We woke up in the mountain with a beautiful sunrise over the villages and grassy fields laying under a cover of morning fog beneath us.
Breakfast was given in the big common room for everyone at 7 and we set off at 8, still continuing our way together with Mitch and Ben after we had said goodbye to grandpa Ernesto.
We walked on country roads for a while and crossed different fields until getting to the coastline again.
Right before seeing the sea, we saw a different curious scene: a little village was preparting for the cow beauty contest. very handsome back-and-white cows in different sized were washed, styled, hairsprayed and combed, microphones were tested and everyone was in a good mood.
While the sun was getting stronger and stronger, we stopped on a field to organize another dentist appointment for Mitch in Santander which took a while.
We walked along the cliffs and beaches for a while and descended to the last one and walked along on the sand.
To make the walk more fun we made some mental riddles which was very entertaining and made time and kilometers fly. Our stage was very short today; even taking the long way along the coast, we arrived at Somo after 15 km. From there, we had to take a little boat to Santander across the bay. We missed the first boat and sat down in a bar waiting for the next one. Although we hurried when the next boat arrived, all of us but Ben missed that one too and we waited another 20 minutes.
A little overwhelmed by the big city, we walked randomly around for a while, finding the dentist and the bus station and stopping by a children’s playground. Then we had to say goodbye to the guys and carried on walking even more randomly on our own. I was a little sun-damaged and food-deprived which pretty much killed my mood for the next hours. Santander with it’s half-dead and strangely mixed style with no real city center wasn’t able to lift it either. Nor was the eternal search for food all over the “center” and in different supermarkets. Maybe we just didn’t find the nice part of the city…
At 5:15 we got on the bus to Santillana del Mar. We had decided to skip the next stage because it is supposed to be extremely ugly and 38 km long and we had to gain some time anyway.We got to the very pretty small village of Santillana at 6 and checked into the albergue, showered, washed, found a restaurant and fell into bed tired at 10. This is the last place I have been to before. From here on all the stops will be free of memories and completely new.
P.S. general update: sometimes it is hard to keep walking. Almost always it’s hard to write this blog in the evening when I really just want to sleep. Everything hurts. It’s fun anyway.
