Santoña to Noja

We are up and ready to go at 8:30am, we meet George at the front door, and walk to breakfast, then head off ready for our day of walking, its not a very long walk today, so we are not in a big rush. We head out of town with quite a few locals going for their morning walk. After about 20 minutes we are passing the El Dueso prison, the walls are high and yes, this is definitely an active prison, there is police detail everywhere, we keep walking, nothing to see here. Soon we hit our first town for the day, it is a little cute surfer town. There is a big 4 star hotel that dominates this town called Juan de la Cosa. Fun fact: Apparently Juan de la Cosa was a 15th Century cartographer, he is credited to have created the first map of the Americas and is the only cartographer to have witnessed first hand the first voyage of Columbus. We keep walking and just after we leave Berria we follow the blue Camino trail thinking this is going to be the easier route out of our two options for today. We are so WRONG and end up walking over a very sketchy hill that is sandy, rocky, slippery, narrow and a briar-lined goat track, it wound up and then down for the next hour or so. I have never been so happy to get off a hill as I was with this one. Once we felt the sand from the beach under our feet and I had swallowed my heart back down my throat and pushed it back into my chest, we decide to just stay on this beach and not divert off to follow the Camino, we make our own path for the rest of the way to Noja. We map our way to La Casona, we can't check in until 3:30pm so we sit in the restaurant that is under our accommodation, have a few drinks and then some scrumptious lunch. We then book into our place, shower, and head to the laundromat to do some long overdue washing, I can't wait for the smell fresh clothes, it's the little things.Read more