Santander

 Santander 

Another old bridge, and this time my camera wanted to take a picture of it unlike yesterdays 'Roman' Bridge outside Noja when it refused to take the shot.

The scenery was hilly, covered with trees and looking a lot greener than much of southern Spain that had suffered a summer of heatwaves, vegetation turned brown by lack of water and a serious of wildfires. 

The uninspiring road approach to Santander, which is just to the right of the mountain on the left of the photo.

I got to Somo just as teh ferry to cross the estuary to Santander was arriving. It was a lot bigger than yesterdays ferry and there were a lot less pilgrims and other passengers queueing u to get aboard. 

The castle protecting the mouth of teh esturey. 

A view of  Santander's river frontage.

An iconic or ugly building near the passenger terminal of teh ferry. 

The steps that the ferry would be dropping us off at. And then it was just a short walk to the hotel. 

I had taken my card out of the camera to download teh photos of the walk to load up tp the blog and than had set outon a tour of the city but had forgot to put the card back into the camera...so I was a tourist in Santander without a functioning camera.

Noja, Cantabria

 Noja, Cantabria 

Breakfast at the Cosmopol Hotel just a little way along the seafront in Laredo is publicised to start at 8.30. When the hotel is hosting pilgrims, especially when they are using the Correos luggage delivery service which will move their bags on from one town to the next town, so pilgrims only need to carry a day pack, but the downside to this service is no lie-ins as the bags need to be in reception before 8am. On some days the bags had been whisked away by Correos before we had left the hotel. It all depended on whether the hotel as at the start of the pick up route or towards the end.

Either way, the Cosmopol Hotel offered breakfast for pilgrims at 8.00am, so that they could drop their bags off, have breakfast and set off on the next leg of their Camino. There was also no point in offering breakfast even earlier, which some early rising pilgrims prefer, and complained about as they had paid for breakfast but it was always late.

There is a tip to be shared here. If you are an early riser, if the hotel offers a discount not to have breakfast, then it may be to your advantage to not have a hotel breakfast so that you can get up and start walking as soon as you like. Cafes open early and their are plenty along the route and mentioned in guidebooks so planning ahead is easy. You can walk several kilometres of your planned day's walk and incorporate a breakfast stop along the way. 

As for breakfast time in the Cosmopol Hotel in Laredo, the summer ferry only starts at 9am in the morning. It is a half an hour walk along the seafront from the hotel to the ferry, so there is no point in offering an even earlier breakfast. 

The ferry closes in winter and pilgrims following this route in winter have to make a long detour following busy roads to cross the river estuary and its tributaries.

The route is obvious, having researched it on Google maps and using satellite imagery, but it is poorly marked on the ground. Sometimes there is only a single arrow and no reassuring secondary arrow just a little further along to confirm that you are going the right way. I didn't see a yellow arrow but there was a sign in Spanish for the ferry. 

There is a lot of signage and distractions seeking your attention. There is a surf school, an indoor tennis academy, a sailing club, a pier, a beach, a camping ground and a large car park with signs saying no over night camping but with several camper vans that looked like they had been here all night. 

The was just a small wooden finger pointing board positioned between a dune covered with pampas grass and a cafe to a boardwalk across the sand to the ferry.

The ferry didn't call at the nearby pier, it just nudged against the sand of the beach. There was an orderly queue of pilgrims waiting to cross on the first ferry of the day. It reminded me of wartime films of the evacuation of soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. 

The ferry was tiny and I feared that I would not make it aboard and would have to wait for the next ferry. It runs every 20 minutues until dusk so it wouldn't take a whole chunk of time out of my planned day. I also half hoped that Leslie, Kim and Gail might catch me up here but they were nowhere to be seen. 

The skipper was counting us aboard and I was the second to last to aboard. There were only a handful of seats left empty but being nearly last on meant that I would I would be off first. It wasn't a long stretch of water but there were a lot of passengers.

The skipper revved the egines  to get us off the beach. The shore shelved deeply and using the current of the estuary, we pulled away from the beach and moved into open water. Then the captain throttled back and we drifted for a while as fares were collected.

Once everyone had paid, the skipper opened the throttle and we steered towards the concrete wharf  in the centre of Santoña. Santoña is the place where Christopher Columbus' ship, the Santa Maria used on first first trip to South America was built. It is also the home to Juan de la Cosa, who was the cartographer on Columbus' second voyage.

There are two routes from the landing stage in Santoña. The shorter route goes due north through the town to the beach at Berria. The alternative, and onger rute goes around the peninsula. The advantage of tis route is that it takes visitors past the Fuerte San Martin and the Fuerte San Carlos, two forts that protect the entrance to the estuary that date from the Peninsula Wars.

The pilgrims that left the boat roughly split into two two equal groups, half walking around the peninsula and the other half going through the town centre. Both route met up again at Playa de Berria, where there is another split in the route. There is one along the beach and another along the road that runs parallel to the beach. Walking on sand can be tiring, and there was another long stretch later that day, so I opted for the road.

At the end of the beach the two paths join and there is a steep climb over rocks up and around a headland. The guide warns that this stretch can be slippery after rain. Whilst the rocks give a good surface, there are also stretches with clay which is often at an angle. I could places where pilgrims ahead of me had slipped on the wet clay. I took my time but slipped and received a gash to my arm as long as a hand from the elbow. I didn't notice it at first until blood was running down my arm and dripping off my hand.

I washed the wound with water. Four Irish pilgrims caught me up. Being on the outside of the arm, I couldn't get a good look at the wound but one of them said he'd seen worse and once the blood had dried it would be alright. He offered a plaster but I said that it would dry shortly and be alright. They walked on and I went even more slowly over the slippery patches, sometimes going backwards and using my hands.

 

The next beach was a long and wide expanse of sand...

B

...until it reaches a river where the trail turns inland to cross a small stone bridge, just wide enough for two people or one horse. It is called the Roman Bridge but was only built in the 17th century.

As the trail approaches the next town of Noja. there was a new style of marker, a waist high concrete pylon with a scallop shell near the top and underneath, an arrow, painted yellow showing the way.

Noja was where I was staying the night at a hotel on the north side of town a kilometre away from El Camino. In the centre of the town, a local nobleman in the 17th century had built a house around a former medieval tower. It is a plain house but has a huge carving above the window of his coat of arms.

My hotel for the night, designed to  look old but recently built. The insides were equally designed to look old with fake rough sawn roof beams, and peeling plaster and brick effect facing bricks covering the concrete pillars and walls,  The bedroom telephones were something out of 1920s films with twisted cords and rotary dialing. The reception was in the basement and the subbasement housed an underground garage. The enclosed balconies are an architectural feature of old buildings further west in Galicia but not unknown in Cantabria. 

Laredo, Cantabria

 Laredo, Cantabria

I woke up in my hotel room in Castro Ardiales with a sore throat, a blocked up nose and sweating. I had obviously caught a chill when I had been rained on during my trek with Leslie from Bilboa to Portugalete and I wasn't feeling well.

It was another 29 km to Laredo and the weather forecast was for rain rising to 75% chance of rain at lunchtime and rising further to 91% in the mid afternoon. I don't like missing a day of walking El Camino as skipping ahead seems like cheating, but I really didn't feel well. I might have made it due to perseverance but it would be a low point.

I researched the bus options to have an easy day and give my body time to fight off the infection. I could skip ahead with a 20 minute coach ride along the motorway for just EUR3.60.

It was a 15 minute walk through Laredo town centre from the bus station to my hotel. At the end of the town centre is the start of the beach, a long, clean expanse of yellow sand. To one end is a headland. 

In the centre, there is a massive headland and teh Faro de Caballo at its eastern end, obscured by low cloud and rain. 

I left the town centre and walked along the seafront.

I passed a restaurant that claims to specialise in seafood dishes so that was where I would be going for my evening meal. 

I reached my accommodation for that evening, Cosmopol Laredo, a six storey. modern, purpose built three star hotel. I sat at the bar until my room was ready. 

Portugalete to Castro Ardigales, crossing from the Basque country to Cantabria

Portugalete to Castro Ardigales, crossing from the Basque country to Cantabria  

Breakfast in the four star hotel in Portugalete started at 7am and it was still dark. At 7.30am, it was just light enough to see so I checked out and started walking up the hill behind the hotel, way marked as El Camino. It was steep but there were several moving walkways to assist pedestrians up the slope. I had already checked the route out of the town the day before because from past experience, it is very hard to see yellow arrows in the dark or when the only light is from streetlights.

After the first kilometre or so, there is a dedicated shared cycle track and walkway running away from the town centre, over several major roads and up into the hills. It was a long while before the path left the urban sprawl and was back in the countryside. The surface was tarmac or concrete and it was hard on the feet. 

The route shares a valley with a busy and noisy motorway so whilst the buildings may have thinned, there was still a lot of traffic noise. There are many alternative route suggested by the guidebooks, some marked, others unmarked. I came to one such junction, but having read and memorised the route, both were waymarked and I instinctively took the left option. 

There were two couples just ahead of me standing in the middle of the path, looking around. One of the women asked me which was the correct way in Spanish. I answered that the left turning was a alternative which was three kilometres longer than the main route that turned right. 

She turned to her campanions and started to say in French, 'I think he said...' and I recognised French and repeated what I had said earlier in French. When all four heard it in French, the decision was unamimous and they all wanted to take the shorter official route. She asked me whether I was a local but, no, I was English I replied and then she mentioned with an unbelieveing note in her voise that I spoke both Spanish and French. I felt that my credentials and reliability was being questioned, especally coming from a French person who have the reputation that they only speak French (and they believe that we only speak English).

I pulled out my map book and explained again about the shorter yellow highlighted route and the longer alternative route shown in black on my map and that they both met just short of Zierbena on the coast. I had proved my credentials and we started to chat. I said that I had a long way to go and that we should start walking. 

They had known each other since school and had started walking a route from Paris where they all lived, firstly just as a morning ramble with a purpose, then an all day event, a long weekend followed and finally now, they would walk a week or two a year towards Santiago, picking up where they left off last time. It would take another three to five years to finish but they liked the journey and the comradeship. 

Just around the next corner, there was a fig tree. There was some ripe fruit that had fallen to the ground and were either squashed or nibbled by wildlife. I love fresh figs. This tree seemed to be early to blossom as all the other fig trees only had green fruit. I told them of my love for figs as I tried to pull down some of the upper boughs to get at the ripe fruit that other pilgrims hadn't yet picked clean.

One of the men in the group stood head and shoulders above me and had long arms. He reached up and effortlessly pulled down an upper bough that had been out of reach of other height challenged pilgrims. We picked several fruits and I suggested that we ought to leave some for others.

I didn't want to walk with them for the rest of the day and I was looking for a way out. There was an opportunity just around the corner.

I knew what this was but it was a mystery to my fellow pilgrims. It is a local, public laundrette. There are two pools lined with stone, fed by a local spring or stream. Locals can wash their clothes in the lower basin and rinse their clothes in the upper basin. Whilst they gawped at the structure, I bid them farewell, thanking them for the figs and they thanked me for showing them the way. 

A new version of the waymarker.

The river flowing out to the bay at Pobena.

Some industrial ruins of an ore loading dock. 

Some major reinforcements required to stop the cliff sliding into the sea.

Looking back up the coast.

There were plenty of information boards along this section of the route, detailing the mining history, the fauna and flora, the geology and the sea life found locally

The route follows a former railway line to the ore loading dock and so it was flat and an easy walk. 

An old locomotive on display in Mioño

And another tunnel, a former railway but not connected to the one that the camino had followed earlier. 

Bilboa to Portugalete

 Bilboa to Portugalete 

It was a very different day from the day before. It had rained in the night and there was a 90% chance of rain all day. The temperature had dropped ten degrees and I had to dig out a fleece as well as my waterproofs.

There are three major routes out of Bolboa to Portugalete, There is a 'scenic' route with a climb and views over the city, although as the route crosses Avril Mountain, we had already seen plenty of views of Bilboa. There is a route that follows the river on the west bank. The guidebook describes it as shorter but through urban sprawl and industrial areas, not surprising since Bilboa was an industrial centre and major port. 

The third option was along the east side of the river and a dedicated cycle route which my guidebook recommended although it was not the official Camino but ended up at the same destination. I took this route, passing the Guggenheim Museum for the second time in two days. 

It was an uninspiring walk through an industrial wasteland. It had once been busy but industry had modernised and moved to newer premises. If this was the recommended route, the others must have been a lot worse.  

But the best part of the route is at the end at the Bizkaia Bridge. It is the lowest downstream crossing of the Nervion River that flows through Bilboa. It had to be high to allow shipping to access the port but there was no narrow route between mountains to build such a bridge.  Ingenious Basque engineers came up with this solution. It is a high level suspension bridge but instead of carrying traffic at high level, it has a gondola suspended from the high level suspension bridge that carries traffic at river level across the river. 

The gondola part way across the river. 

Another view of the gondola crossing the river. 

My surprise hotel for the night. the four star Puente Colgante Boutique Hotel, such a great upgrade from cramped one or two star accomadation or homestays. 

Bilboa

 Bilboa 

It was a nice flat and easy start to the day from Larrabetzu through Lezama to Zamudio. It was warm but the clouds kept the sun away so it wasn't too hot or too bright. The roads and the railway go around Mount Avril to reach Bilboa but El Camino purposefully makes everything a challenge for the pilgrim. It has to go straight over the top.

The view of Mount Avril from Zamudio with the telcommunication masts on the top. It is only 365 metres to climb but after already a week of walking and carrying a pack, any incline is a challenge.

The road goes up to a junction on the motorway but El Camino takes a parallel path through woods giving shade. The path passes a farm with barking dogs and freeranging goats that ignored both me and the dogs. The path goes under the motorway to a junction with a path going either left or right. I searched for an arrow or a marker but I found none. I even walked back under the motorway in case there was a sign there advising which way to go but there was nothing. The dogs continued to bark, the goats continued to ignore me. 

The right hand path dipped down, levelled out for a while and then a gentle slope up. The left hand path was steep and rutted. Near the top, there were some crash barriers to stop vehicles driving off the track, down the cutting and onto the motorway. I felt sure that there would be an arrow there. I slooged up the deeply rutted track, and where it wasn't rutted, it was covered with coarse gravel so your feet slipped backwards with every step.

I reached the top and the start of the crash barriers but there were no yellow arrows. The track continued but it didn't look that used, so I had probably made an error. Not the first time and there would be more. Despite slogging up the steep slope, I returned to the junction under the motorway. As I came down, I saw a faded yellow arrow on the concrete of the bridge support. I had missed it on the way up as it was in shadow and it was open and bright just beyond. Earlier, as I stood at the junction searching for a sign, a sapling had obscured it. Just a bit further on was another yellow arrow, to confirm that I was back on track. 

I was looking for a left turn and passed one. I had made one mistake already that day. Once bitten, twice shy. I wasted some time checking for arrows or crosses but their were none. I walked up the track but there were on signs and it was overgrown further up so it didn't feel right. I continued down the original track.

I was rewarded with the sight of several yellow arrows painted on crash barriers.

As I walked further up the mountain, I had a view of Bilboa airport in the distance, some of the urban sprawl of the city and top left of the photo, the estuary, the sea and the port, clear to the naked eye but a blur in the distance in the photo.

A fire break in the forest, with dozens of clumps of pampas grass growing in the open space.

A concreteentrance and a padlocked door, hidden in the forect with no information board, but it did have a tall pole with an aerial and a solar panel on top so it was in use but no clue as to what it was. 

As I descended from the summit of Mount Avril, there was a new version of the El Camino marker signs, pointing the way to go.

                                      

The entrance to teh cathedral in Bilboa...

                                               

...and a view of the entrance and h tower, but being in the old city centre, space is precious and it was difficult to find a better perspective. 

                                       

A shopping mall, a beautiful art deco style building. 

The entrance to one of Bilboa's railway stations. The words above the door read C-F (for Ferro Carrill meaning railway) Santander to Bilboa. 

I was walking up the Nervion River and knew I was getting near to the Guggenheim Museum when I saw the Zubizuri Bridge. 

It is a curved pedestrain bridge. 

The next bridge is the high level Puente de la Salve which carries a najor road over the river and runs adjacent to the Guggenheim Museum. Pedstrains have access from river level to cross the river but with 12 flights of stairs to climb, you must be desparate to cross just here rather than a less eerting option  elsewhere. 

The Guggenheim...

 

...the main entrance, everyone knows it but I thought it was ugly but I still had to go and have a look. 

On my return from the Guggenheim to my hotel, I passed the Arriaga Theatre, a beautiful classical building. It was showing Mama Mia! and queues were forming for the matinee performance.  

Larrabetzu

 Larrabetzu

The camera decided not to work at all until I had recharged both batteries although both had full charges when I left the hotel this morning. My hotel was miles outside Guernica and away from El Camino so I took the train to Usansolo, then set off to walk up into the hills.

I arrived at my homestay in Larrabetzu in time for lunch. The front of the homestay.

The porch on the shaded northside of the house.

The back of the house and part of the garden. My room is the one on the left of the balcony and the end of the balcony is just visible on the far left of the house.

The distant views are scenic but spoiled by the giant industrial estate in the middle distance.  In the foreground at the end of the garden is the red roofof a restaurant.. It seemed a convenient place to have lunch but it is an upmarket three Michelin star restaurant. A three course set menu was available for EUR315 before drinks. There was a selection of wines available but if you have to ask the price, you know that you can't afford it. I had a picnic lunch in the shade of some trees.

And a typical patio scene for a homestay catering for pilgrims, and there were six other pilgrims staying at the same place... rows of clothes drying on the fences. Tomorrow is a short walk into Bilboa.