Comillas

 Comillas 

There was ore to see of Santillana del Mar that I had purposefully not visited the day before as I would be walking out of the town this way en route to Comillas.

More old stone buildings with open balconies...

...others with some stone with brick and timber...

...and defensive strongly built towers.

This was a clear sign at head height of the path to follow. It was also a reminder that I still had 534 kilometres to walk to get to Santiago de Compostela.Whilst it stated that it was only another 10.8 km to Cobreces, my next stop for the night was in Comillas which is another 10 km from Cobreces. 

There was some beautiful rolling countryside to see as the route wound its way through some hills and farming communitities. 

The quiet country walk finally descends to join a main road across a bridge over a river that empties into the sea. I hadn't see the sea for a while so it was nice to get back to some familiar territory. 

Santillana del Mar

 Santillana del Mar  

I set out from the posada with Leslie. I planned to walk with her through the urban zone on the basis that two pairs of eyes are better than one when trying to locate yellow arrows in an urban environment, and then take off when we reached the countryside. The first two kilometres from the posada to the local village were in open countryside but spoilt by the sounds of traffic on the motorway and the occasional train that both followed the valley.

The next ten kilometres were through villages that had expanded so much that it was a continuous ribbon development with a little industry on the outskirts before the outer residential areas of the next village began. 

Between Requejada and Barreda, there is a giant chemical complex operated by Solvay with their own marshalling yards and connected by train to the port at Santander.

This was where I was about to split with Leslie and walk at my own speed. After leaving the giant chemical complex, we crossed the river and were confronted by two a junction where the route splits. The sign indicated that one route was four kilometres and the other was seven kilometres. I didn't know that there was a choice along ths route. 

I stopped and checked my guidebook and the map book. Neither indicated an alternative route but judging by the maps, the short route followed the main road and the longer route took some quiet backroads. It was only 10.30am and we had the rest of the day. We took the back roads option. 

The route rose into the gently rolling hills before descending in Santillana del Mar, a real gem of a place to visit on El Camino del Norte. The tarmac of the road changed to cobbles as the road passed the camp ground on the edge of the town. The route descended past the 12th century Colegiata de Santa Juliana. She was martyred by Diocletian and her remains have been housed here since the 6th century. 

The whole village is a well preserved medieval era village. A former palace, now a museum.

Old buildings with shaded balconies...

...and other buildings with open balconies.

There are several museums, this one is the Museum of Torture featuring medieval and Inquisition torture devices. There are also museums of chocolate, cheese and in the surrounding area if you have your own transport, museums of wine and cider. Plus the Cueva de Altamira, a UNESCO world heritage listed site, a cave system with well preserved Paleolithic cave art. The original cave is closed to the public but a replica has been built for visitors to get a near real life immersive experience. 

There are a lot of tourists, souvenir shops, cafes, restaurants and shops selling local produce, wines, ciders, flavoured spirits, and cheeses such as this one with a calf looking out of a window...

...and another life size plastic cow. The sign says do not touch the cow, she bites!

Every street is a piece of preserved medieval history. The town became rich from wool and linen production. It has had a string of famous residents and visitors such as the Marques of Santillana, the Duchess of Austria, Jean-Paul Satre and Gil Blas.

Another street scene with my hotel on the left, an ancient stone built former merchants house and the street is quiet as it is siesta, but two hours earlier and you couldn't move for visitors and tour groups. 

Inside the hotel, the reception and stairs...

...the place was like a rabbit warren with staircases and corridors going off in all directions. ..

...more stairs....

... a public seating area...

...and a brightly lit covered stairwell. 

Posada Lunada

 

Posada Lunada 

The walk out of Santander is through urban sprawl and is uninspiring, so I took the train and walked from the station through quiet countryside to the hotel. 

A view from the train...

...and another view, so the countryside was not mountainous but just a few hills so a few days of easier walking.

A grand entrance to a local noble's estate. 

Iglesia Santa Maria. 

A view of the scenery from my hotel room.

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 the photos of the walk to load up tp the blog and than had set out on 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.

So in the morning, I was out with the camera...

...my hotel...

...and the south side of the cathedral built in a plain Cisterian Gothic style, started in the late 13th century and completed in the early 14th century...

...and the main entrance to the right of the bell tower although being early in the morning, it was locked so still no photos of the inside or of the cloisters.

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.