to another bridge, and then back north.  She said it was very pleasant and scenic. Perhaps if we walk the Norte again we will go that way!

We were, frankly, eager to get to a place with a washateria and get some laundry clean, so we elected to go straight to Ribadeo, crossing the high bridge--using the pedestrian walkway, it wasn't all dangerously scary--and getting there early. We then chose a hotel that was close to the washateria and got busy making ourselves look more human.

FYI, Ribadeo on I think it was Monday, doesn't have an open Turista office. (Kind of like museums, really.) The nice police people gave us a map and stamped our credenciales IIRC. Ribadeo was a pretty town to stroll through and admire the buildings and park.

A pretty flower (Camino del Norte)

Hello, everyone.

Sorry it's been so long. We moved house a little while back, and did some renovation to the new place (new to us, that is) and it's been hectic.

There has been more stash busting, pictures of which are not in the main computer yet, and some gardening.

Today, though, I am putting up a picture of a passion flower blossom that we saw in northern Spain during our Camino last summer.

This is called a passion flower because the parts of the flower reminded people of the Passion of Christ. Supposedly the five stamens remind of the Five Wounds and the lots of fringe bits correspond to, um, I think it was the number of days of the season of Lent. I am impressed by the idea that someone actually counted all the bits and discovered allegorical symbolism for them. I would never have thought of all that.

The passion flower blossoms are really pretty. Even the wild unimproved native Texas version is pretty! There is a kind of butterfly whose young--the caterpillars--think it's just the best food going. They are orange and I think they have dark spines or bumps all over their little wormy bodies.

Camino flowers: Castro Urdiales

Hello, everyone.

One of the nice things about setting the huge pile of Camino pictures to be a rotating desk background is the way it reminds me of various things we saw.

Today, a photo of the flowers growing out of the seaside cliff at Castro Urdiales.

For those who are keeping track, this is not far from the seagull nest that was also photographed. I thought at the time that these flowers were some kind of aloe, but am not nearly so certain about the identification now. The agave behind the orange flowers I am still confident about--south Texas has many agaves in yards to look at--but the others may be some other thing altogether.

It's amazing how the tons of rain the north coast of Spain gets produces loads of pretty flowers in some of the most impossible looking spots.

From Santillana del Mar to Comillas

Hello, everyone. The last post talked a little about the thirteenth day of walking. Today's post will go on from there--is it the fourteenth day of walking if it begins two mornings after arriving in Santillana? I can't remember any more if I counted days when we rested in Bilbao.

First, a picture of the little map the ladies at the Turismo gave us.

The top right is where the Camino path enters the village on a tiny road. The village is a very popular spot to visit, and especially on weekends and holidays many local folks drive over to visit the picturesque village and also the museum about Altamira Cavern.

When we walked on, we returned to a more coastal area. We also entered the area that many people had emigrated to Latin America from, and some of them made their fortunes there and then returned to their home towns and villages. They were nicknamed Indianos after they returned, all of this being in the late 19th century I believe, and they had a distinctive style of building.

This church showed two of the very common marks of the Indiano building style: the painted walls of the building, with the gingerbread accents, and the palm tree. It is said that the Indianos, when they returned to their homes, planted palms to remember their years in the Americas. Regarding the paint, most of the Indiano painted buildings that we saw had brighter paint colors than this. Red-orange was popular.

 In Ruiloba, we saw another style of very painted building. These folks have painted murals on both of the street facing sides of their place.

At the end of the day, waiting on the front patio--or sidewalk--of the Comillas old jail for the hospitalera to return and open for pilgrims, we saw some people working (painting? cleaning?) on an old house. I want to call it an old Victorian type house. They have brought in the power lift and the men on the basket are probably 40 or 50 feet up. The sight reminded us of the time we rented the Genie TZ50 for house painting of our own.

From Santander to Santillana del Mar, the village of the three lies

Hello, everyone. It's been a long time since the last post. Things are very busy around the homestead right now. Posting may continue to be "gappy."

The train station at Boo de Pielagos--no actual "station" just a
stop where people get on and off the train. 

The day after we arrived in Santander, we walked to Santillana del Mar. This was a long day's walk.


And after we crossed the river on the short train ride, we walked through what seemed like an endless series of tiny villages. When we finally got to Santillana, we didn't know we were there until we saw the information map posted at the outskirts of the village. Fortunately, we encountered the very friendly man who has the "milk bar" and he gave us a lovely recommendation for a place to stay. He also gave us a ride out to the museum of the famous cave with the ancient paintings.

A church we saw while walking that day.

The entrance to the museum.

We made a rest day in Santillana and enjoyed this small town a lot. If you are there, don't forget to look up the sisters in their convent, who sell pastries. They also have an albergue there, I think.

The Oficina del Turismo is close to the convent. They have maps of the village and give directions how to find the Camino route when walking on.

The twelfth day of walking: to Santander

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the series about the Camino del Norte in 2018:

We got up and were given (European-style) breakfast before departing from Guemes. The coffee was hot, there were tea bags for those of us who don't start with caffeine first thing in the morning anymore, and there was bread. There was probably butter and jelly as well, but I don't remember.

Some of the paths of the Norte route go alongside steep cliffs. It's important to remember that nature doesn't come with grab rails.

This was our third ferry ride of the pilgrimage. It was a little bit longer than the other two. We passed a cruise ship in the harbor at Santander. When we got to the church there, we found the cruise ship tourists. They were crowded into long lines, gabbing away inside the church, and generally acting like they were there to see a side show act. 😞The Tabernacle was there and they all acted like they were out in the public street. The lines led to the reliquaries of San Celedonio and San Emeterio, the patron saints of the diocese.

We stayed in the albergue there. There is a washer but I don't remember a dryer. There are clotheslines outside the window of the dormitory...two stories up, reached by opening the window and reaching out to pin the clothes onto them...but hey, a bunk in a dorm beats no bed at all.  And the sleeping was fine. Pilgrims give thanks for what we receive.

The eleventh day: to Guemes

Hello, everyone.

We got up early and walked out of Noja when the sun was just up--our favorite time to depart. We walked along a series of quiet country roads. Some had red anti-slip paint on one side for walkers like us. Some didn't.

We made a moderate day's walk and arrived at Güemes around lunch time. Father Enrique runs the famous albergue there, which is in his old family home. When we walked up to the door, the hospitaleros immediately told us to come in and sit down for lunch. (Well, immediately after putting down packs and sticks of course.) They fed us wonderfully warm and tasty lentil-and-sausage soup. The weather stayed clammy and cloudy and moved on to rain after a while, but we were in for the night and it didn't bother us.

The picture is from the Ermita de San Julian, a sort of museum of pilgrimage and pilgrims in what appears to be a former chapel.

The tenth day: Laredo to Noja

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the Camino series, on the tenth day we walked the length of Laredo to the beach at the very tip of the land and boarded the ferry across to Santoña.

This is the sign at the ferry landing. (Well, it's actually a section of beach and you walk across the sand, but it's the landing.)

The ride was pleasant and uneventful.

The other photo, below, is of a primrose that was growing in the sand along the way. It looks a lot like a similar primrose that grows at South Padre Island, Texas, but it may be a different species. It is still lovely!



After we arrived at Noja, we found a pension to stay at and loaded up our laundry for the walk across the small town to the laundromat. While we were there, the heavens opened and dumped down strong rain. There was also lightning and possibly even a bit of hail. All very exciting! Especially as we dashed back across town with newly dried laundry. We did duck into a bar to wait out the worst of it.

Day 9: to Laredo

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the series of Camino 2018 posts, we revisit the ninth day of walking, from Castro Urdiales to Laredo.

This day was a lot of seaside walking along the bluffs. The weather continued cool. There was a fair amount of scenery. We did remember to take a few pictures.

The hills and bluffs seem to gather convection to themselves. There is a possible rain event building up on the mountain in the distance. We were walking in sunshine when the picture was taken.

By the time we arrived the the outskirts of the city the sunshine had been replaced by clouds.

 Laredo has a long beach.

There is a ferry ride here, not quite as short as the ferry in Pasajes but not long either.

We stayed with the Trinitarian sisters in their convent albergue. The alburgue had beds and warm blankets. They had evening Mass in the church. At the end of Mass the sisters gave all of the pilgrims paper stars to keep. They were very sweet.

Camino del Norte day 8: from Portugalete to Castro Urdiales

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned in the last post about the Camino, we rode the metro to Portugalete. This is basically getting to the edge of the city. Once there we found the trail, which follows a dedicated bicycle path. The path is controlled-access: periodically there will be an exit for a village or town. After that, we continued on.

The way down at Las Arenas. It was still pretty brisk on temperatures, especially for us Texans. There was a little bar and we had tortilla and coffee there. Then we continued on.

This part of the coast was a mining region at one time. The trail even went through an old mine tunnel!

The walking was fine, but I did manage to trip over a rock on that day and get a bit of "road rash" on one knee. It is important to pick the feet up!

At Castro Urdiales, the person who has a sello for your crdencial is the lady at the tourism office. We stayed in a pension room above a restaurant. We did walk around the old church-castle complex and saw nesting seagulls and flowers. The church wasn't open that afternoon. The castle had some art displays.

A little bit more about Bilbao

Hello, everyone.

We stayed a couple of days in Bilbao, just to rest and recuperate a little, and since there have already been some posts about the city, this will be brief.

En route from Larrabetzu, a kind lady invited me to borrow her restroom. This was entirely unexpected, but very gratefully received. She was a true Camino Angel for me. After that, feeling somewhat unsettled, we took the train into the city.

 This is a baptistry, the place in the church where people are baptized into the faith. The Easter candle is there, convenient for use during the rite. (I think I remember this as being in the Church of St. Nicholas.) There is a sculpture of the First Luminous Mystery of the Rosary, Jesus being baptized in the river Jordan by His cousin St. John, in the niche behind the basin.

This is a very, very old tabernacle. It may be of white stone with bronze doors, but the people of that time beautified it with carvings.

This was my first time to eat the very traditional Spanish breakfast food called Pan con Tomate: toasted bread with fresh tomato (chopped or shredded) and olive oil. It was wonderful!

When we left Bilbao, we rode the metro over to Portugalete and began walking there.

Fourth and Fifth Days: to Gernika and Larrabetzu

Hello, everyone.

The next two days were in one way similar to the third day: up and down, and especially in the morning some steep climbing.

The thing that stands out most in my memory of the fourth day was a descent that had been given some care by the local people.

 There must have been 500 steps in this long collection of descending stairs. Some of the people that walked it that day really, really hated it because their knees hurt. We didn't have any problem. We did take care to even out the stress of stepping down between our two knees. (I alternated 4 steps leading with the left and 4 steps leading with the right, over and over.) All the way down I marveled to myself about the steepness and difficulty of the trail here before they added these (new) stairs. The thought of trying to go down this slope on unimproved surfaces was enough to make me grateful for the steps.

Later that day, we came to the "green tunnel." There are walls on either side of this old road. Probably the walls are older than the surface we walked on. They were certainly buried under the greenery.

At Gernika we walked past the mural of the famous painting of the air raids and the memorial to the ancient council tree.

The next day we passed a really pretty wild iris.

If this variety hasn't made it into the gardening world yet, it's because the people who find and propagate lovely flowers haven't been looking hard enough. The lips of the blooms are fuzzy!

As Larrabetzu was discussed when we posted from the trail, I think that I will let the flower stand in for the village. We had pizza that night--a Monday, so almost no eating places were open at supper time--and called it a night.  The next morning we headed toward Bilbao.

A small programming note: I will be out of pocket for a few days. Any posts will be a digression from this series. The recap series will resume when I return to my desktop computer where the pictures reside.