Soto de Luiña to Cadavedo

Decisions, decisions, decisions. We wake this morning to light rain outside, we get ready and then head down for breakfast, whilst eating we chat about which route we will take today - the mountains or the road??? We asked our host and her advice was to stick with the roads where we will pass through plenty of villages and we will have pilgrim support the whole way. Our Camino app provides feedback from pilgrims who have walked the two different routes and the reviews are many and varied. We are torn - whilst we love walking in forests up in the mountains, there is no support and the walk will be longer, harder and way slower, but if we take the road our feet and joints will be throbbing and sore in no time, we are over all the road walking on the Norte. We have organised to take a packed lunch with us and in the end, we toss a coin - heads we take the mountains, tails we take the road…Heads win, mountains it is! Our walk starts on a fairly busy bitumen road, the only one coming in and out of this village, vehicles whizz by and we are happy to get onto the country path and be heading into the mountains, the first few hours are great, with beautiful trails, scenery and sounds. Then the rain starts and we come across bog holes that we need to divert around, the track becomes overgrown, and hard to follow, at one point we take the wrong trail and have to double back after realising our mistake. I take the lead as Louie is not a fan of long grass and has a fear of snakes, I’m ok with snakes and I don’t mind the long grass, but once we start hitting all the spider webs and I start seeing these massive scary spiders I am OUT, I just want off this mountain! Clearly, we are the only idiots that decided to ignore the local’s advice of ‘stick to the road’, it looks like no one has walked this path in months and I am pretty sure if pilgrims were on this trail this morning the spiders couldn’t have rebuilt their intricate webs that fast, there’s just way too many of them! So now it’s Louie's turn to take the lead, she does an awesome job leading us out of this spider-infested overgrown jungle!! We GPS our location and end up taking a road down into Ballota, we stop halfway down at a church to eat lunch and rest for a while, and then we continue on. We get into Ballota and decide to train/taxi or bus the rest of the way to our destination today we have been walking for over 6 hours and have walked 15 hard kms and we are done. We go to the train stop but can’t work out how to buy a ticket or when the next train is due. So we walk to a bar, have a drink, sit down and enjoy the beautiful singing of some locals that have gathered here for a long boozy lunch, their voices, music and atmosphere is beautiful! After a couple of drinks of agua con gas, we order a taxi and enjoy the ride to our destination. The rest has worked wonders and once we have settled into our apartment for tonight we decide to go to the supermacado and get ingredients to make chicken and veggies for dinner. Louie prepares dinner and cooks it, it’s my job to keep her wine glass topped up, get some pre-dinner nibblies ready, and then clean up after dinner - this system works a treat. Dinner is delicious as usual, we sit and chat for a while solving all the worlds problems, before calling it a night - sweet dreams everyone ZzzzzzRead more