María made me do it!

Last night, at the only (and pretty bad) place to eat in town, I met María, who is also walking alone, but in the opposite direction from me. It turns out we share a lot of Camino “obsession,” and we fell into easy conversation. She told me that the 13 km circle route she had done from this town had been beautiful. A Mirador, a maybe too cute path with representations of a lot of ghosts, ghouls, and giants from Spanish folklore, a walk through your very own private gorge, some beautiful waterfalls, and more than 800 m of ascent thrown in there for a good measure.

So last night, as I was figuring out the next few days as my Camino winds down, I realize I was only going to have a short walk to Cades today.

Adding that loop before I left town would give me a longer and more interesting day. So that’s what I did.

The mirador is absolutely one of the most beautiful overlook spots I’ve seen in any Spanish mountains. Even with some clouds obscuring the more distant peaks, it was just spectacular. And the rest of the route was just as María told me, although I don’t think she stressed the 400 m descent through totally flooded muddy rocky paths. But I was extremely glad to have done it.

The stage between Cicera and Cades does not have much to recommend it. About 18 km, mostly on roads, nothing very pretty. It made me even gladder to have walked that beautiful loop beforehand.

I stopped and chatted with several groups of people walking in the opposite direction. I feel like some sort of an oddity, which I guess I am. I did learn from one of the groups that the albergue at the end of my stage was very cold last night. That was the only nudge I needed to walk a few hundred meters further when I got to town to inquire about a private room in a nearby Hotel Rural.

Cicera-mirador-desfiladero- Ruta Agüeros -Cicera- Cades (for some reason my tracks spontaneously stopped in La Fuente, about 12 km from the end. But it is impossible to lose your way, since you’re just walking on the side of the narrow road that goes from point A to point B.

29 km, 825 m
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