May 6, 2017 – There's more in you!

Best bits and blessings:

As you can see, I made it to the Picos de Europa! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves as to why I wanted to get up into these spectacular mountains! Although I don’t think they fully capture the scale.

At the bottom.

Zig zags and more zig zags.

In God’s rock garden.

And more zig zags, up and up.

You might be able to see a large bird of prey up high on the thermals.

Then finally, a view of the wee village of Tresviso.
I first read of some other pilgrims making this walk up to Tresviso because they heard that Fr Ernesto (of Guemes albergue) used to work here. The story goes that when the time came for him to go to his first church after training he chose to go to Tresviso because no one else would. Too isolated, long winters cut off from the world. It caught my interest too, so here I am.

I have the whole hostel to myself. And then off to the local bar for some of the local speciality, blue cheese! I’m not a huge fan of blue cheese, but it was pretty good.

But wait, there’s another way to get up here?

Challenges:

There‘s the obvious physical challenge of taking that walk, but we’re not talking the Himalayas here. It was very steep and demanding, yes, but it was only 2 1/2 hours, compared to the approx 8 hours I walked yesterday.

The real challenge for me was getting myself here, especially after my carefully arranged original plans fell through. It’s all very well to sit at home and look at ideas on trip advisor. The reality of making it work on the other side of the world with limited language skills and lots of other unknowns, is very different. The people at the tourist info centres were mostly very helpful, but even they were not exactly sure that everything would go to plan. Asking lots of people for help and stepping out without knowing exactly how it’s going to go really stretches me. But that’s what this is all about. I think there may just be more in me than I thought.

I spent a nervous couple of hours waiting for the bus this morning, watching other pilgrims coming and going, practising a few phrases from Google translate, and wondering if it was all going to work.

The view as I left the albergue this morning. Pilgrims usually have to leave by 8 am to allow the clean up before the next lot arrive.

The bus was about 15 minutes late, and believe me, I was hours early! I do still have to get myself back to San Vicente de la Barquera tomorrow so that will give me a new range of challenges. Also, I’m now a day behind schedule so will need to do some bigger stages to catch that up. I’m not going to catch the bus unless I absolutely have to!

Another delay in posting because of WiFi issues, and I really wanted to share these photos!

Best bits and blessings:

I was in my happy place walking this morning!Edit I have been enjoying the walking in general, not all of it, of course, but this morning was particularly good! There was a warm breeze, the countryside was gently rolling, the wild flowers lovely, and I was in a good rhythm. I sing and whistle when I’m walking in my happy place!It didn’t stay that way for the whole day but there were at least a couple of hours of happy place!
I took time to have a good meal and break at lunch time. Opportunities for breaks had been few and far between all morning so about 1 pm I had a menu del dia, 3 courses and wine! The way the day progressed, that was just as well!Local speciality with beans and sausage for first course.

Challenges:

The body isn’t too bad, the blisters a little better but I quickly stiffen up when I stop moving and have the Camino hobble when I get going again! My heels are still sore at times from the impact of the hard surfaces.
A long day: I arrived at the albergue tonight at 5.30, having started about 8am. I didn’t intend to go quite that far but missed the albergue I planned to stop at and before you know it, had to walk on to the next town. The signage was not straight forward to this albergue, either, so I had to ask a couple of people for directions.
There were only about 2 beds left by that stage, and a grumpy hospitalerio! The plan for tomorrow includes a slow start, followed by a bus trip to the mountains and a steep walk up for a couple of hours. All going to plan this time, of course! Stay tuned!

Standout moments:

The absolute best part of the day was another wee side trip made to see the Capricho de Gaudi. Happily this diversion didn’t take me far off the way. If you have not heard of Antoni Gaudi, he is considered one of the best architects ever! This was one of his first buildings (1883-1885) and is described as a jewel of European Modernism. I took a little visit around it while my large lunch settled and it was delightful! Full of drama and humour. Undoubtedly of huge expense to create in it’s day but maintained in great condition and wonderful to view. Covered in ceramic sunflowers. These window seats don’t face outward to look at the view, but inward to admire the architecture!