October 2, 2022
- Route: Villaviciosa to Gijón
- Distance: 29.1 kilometers (18 miles)
- Cumulative Distance: 496 kilometers
I didn’t fall asleep as early as I’d wanted last night thanks to the late night revelers outside my window. My room was on the second floor, but it faced into a small plaza filled with small restaurants and bars.
In true Spanish fashion, the outdoor seats were filling up around 7 p.m., but those patrons were just there for drinks and early socialization. The real diners wouldn’t show up in to eat dinner until closer to 9 p.m., and the cacophony of their loud conversations continued late into the night and past my early bed time.
Despite my tiredness, I was still up before the sun, but I held off departing Villaviciosa until 8 a.m. in hopes that I might find a cafe serving coffee and a pastry before I headed into the countryside.
As I wove through the town’s dark streets looking for any signs of an open bar or cafe, I was disappointed to find none. Though in retrospect, I’m not quite sure what I was thinking. Today was Sunday. If the cafes opened at all today, it will be much, much later than 8 a.m.
And so I left Villaviciosa feeling a little deprived and knowing I probably wouldn’t have a lot of options for food or coffee on my route today. It’s a good thing I picked up a loaf of bread and some fruit at the supermarket yesterday, otherwise I might have nothing to eat at all.
HIKING WITH A DOG
The sun was just beginning to come up as I walked out of town, turning the sky a shade of orange reminiscent of a creamsicle. Just off the main Camino route, I could see a lovely old church with a double bell tower sihouetted against the sky.
I detoured up a short hill to take a few close up photos of a church and that’s when I ran into Matthieu again — the French pilgrim hiking with his dog
We stopped to talk for a bit, and I learned that he never did find his friend who was hiking in sandals yesterday. Perhaps the guy took an extended break. Or maybe he got lost, though that would be hard to do. There weren’t any albergues to stop at in that five kilometers between the pilgrim oasis and Villaviciosa.
As we walked and talked, I asked Matthieu about hiking with his dog Astro. He shared that they’d started the Camino two months ago from his hometown of Brittany, France. From there, they walked southwest for 600 kilometers through France along the Bay of Biscay just to get to Spanish border. And now they were nearly 500 kilometers into the Spanish leg of their journey.
Matthieu said he and Astro mostly camped along the route, with him setting up their shared tent behind churches or in open fields just as the sun started to go down. He’d pitched his tent last night right behind the church I was photographing when I met up with him this morning.
I guess stealth camping on the Camino made sense for him. Albergues weren’t exactly dog-friendly places. And I also suspect his journey was much rougher than my own Camino, especially during our last full week of rain!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TRUST
Not long after I parted ways with Mattieu and Astro, I walked up a narrow alley between some private homes. A water fountain was cut into a wall outside one of the houses, and tiles with yellow scallops (the sign of the Camino) were placed on either side of it.
Based on this adornment, the fountain seemed to have been constructed for pilgrims to use, so I went over to top off my water bottles, which were still nearly 90% full. Yesterday afternoon’s intense thirst left a major impact on me, and my new policy was to deliberately drink some water and refill my water anytime I saw a water fountain so I didn’t get dehydrated again.
As the water trickled into my main bottle, I looked up to read the sign mounted over the fountain, and it immediately gave me pause. The message was written in Spanish, French and English and read:
Welcome to Villaviciosa, city of apples. Here you will find drinking water which comes from the mountain. This water is very good and free. Thank you very much for your trust.
Thank you for your trust? What the heck did that mean? I’d already trusted that it was potable water because it was coming out of a drinking fountain. Why wouldn’t I trust a public water fountain?
Now I was suddenly second guessing myself and wondering what the heck this particular sentence meant. It reminded me of one of those times when my teenaged sister would offer me a piece of food and tell me to “enjoy it” while closely waiting see my reaction at the first bite. Inevitably she’d tainted with the item with hot sauce, or excess salt, or she had the dog lick it first – just to get back at me for some past grievance.
But perhaps my paranoia I was just getting the better of me here. They sign’s author meant nothing bad. It was a fine water source, I assured myself. Or I was at least mostly sure…
CAMINO PRIMATIVO
A half an hour later, I walked into the village of Casequeta where it was time to make a critical decision. The road spit here with yellow arrows pointing in two different directions.
If I turned left and headed south, I’d go inland toward Oveido, where the 350-kilometer Camino Primativo began. Or I could continue straight ahead, continuing west along the coast toward Gijón and remain on the Camino del Norte.
The Camino Primativo (or Original Way) is the oldest of the all Camino routes. Upon hearing that the remains of St. James the Apostle were in Santiago de Compestela, King Alphonso II of Asturias set out on a pilgrimage walking from his kingdom’s capital (Oviedo) to Santiago in 814 A.D..
Other pilgrims continued to predominately follow this route until León became the Spanish kingdom’s capital and pilgrims switched to walking what is now the Camino Frances route instead.
Today, the Camino Primativo is far less popular than the Camino Frances, Camino del Norte, and Camino Portuguese – with only 5% of modern pilgrims walking that route each year.
When I reached the junction, I briefly debated whether to turn left toward the Camino Primativo. It might be less busy than my existing route, I reasoned. Yet I knew that hope was unlikely to be true. The Camino was an insanely popular venture in 2022, and there were even fewer pilgrim-oriented services available on the Camino Primativo.
I was probably better off staying with the more popular Camino del Norte, I reasoned. Besides, I traveled to Spain to walk this particular Camino. Switching routes now would leave me with more than 360 kilometers of unfinished trail.
So I chose the path straight ahead. I’d continue walking toward Gijón and points west.
NO VIEWS
The route eased into a series of rolling hills over the next hour before ascending a massive climb up to Alto La Cruz. This was the tallest peak I’d gone up since I’d left Basque Country, and my calves burned with the effort.
I wasn’t moving particularly fast up the long climb, but I passed about a dozen other pilgrims struggling with the difficulty of the steep incline. Each time I passed another one, it secretly made me feel better about myself. Perhaps I wasn’t as old or slow as I’d thought.
As I trod uphill, the sunshine I’d reveled in during the first few hours of the morning seemed to disappear entirely, and misty clouds rolled in.
The temperature seemed to drop a little, but it was so insanely humid that sweat dripped down the length of my body and saturated my shirt and shorts. Even my sunglasses fogged up from my steamy efforts so much that I had to remove them when I could no longer see out the lenses.
A quarter mile before the summit, the mountain trail transitioned from dirt to a paved road. And although I was still climbing, the asphalt made the journey seem physically easier. Every time I looked up though, all I could see was more inclined road. I still couldn’t see the top.
Then a Spaniard came walking downhill toward me encouraging me and telling me that I was nearly to the summit. “Dos o tres minutos mas,” he said. That was just the news I needed to make the final push.
When I created the top of Alto La Cruz, I was sorely disappointed. It was completely unremarkable. There were zero views. It was just a flat space with a pile of harvested trees, and a thick forest around me blocking all the sights.
What a bummer! Anytime you hike up that big of a climb, I feel there should at least be a pay off in terms of a views. This was reminding me of the Appalachian Trail, where so many of the peaks were so densely forested that I couldn’t see a damn thing.
On the positive side, at least the descent on the backside of Alto La Cruz was paved. This would save my knees from considerable pain. And about kilometer later, I finally got my views of the valley below right as the Camino switched back to a dirt path and I needed to focus on my footwork again.
VENDING MACHINES
On the way down into the valley, the Camino wound through apple orchards filled with fruit. This was what Asturias was so famous for, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Apple, apples, and more apples.
I checked my guide and saw that I would be a small little village called Peón down at the base of the valley. And there was supposed to be a great little restaurant there called Casa Pepito. Thank goodness, I thought. I was desperately looking forward to my first café con leche of the day.
It was a quarter past 11 a.m. when I arrived, and a cluster of pilgrims were seated outside Casa Pepito‘on picnic tables. Unfortunately, the weren’t eating any food from the restaurant though… because it was closed!
A sign on the door announced the restaurant was closed ‘for vacation from 19 September to 7 October 2022.’ And today was only October 2nd. The proprietors wouldn’t return to re-open the place for several more days yet!
I was feeling a bit dejected about my streak of bad luck until I noticed one of the pilgrims coming out to a covered patio with two tiny plastic cups filled of coffee! What the heck?!?! Where did he get those? I wondered.
I ventured into the patio he’d just exited from and discovered two vending machines immediately inside the door. One machine held sodas and candy, while the other one dispensed coffee drinks.
I hadn’t seen a coffee vending machine since the mid-1980s! But beggars can’t be choosers. So I dug a €1 coin out of my wallet and pressed the buttons that would dispense a mediocre, but hot, cup coffee to drink.
If I learned nothing nothing else these past few days, it’s that you should always carry plenty of coins on the Camino just in case you roll up on a Coke machine on a blazing hot afternoon (like yesterday) or a coffee machine on a quiet Sunday morning!
APPLES & Grapes
As I departed Peón, I immediately found myself heading uphill once again out of the valley. But this ascent felt considerably easier as I walked between beautiful apple orchards. I even passed a large chestnut cask where the local sidra (hard cider) was fermented.
About halfway up the climb, I passed through a cluster of stucco-covered homes, when a constant whirring noise caught my attention. It sounded like a wood chipper, and it was grinding something over and over.
As got closer to the where the machine was being operated, I spotted two men working together to lift a large blue bag and dump its contents into the top of the noisy metal beast. I stood and watched as they dumped a second bag too, but I still couldn’t see what exactly they were grinding up.
As the men lifted a third bag, I took a tentative step onto the property and waved to get their attention before asking if I could see what they were feeding into the machine. The older of the two men nonchalantly shrugged and then gestured me over and take look.
At first, I assumed that maybe the blue bags held apples and they were grinding them down to make cider. But as I neared the machine, I could see they were actually macerating dark purple grapes.
One of the men spread the clusters of grapes around, careful not to catch his hands on the spinning auger that was tilling and crushing grapes downward into the machine. Then he pointed to the tubing connected to the bottom of the machine and told me to follow it to see what they were making.
The tube went into a building, and stairs led down to a basement level where two more men were working. They were standing in front of a the tubing where purple liquid was quickly pouring into two plastic buckets inside a metal barrel at their knees.
When one of the buckets became half full, the younger of the two gentlemen hoisted it up and carried it off to an adjacent room where he poured it one of the wooden casks perched on a table. Then he quickly scooted back to the tap room and placed the bucket back down inside the metal barrel where it could catch more grape juice as it was expelled from the tubing.
The older gentleman manning the system said something in rapid Spanish to the younger one, but I didn’t catch his words. Nonetheless, he gestured for me to wait and was smiling, so I assumed he had something more to show me.
The young guy turned to a sink, washed the sticky juice off his hands and grabbed a glass, which he dipped under one of the spouts. In a matter of seconds, the glass was filled to the brim with liquid. Then he turned back toward me, offering me nearly half a pint of freshly squeezed and filtered grape juice.
I smiled and thanked him before raising the sugary liquid to my lips to taste it. Wow! Was it sweet! But also refreshing and delicious. I gulped down the rest of the glass, not quite sure the last time I drank grape juice. But I do know it never tasted this darn good.
The man smiled back at me, pleased that I was enjoying the juice, and told me in Spanish that they were using the juice to make their own wine. I took a few more photos of their set up and thanked them once again for sharing this experience inside their home with me.
The men both nodded in assent and then wished me a “Buen Camino.” Wow! It’s moments like this one that made my entire Camino experience worth the physical effort! I was smiling from ear to ear for the rest of my climb afterward as the sound of the grape crushing machine faded in the distance.
Gijón
When I crested the top of the second big peak of my day, I caught my first glimpses of the port of Gijón in the far distance. And then I descended down toward Deva, where a large campground sat waiting for me to patronize its restaurant. Finally, a something more substantial than bread and vending machine coffee!
The restaurant looked as if it was getting ready for a big party with wait staff rushing around to put table cloths on tables and getting things ready for a large group. Nevertheless, I was able to sit inside their bar area, which was empty of diners other than duo of ladies drinking coffee. I ordered myself a glass of beer and lunch and I devoured it greedily as soon as it arrived.
I still haven’t gotten used this whole Sunday thing, where so many of the country’s restaurants, bars, and stores are closed for the day. I know it’s a typical practice for Europeans, but I’ve lost track of what day it is so many times out here on the Camino that each Sunday just seems to creep up and surprise me. I’ll have to be much more diligent about remembering to pack food out next weekend so I’m not starving like this yet again!
After my meal in Deva, the Camino split once again, with the main route taking pilgrims through the industrial outskirts of Gijón on paved roads. I opted for the more pleasant (though slightly longer) alternate known as the Senda del Peña Francis, which followed several creeks and wound its way around the municipal golf course before heading to Gijon’s downtown area.
Gijón is a large coastal city, and it was the last major town I would walk through on this adventure. In terms of population, Gijón-Oviedo-Aviles is the 7th largest metro area in Spain with more than 844,000 people.
This statistic is all the more amazing because Gijón was essentially destroyed during the 14th century in a war between rival Spanish leaders. But then the city reemerged and began developing rapidly as a commercial port between Spain and the American colonies in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Today Gijón was major modern town with museums, art galleries, an aquarium and botanical garden, a major university, and a professional futból team with a stadium that seated 30,000 fans (of course).
As I walked through the outskirts of the town, my suburban route took me past the sprawling campus of the Gijón Science and Technology Park, which I mistakenly assumed was the major university based on its ornate architecture and impressive size.
The afternoon continued to warm up as the sun re-emerged overhead the blue sky. And I was immensely grateful I’d chosen the alternate route. This serene multi-use path ran under a canopy of trees that blocked the intense sunshine and kept my ears from getting more sunburned than they’d already were.
Eventually I ran out of luck though, and the shaded path gave way to a concrete bike and walking path in the middle of the city. The sun beat down on top of me, reminding me of yesterday afternoon’s sizzling temperatures. I swear the warm rays seemed to bounce off the ground and reflect back up even warmer, if that’s possible.
When I finally reached the promenade the ran adjacent to Gijon’s Playa San Lorenzo, I knew needed to find my hostel for the night. The dried salt from this morning’s sweaty climb was still caked to my face and forearms and I was ready to shower it all off. I’d wait to explore the city until I was cleaned up and presentable once again.
I’m so glad I’d marked where the hostel was located on my map because its entrance wasn’t obvious. I completely walked past it and was all the way down the block before having to double back again in search of the address.
This oversight was probably due to the fact that the hostel wasn’t conspicuous at all. It was located on the third floor of an 15-story building with just a tiny, discreet sign mounted to the building’s outside wall to let guests know it was there.
I stood outside the building’s locked front door trying to figure out how best to call up to the hostel to get them to buzz me in. This seemed more like an apartment building than a business, and they certainly weren’t making it easy for guests to check in.
As I pondered my options in front of the locked glass door, another pilgrim was returning from the grocery story and swiped herself in with the electronic keycard. Oh thank goodness. My backpack must have signaled I belonged there too, and I followed her inside and up the elevator to the third floor to check in.
As I settled in for the evening, a realization washed over me. I’d made it to Gijón, completing nearly 500 kilometers of my Camino adventure!!
In just another 150 kilometers west of here, the Camino del Norte would reach Ribadeo, where the route turned inland and left the coast behind for good. I only have another five days or so left of ocean views.
