We left the albergue at the usual time, prepared for a rainy day and one of our hardest stages on the whole Camino. It was just lightly drizzeling and the clouds were still above us when we set off. The Camino took us on beautiful paths through forests along a small mountain river. It was not too steep at first and even descended a few times. Always following the course of the river, we almost didn’t notice how we gained hight. After about 3 km we reached the altitude of the clouds and continued in thick, wet fog, with sometimes more, sometimes less rain. The profile of the stage had…
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Day 57 – 22. Tineo – Pola de Allande. KM 453
We started 7 o’clock as always and got out into a cloudy and cool day. After leaving Tineo, a dirt road began to take us slightly further and further up through fields and forests, sometimes steep, sometimes softly. We had already been able to see the clouds hanging low between the mountains from downstairs and as we climbed our first 100m, we walked right into the clouds. We went further up, through fairy-tale foggy forests, my hands increasingly freezing to ice-blocks. We passed our first highest point and descended again until we left the fog and reached the first village. We found a picnic place and settled down for breakfast…
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Day 56 – 21. Salas – Tineo. KM 426
Sticking to the working system of the past days, Johanna and I set off around 7. Today we would have only 20 km to go, but all uphill. Good thing there were lots of fountains on the way – like for example the “fountain of pain”…We walked up on nice and non-alsphalty paths and dirt roads through mainly forests but with some nice views in between until we reached the first village.We had breakfast at the third village, as planned, around 9:30/8km, using the tables in the garden of an albergue there.When we were all finished and full, the guys showed up and we continued together. After a while of…
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Day 55 – 20. Salas. KM 406
Today was the opposite of any other day until now. We literally didn’t do anything. My cold is getting worse rather than better. We slept until 10:30, had breakfast for 3 hours, and played card games without really getting out of the albergue all day. That’s about it. At night, we did some grocery shopping together and Mitch cooked a nice dinner for us. We had some very good conversations and there even was some dancing, in which I couldn’t take part the way I would have liked to because I felt just too k.o. We were all on our own tonight. No one snoring, no one sleeping or annoyed,…
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Day 54 – 19. Grado – Salas. KM 406
We left as one of the earliest pilgrims this morning at 7:20, willing to leave the one steep mountain behind us before breakfast. My throat ache from yesterday had turned into a cold so it took a little more efford for me than normally but I did okay. After a short while, Richard from the Netherlands caught up with us and we walked together for a while, climbing the first 300 meters.Only a short while after reaching the top and starting to descend, the perfect breakfast place appeared in front of us in a small village. An Argentinian young family that had walked the Camino 5 years ago and decided…
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Day 53 – 18. Oviedo – Grado. KM 384
After a pretty good night in a pretty shitty albergue, we started the Camino Primitivo today. As I already mentioned, this Camino is commonly described as “Challenging but worth it” and has been highly recommended to us. It is supposed to have more mountains and less road wich is why we decided to switch from the Camino del Norte to the Primitivo. With its official starting point in front of the Cathedral of Oviedo, the path took us out of the city and through foggy villages that looked basically exactly like Ottweiler or Schiffweiler. We were supposed to see the famous Holy Mountain on the other side of the valley…
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Day 52 – 17. Caravio – Villaviciosa – Oviedo. KM 358.
Although I slept relatively well, I started the day with a worse throat than yesterday and decided to make a silence day and not talk until the evening to let my voice recover.We left the albergue around 7 and started walking out of Caravio. The paths were mainly very nice through villages, forests and fields with nice views and the weather was perfectly sunny and warm.After walking through perfect landscape in silence (Johanna sometimes talking and I responded her in sign language), we decided we should have breakfast exactly where our path turned into a street that crossed the motorway. We tried to find a nice spot or a bench…
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Day 51 – 16. Piñares de Pría. KM 335
We “woke up” after a pretty sleepless night completely frozen this morning at 6 and started to get ready. The sun rose and painted the mountains in red, the cows’ bells ringing peacefully when we started walking at 7. The path took us through some villages, through some forests, fields, along the coast, through the countryside, along some highways, uphill, downhill… We hadn’t had anywhere to buy food yesterday, so we walked the first three hours without breakfast and stopped at a bigger village where we got some food in the supermarket (the second market I tried had some gluten free muffins…). To be more correct, we got like 4…
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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…
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Day 49 – 14. El Peral – Llanes. KM 290
There are the good days, the normal days and then there are strange days like today. We left at 8, without breakfast, thinking we had a super short day of “only” 21 km and had lots of time. We had also reserved beds at our destination and felt very relaxed. Minutes after getting out, it started raining and basically didn’t stop until the evening. With rain, wind and freezing cold temperature, we had our difficulties to stay strong and happy today. The path, however, was really beautiful today. It took us along the coast on small hiking paths through rocks and mud, the sea to our right, the high mountains…
