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By the time we arrived the the outskirts of the city the sunshine had been replaced by clouds.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

A lovely bit of needlework

Hello, everyone.

Today, visiting with family, I saw some beautiful old needlework.

The stitches were done by hand and they are so even and small!

This is an old christening gown. The main embellishment is the several sections with diagonal tucks. They're separated by

embroidered strips. At the right, the front on the outside.

At the bottom, a closer look at the neckline. (Posting this from the tablet and missing the mouse buttons a lot right now!)

I am amazed at the beautiful work our ancestors did. They took such care to make the piece beautiful.

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.

Third day's walking: Deba to Markina 27 km

Hello, everyone.

We left Deba at what was turning out to be our new standard departure time: between 6:45 and 7:15. (We would have liked to leave earlier, but we kept forgetting to set our watch to 0530 to get the day started!)

This was a day of walking away from the ocean and into the mountains.

The river at Deba was beautiful in the early morning.

We crossed the dam and began the long day's climb. Y'all can just see the beginnings of the path at the right side of the picture.

Parts of the path were reasonably level. Parts of it were steep. The village of Olatz was in a little enclosed valley that doesn't drain away: a polje I think it's called. The bar had a very welcome bite of food to eat. I refilled my water bottle at the sink in the ladies' room.

A bus group came and sat around outside the bar in their couple or three dozen, eating sack lunches and buying nothing from the little business. I felt like it was tacky of them. If they ordered the sack breakfasts from the lady at the bar, she could have had them ready and the extra business might have been the difference to make it worthwhile for her to be open an extra day during the week. Instead of only at the weekend.

The trail, which was mostly on dirt lumber roads, went pretty high. We had some lovely views.

We had gotten a barra loaf and some sardines in Deba, because of the notes in the guide book about a near-total lack of facilities en route, and about 1 we sat down near a farm with a (non-potable) spring and ate. The kids at the farm had set up a table to sell drinks: sodas, Aquarius water, and maybe some beer. We bought drinks to go with our food and enjoyed a rest on the grass.

The lunch stop was about 10 kilometers from our destination, according to a sign we saw. Those were some long kilometers! There was a really long descent at one point, somewhat steep. I zigzagged my way all the way down on the concrete way. And it wasn't the end! There were still some more miles.

We got to Markina about 4 in the afternoon, and almost the first thing we saw was the famous shrine to St. Michael the Archangel. The statue is in the center of a megalithic rock construction. There are a couple of benches for a visitor to sit down for a minute inside the building.

In Markina we stayed at the convent of the Benedictinas. The building was in the classic hollow-square shape and clotheslines for the pilgrims were inside the paved courtyard at the center. (In that climate the heat reflecting off of the walls is an advantage.) They had something I'd never seen before, a little electric gizmo that would spin-out your wet laundry after you washed it in the (cold!) water at the sink. This was interesting, it almost got the clothes as wrung-out as an actual washing machine load. I needed help to figure out how to start the machine.

The Benedictinas had blankets, beds, showers, and the above discussed things--but no internet. (Not that internet is necessary, it's more of a luxury. Come to think of it, having a bed instead of a bunk is a luxury, too!) There are a number of places in the area to eat and we enjoyed a hot meal for dinner.

We made sure to get back to our sleeping place before the doors were locked and the lights turned off at 10 PM. This had been standard when we were on the Camino Frances and the Camino Portugues, but it is less so on the Camino del Norte. Some of the pilgrims, especially the ones who were more hikers than pilgrims, felt like the rule of 10 PM should be relaxed so they could keep the lights on later. This didn't work, as the sisters had established that as a strict rule that probably has been in force as long as they've been sheltering pilgrims on the Way. We were too tired to want to party all night anyway.

Second day's walking, May 18

Hello, everyone.

May 18 was chilly just like May 17 had been. In fact, the weather during the entire time we walked along the coast can be summarized as cool, with intermittent rain, and not that much sunshine. Local people said it was abnormally cool this spring.

We left Getaria around 6:30 or 7 in the morning and were grateful to have done our "get out of town" climb the night before.

At breakfast time we arrived in Zumaia--well breakfast time if you like to eat around 9:30 that is--and had a bite with cafe con leche at a bar. Then we wandered around town finding the scenic route out of town.

This scenic route is a part of the GR9 hikers' route. It is closer to the water for much of its way and the hiker who takes it gets to see some scenery that isn't visible at all from the other route.  On the other hand, we discovered, it is more strenuous.  We took this part of the GR9 and when it split off again later in the day we stayed with the main Camino trail. Others, who had skipped this part, took the GR9 later and said it was quite demanding for them. As this part turned out to be for us!

 Looking back from the start of the GR9 segment, we saw some of the famous flysh rock layers. We also noticed that the church is on a cliff that is being undercut by the waves. Presumably it will be quite a while before the top falls down.

The trail here follows the cliff top on some goat trails. It was very up-and-down, but very pretty. By the time it connected back up to the main Camino trail, we were, as it used to be said, "tuckered out."

Farther along, we noticed that the local farmers have helpers to attend to a little bit of trail maintenance. Billy, here, appears to have been assigned to weed removal. We said soothing things and walked past him, and he was a very amiable old goat so our close up visit went smoothly.

We got to the outskirts of Deba and discovered that they have paved over some of the steep rocks approaching the town. They have added a red non-slip stripe on one side to help people negotiate the descent in wet weather. At the end of the red stripe, we saw a billboard celebrating their carefully conserved piece of Roman road and a steep asphalt road going into town a different way. We followed that way and found the famous elevator! Actually, there are two elevators, installed by the town for the people to get from their homes on a very steep slope down to the main part of the town. We enjoyed the elevator ride very much!