Ribadesella

Another 35 km day. It's a little too long for my liking, those last few kilometers into town are really a slog. But the walk was really good, spectacular in many places. I took a little detour to get back to the coast, and that added another 4 km or so to my total. And of course it's a lot slower walking carefully over and around rocks than on a forest path or along the road. Not to mention all the time it takes to stop and gaze at the crashing waves or rocky coast and take yet another picture.

Though these coastal paths are usually fairly obvious, they are not well marked, so I was very glad to have the GPS. A Spanish friend sent me all the tracks for the coastal detours on this Camino and I couldn't have done it without them.

So by the time I washed clothes and showered it was after 4pm, so once again too late to eat lunch in a restaurant. That's a real negative aspect of arriving so late. You can't eat lunch, and you certainly don't want to wait up until they start serving dinner. So I'm having another store-bought dinner -- gazpacho in a box, two spinach and cheese empanadas from the pastry shop, a red pepper, and an orange. Not terribly exciting or gourmet, but it'll fill the belly! Oh yes and a local specialty sweet of some type.

The red building is my hotel for the night. 30€ special for peregrinos! That's not bad but about 10€ more than going rates in other less touristy parts of Spain!Read more