Day 50 – 15. Llanes – Piñeres de Pría. KM 310.

After yesterday, we decided to have breakfast in the dry and warm shelter of our albergue this morning before leaving. We ate our luxury food at 7 and left at 8. It rained just a little bit for about half an hour and then stopped and we had a pretty dry, cloudy walking day.

We walked the first kilometres with another German girl and carried on on our ones after our snack break, talking about religion, spirituality, education, our childhood and many other things (it is amazing how we still can talk for hours even though we have already spent 15 days together).

We met our Catalan friends, different other people and the English man, who had sat down on a bench with bread, cheese and wine, representing the Camino “savoir vivre” better than anyone.The way took us through extremely pretty Asturian villages, along the coast and several little beaches and through forests. Asturias has everything one could ask for. The coast is full of beautiful little wild beaches, the mountains lay majestuoso about 2 km from the coast on the inside and the villages and houses are very colorful and pretty and full of flowers. Although we had to pass through different passages of roads and asphalt, we didn’t mind so much because the path was extremely varied and nice most of the time and also we would only walk about 20 km today.By 12:30 we had almost reached our final destination and decided to just go on to the albergue in Piñeres de Pría. When it came in sight it immediately convinced us. We crossed a big grassy field full of cows and found the albergue on top of it. It was a big country house with a grass terrasse with chairs and tables and the hospitalero let us in although it was still closed. We were the first ones to arrive and chose two beds in the last one of the 10 or so dormitories with a view over the cow-field and mountains. Johanna was going through an energy low and we tried to find out how to get any food around here.The albergue was situated in the middle of nowhere, only a little church right next to it. The next supermarket at 1.5 km and closed (it’s Sunday again), the next restaurant at 2.5 km. However, they explained us that there was a restaurant in the next village which you could call and they would just bring the food up to the albergue. Johanna ordered two of the biggest dishes in the menu and we were told not to buy them because it would be just too much, even for two days, so she settled for an extra-large Cord en bleu with fries. I would be getting just the meat and the fries.While we were waiting, I took a shower and Johanna sat there, incapable of doing anything without any energy input. The shower’s temperature changed between cold-ish and lukewarm but when I finished the food arrived and we ate it all without finding it had been too much at all.

The hospitalero lit the fire in the old wooden stove in the kitchen and put on some tea made of fresh mountain mint, thyme, Rosemary and cinnamon and we just spent the rest of the afternoon in the warm kitchen and common room, drinking tea (I think I drank almost 1,5 l of it), playing games and enjoying our almost free day.

I also used a small gap in the clouds to stretch with a view and sit on the front terrasse for a while writing but it was soon too cold and I proceeded to having dinner inside. When I came back inside, Johanna was writing some emails and when I told her about outside she said – totally serious – “I haven’t been outside today at all…”… It’s funny what 20 km and only 6 hours of walking in fresh air mean to us by now.

Later, we formed a nice group of 5 Germans who would be sleeping here tonight; one fellow pilgrim, one volunteer and two other people who were checking out the albergue to do a coaching seminar here in September. One of them, I felt like I recognized her immediately when I saw her the first time. After some conversation, it turned out that she was an ex TV-star and had played a main role in a TV-Show I used to watch a lot in my teen years (I won’t tell you which, it’s too embarrassing). It flashed me to sit around and have dinner with her, to hear her very interesting life story and get to know her.

At some point, the other German pilgrim mentioned the sundown and we all stormed out to watch the red ball disappear behind the mountains and sea. The color spectrum and air perspective of different layers of forests, houses, trees and mountains was absolutely stunning and we sat resting our backs against the wall of the church which was full of beautiful violet daisies and waited until the sun disappeared behind the stripe of clouds sitting on the horizon.It was later than our usual bedtime already and we went upstairs tired to settle in our room which we don’t have to share with anybody tonight as the 5 guests have distributed over the (at least 7) rooms full of beds.