October 5, 2022
- Route: Soto de Luiña to Canelo
- Distance: 27.7 kilometers (17.2 miles)
- Cumulative Distance: 588.4 kilometers
I woke this morning feeling energized once again. It’s amazing how a room all to myself at a casa rural in town could do that. No snoring pilgrims from Austria to deprive me of another night’s sleep.
I was awake early, too, which meant the sky was still dark when I departed around 7:30 am. The town’s sole bar/cafe wasn’t even open yet. However, there was a small hotel on the far end of town just past the public albergue that had its lights on. It was serving a pilgrim’s breakfast, consisting of brioche toast, coffee, and orange juice.
I’m not much of a juice drinker, but I’ll take coffee and a few thick slices of brioche any day of the week. My mom makes this thick braided loaf of brioche bread during the holidays. It holds so many pleasant family memories for me. Thus, breakfast felt like a nostalgic taste of home!
ANOTHER CHOICE
After finishing my early breakfast, I had to make a choice. The Camino split once again at the outskirts of Soto de Luiña. I could either take the Ballota path or the mountain path on my way to Cadavedo.
The locals in town usually recommend the lower route (the Ballota Path) because it’s far better maintained, physically easier, and it heads through several towns where pilgrims have access to food and lodging. It also passes by several pristine, secluded beaches on the coastline, but it involves a bit of road walking.
Meanwhile, the mountain route takes pilgrims up to an elevation of 635 meters (or 2,200 feet), revealing sweeping ocean views reminiscent of the Camino’s first day of hiking between Irun and San Sebastián. However, this route can be dangerous in bad weather and is fairly unmaintained. It also has absolutely no services for 20 kilometers.
I wasn’t sure if my body, namely my calves and achilles, was on board with the challenge of the mountain route, but I rarely shy away from difficult things. When the time came to choose, I was bold. I selected the mountain route.
THE CARWASH
As I turned left onto the dirt trail leading uphill, the mountains and trees seemed to obscure the ambient light of the town below. The morning was completely overcast, and fog shrouded the countryside, obscuring any sweeping vista of the sea that I might have had on a sunnier day.
The trail was seriously overgrown in places, too. Not to the extent that I completely lost the well-worn dirt footpath, but thick foliage crisscrossed the narrow dirt trail in front of me up to four feet high in places. It was soaking wet from morning condensation. And soon so was I.
As I beat my way through the morass, my shoes, socks, shorts, and bare legs were completely saturated with moisture and small dark seeds. I felt like I was going through an automatic carwash with wet ferns and tall grasses brushing up against me as I tried to make my way through this gauntlet.
Despite these uncomfortable conditions, the climb itself wasn’t nearly as physically difficult as I expected from all the hype. In fact, much of the morning was on a gentle grade with a few steep sections, and it just more like traditional hiking in the backcountry.
For the next few hours, dense cloud cover continued to obscure the views. Each time I turned to look behind me, I could see the sun radiating and trying its best to break through, but with little success.
I continued working my way through the wet foliage before eventually turning onto an old, abandoned road that was far easier to walk on. Tunnel vision took over my mind at some point here, because I realized (a bit late) that the easy road didn’t climb over the next few hilltops to the west. Instead, it went around the hills and then started to run downhill in the wrong direction.
In my desire for comfortable walking, I must have completely missed my turn. I now found myself walking downhill toward a cluster of homes when I should have continued following the ridgeline uphill.
After confirming on my GPS that I was indeed off my intended route, I did a combination of backtracking and cross-country navigation to rejoin the Camino as it continued to climb upward.
Around 10 a.m., the sun finally began to emerge, burning off some of the cloud cover and altering the dynamics of my surroundings entirely. Off to my right, I caught the occasional glimpse of the ocean and the Ballota Path down in the low foothills that ran parallel to the coastline.
And now I could also see the mountains off to my left poking upward from the clouds, too. Atop these adjacent peaks, a series of wind turbines slowly turned, while the valley below was still blanketed in clouds. Up until now, the morning fog had been so thick I’d had no idea what fantastic views I was missing.
A FAMILIAR FACE
The Camino merged onto a quiet paved road for about a kilometer before returning to the trail to make the final push to the highest point on the mountain route. I was back on the overgrown trail cut into the southern side of the ridge I was ascending. But at least now the ‘car wash’ was dry and just tickled against my legs.
I spotted a dirt utility road that seemed to straddle the center of the ridgeline above me, heading up and over a roller coaster of hills toward the highest summit.
I probably could have avoided all the last kilometer and a half of tall grass and unmaintained trail if I’d chosen to bushwhack up to the utility road. But hiking up and down each of those hills seemed more arduous than the moderately graded (but overgrown) Camino route I was taking. I’d trade a bit of extra foliage for a mellower grade, for sure.
My eyes landed on the white building and a red and white radio tower sitting atop the climb’s highest peak up ahead. The Camino didn’t head up to that final summit, though. Instead, it crossed over the utility road on the spine of the ridge and then detoured through a fence toward a trail on the opposite slope.
I was as finally as high as I needed to climb for the day. I could head downhill toward Cadavedo now.
I passed through the rustic wire gate, where the Camino treated me to clear views of the green hills and blue ocean below me. Small groups of cows grazed on the mountains, and I spotted two hikers sitting in the grass and taking a break just ahead of me.
As I closed in on their position, I realized I knew one of them! It was Joe – the pilgrim I walked with for most of yesterday. The guy beside him was wearing an olive green bucket hat. Joe introduced the new pilgrim as Sebastian, a Canadian who also stayed in the municipal albergue in town. So, without an ounce of hesitation, I stopped and joined them both on the hillside, eager to take my first real rest break of the day.
A TRIO OF PILGRIMS
As we sat around chatting, I broke out some food for my midmorning snack break and soaked in the views from the mountain route.
From this vantage point, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose the lower route and miss out on these epic views. Yet the three of us were all alone up here. It seems that all the other pilgrims chose the Ballota Path at the trail junction this morning. Their loss!
I looked down and noticed that Joe swapped his hiking sandals out for boots today, which was probably a wise choice for this mountain terrain. I’m not sure if the boots kept his feet any drier than mine on the way up here (my socks were soaking wet inside my trail runners), but they had to be better than his open-toed sandals, for sure.
A chill started to set in after 15 minutes of sitting still. The sun was out, but the light wind on my sweaty shirt was making it feel cold up there on the exposed hill. So the three of us decided it was time to get going again and begin the gradual descent.
The route down to Cadavedo seemed to sidewind the mountains, and was equal parts uneven ground and mud, which slowed our progress. And then, for a bit of time, the narrow dirt trench we were walking in paralleled a tall stone wall before eventually giving way to an old, poorly maintained forest road.
As the terrain leveled out, the Camino tossed us back onto paved road again. Sebastian stopped to remove his wet shoes and socks and exchanged them for his hiking sandals.
In hindsight, his gear change was probably premature. Even though we continued to follow the Camino markers, we somehow missed the new re-route into Cadavedo, and we ended up on the original path instead.
This older route was on a poorly maintained dirt trail in a forest that required us to navigate over numerous downed trees and then around large flooded sections that resembled small wading pools. It honestly didn’t matter to the three of us that we were on an alternate route, though. We were having a good time in each other’s company. Besides, all roads lead to Santiago. No single way is right or wrong on this adventure.
Nonetheless, we were really looking forward to finally reaching Cadavedo. All of us were thirsty from the lack of water for the past 20 kilometers, and Joe was even more obsessed than I was about getting another cup of coffee.
DO WE BACKTRACK?
We forged ahead on the old Camino path, but when we finally rejoined the main route 45 minutes later, we discovered our little detour had completely overshot the town of Cadavedo. We’d missed it! All the restaurants and water fountains were now behind us.
So we had to make a choice. We could backtrack on the actual/new Camino about a kilometer or more to Cadavedo. Or we could follow it forward for another three or four kilometers to the next town of Querúas, which was also supposed to have a bar.
Given that the Querúas was where Joe and Sebastian had their albergue reservations for the night, it didn’t take much convincing to get us all to push on.
This was probably a foolish choice, though. We were all so parched. And it was so much hotter down here at the lower elevation with no shade to shield us from the midday sun.
By the time we arrived in Querúas, Joe was so elated to be there that he announced our first round of Coca-Cola was on him. And for the next 45 minutes, the three of us soaked up the cool, protective shade on the restaurant’s patio, while gulping down our cold drinks and enjoying each other’s company.
Eventually, we had to part ways, though. I had my own reservation in a town another 3.4 kilometers up the Camino, and they were staying here in Querúas for the night. It was bittersweet, but I shared which town I was planning to stop in tomorrow in hopes I might see them again.
And then it was time to bid them Buen Camino, as I set off toward Canelo, where I would stay the night without them.
As I walked back into the hot sunshine, I once again I found myself lamenting the logistics of this Camino. If left to my own devices, I would 100% have enjoyed hanging out with Joe and Sebastian in Querúas tonight. But there was little flexibility to do so when I had my own reservation (which I made two days ago) for a town nearly an hour’s walk away.
Oh well. If we were meant to walk together, our paths would cross again. After all, look at how many times I unexpectedly ran into Renato during my first two weeks on the Camino! If the three of us don’t see each other again, I’m sure the Camino will provide me with something else I need instead.
