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Camino Lebaniego Castellano
  • Laurie Reynolds
  • Laurie Reynolds

Camino Lebaniego Castellano

27-päiväinen seikkaillu — Laurie Lue lisää
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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    Plaques nearby explained who each figure was was and what they did.
    Plaques nearby explained who each figure was was and what they did.1111111Each one of these figures had a little explanation of the story and who each person was

    María made me do it!

    17. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

    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
    https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/cicera-mi…    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    131This entire bridge was a meter under water a few days ago!1Clare and I have climbed worse!112Nicest 50€ place I've ever stayed!11

    On The Norte

    18. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    Cades to San Vicente
    24 km, 500 m

    Great day! The Senda Fluvial del Nansá (Nansá River Trail) is fabulous. The trail is exceptionally well maintained, there are wooden bridges and steps, and there are alternatives for when the river is high (as it was today). It is 14 km alongside the river, just great for walking. I met a very chatty señor working on an environmental project to improve the health of plant life along the river. His particular challenge for the day was pulling out invasive species, which seems like a never ending task. But they have other jobs too like working on water quality, trying to protect the bat population, preventing erosion, etc. A good use of government funds!

    In the town of Serdio, the Lebaniego merges with the Norte. There is a certain amount of arrow confusion, and I somehow managed to find myself on the path that took me to the damaged wooden bridge that is theoretically closed. But I had talked to several people who had climbed over the barrier and walked across, and so that’s what I did too. It is true that the bridge is badly in need of repair or replacement, but I was not about to go back 5 km and take another longer route.

    By 3:00 I was in San Vicente, and as I was walking on the main drag, I saw a hotel, the Luzón, that looked like it was built in the early 20th century. Very charming. Turns out it is the oldest hotel in town, and was built as a hotel more than 100 years ago. It has been in the family since it was built, and there is currently a 30-ish guy working in the office who tells me he is the next generation and hopes to have kids who will also carry it on.

    I have spent a few hours walking around, remembering especially the time that Dana and I stayed here in the albergue. The hospitalero was very hostile to us, accusing us of being hegemonist Americans. It was not pleasant. The albergue is still there, under private management now, so I’m sure our old friend is long gone.

    I have a few more days to walk and I have plenty of time to get to my goal of Santander. So I think I will lollygag around a bit, walking backwards on the Norte.

    https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/cades-cas…    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    2
    271By Gaudí --the church pews1Gaudí also did the confessional in the family's church.2Adams Family home1

    Lollygagging to Comillas

    19. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    San Vicente de la Barquera to Comillas
    14km, 240 m

    No alarm, no rush, not many kms. Off I went at about 8, and though almost every km was on asphalt, it was a nice walk on a pedestrian path.

    The snow-covered Picos are now out of view, and I got to Comillas with plenty of time to see the things I’ve never visited despite several stops here on the Norte.

    Gaudi’s El Capricho house is the most famous attraction, but there were plenty of other things to fill my afternoon.

    I walked out to the beach, enjoyed the old town, visited the neo-gothic palace of Sobrellano and its adjacent faux-gothic church, and found the Casa del Duque, which looks like the Adams Family lived there.

    This town was, in the mid 1800s, a sleepy village of 300 farmers and cattle ranchers. Then some of the town’s young men went to the Americas and made their fortunes. A building boom resulted and the young Gaudí did work on several of these projects. The over the top palace was built as a summer home, with a church next door for the family’s graves.

    Comillas is now pretty touristy, and the Camino isn’t really cultivated here. I think the more up market tourist trade is what they’re after. But I had a good time here.    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    141

    Comillas to Santillana Del Mar

    20. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    The Cantabrian regional government has done a good job of keeping pilgrims off the busy roads, but unfortunately, their solution has been to send us on long loops on country roads or to pave paths. So today, out of the 24 km I walked, I’ll bet that at least 22 were on pavement.

    It was not an unpleasant walk, and I think there were about five or six moderate ascents, followed by the same number of descents. It was very pleasant, with occasional glimpses of the far away ocean, and lots of little pueblos. I have done most of my singing on this Camino in connection with trying to get cows and bulls to move away from me. But today I just couldn’t stop singing Enter, rejoice and come in! With a few camino modifications to the lyrics of course!

    When I was about 2 km away from Santillana, I looked at my watch and saw it was about noon. That meant that I could arrive in time to visit the colegiata and one of Spain’s most beautiful and best preserved Romanesque cloisters. I was in the cloister by 12:30, and even though it closed at 1:00, the very nice man at the desk let several of us stay until about 1:20. Wonderful.

    Santillana has gobs of hotels, and I was right to assume that this early in the season most were open, but probably none were full. So I picked out an old stone house, turns out it was built in the 16th century by the first Marqués of Santillana. Very nice, with a beautiful little garden out back where I am having an Agua con gas as I write this.

    I decided to go up to visit the caves of Altamira this time. I have been there twice before, once in the 70s when I actually went into the real cave, and once in the 90s with my family when we went into the “reproduction cave.” I decided that I would rather walk up there than spend a couple of hours walking up and down Santillana’s two historic streets, which are, unfortunately, filled with souvenir shops.

    The “reproduction cave” is apparently done to the highest standards, and the way it is set up is really informative and attention-grabbing. Our guide (small group of 10) was excellent. From a church and cloister that are a little less than 1000 years old to a cave that has paintings ranging in age from 15,000 years old to more than 30,000 years old. That is just incomprehensible to me.

    Dinner at a nice tapas place, La Tienda. And then I just couldn’t resist taking another walk around town, with all the shops closed and the streets lit up. It was really beautiful.    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    111134

    Santillana to Liencres

    21. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Santillana to Liencres
    28 km, 460 m

    Until I got to about the last 9 km, I was telling myself that uninspiring pavement walks are all just part of the Camino. This stage is made even less appealing with its passage through the industrial town of Torrelavega. It was time for school to start when I passed through, so I realized once again that people can be happy anywhere, because there were a lot of very energetic, happy children and their parents going towards the school.

    I had had a few nice conversations with pilgrims coming in the opposite direction, I enjoyed waiting for my 6 km train ride with a couple of older Spanish people, and I appreciated that even though it was all on asphalt, I was almost always on a separate path for pedestrians. But that’s not much to wax poetic about.

    But when I got to the turn off to go through the natural park of the dunes, things changed from blah to WOW! About 1K down to the beach was all on soft pine needles through the dunes. And then at the beach, hang a right and go east for about 6 km along a spectacularly beautiful coastal trail.

    I am in a small hotel overlooking the water and some beaches below. I have done the very uncharacteristic thing of sitting on a comfortable chair and looking out over the water for about an hour.

    I decided to walk about 1 km into town to get some food for dinner, so I could enjoy the sunset from my little patio. I bought some pretty standard Pilgrim grocery items.- gazpacho in a carton and prepared tortilla española. And I walked down to the nearest beach just to confirm my suspicion that those people who were actually swimming were crazy!

    Sunset was at 9:35, which was later than I wanted to stay up, but how can you have a room on the ocean heading west and not stay up for sunset?

    And ps—mil gracias to trecile and caminka- I would not have found my way without you!

    https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/santillan…    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    13212

    Into Santander - done walking!

    22. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    Liencres -Santander
    25 km, 200 m

    I started early because I knew it was going to be hot. When I got into Santander, a pharmacy showed 30° (86 F) on its sign. It’s a calima from North Africa, and though not much of the orange sand has reached northern Spain, it was like being in an oven.

    It was beautiful and cool along the coast, at least for most of the way. The sun had just risen when I got started. There were people walking in both directions, not hoards, but I probably saw a total of 20 people, counting walkers and cyclists.

    The coast changed a lot between the two end points. At the beginning, I was up on the headlands looking down 30 or 40 m to all kinds of rock formations out in the water. By the time I got to Playa de Maruca, the cliffs were gone, and the path wove in and out around brown and black rocks very close to the water. I knew that when I got to the lighthouse, things would change. There were lots of people!

    The last few kilometers went past some of Santander’s beautiful in-city beaches.

    By 2:30 I was checked into the hotel, and at about three, there was a knock on the door and lo and behold there was Ana. She had taken a several- hour bus from Oviedo for a few hours in Santander, a museum, a dinner, and lots of gabbing.

    We got so lost so many times trying to find places that we knew were in the vicinity. Our problem was that we kept slipping into conversation and not paying attention. But what a great ending for my Camino.

    This morning we had time for a good coffee, and a visit to the sporting goods store to buy my olive oil bag, a ritual I cannot abandon. My daughter and her family use a LOT of olive oil, and have not had to buy any for at least the last 15 years. The staff at the store could not have been more helpful. The woman actually walked down the block to get some bottles of olive oil so that we could do an approximation. They admitted that this was a first for them!

    Ana and I said goodbye on the paseo marítimo and she headed towards the beaches while I headed to the train station. I bought a sandwich for the ride and am now waiting to head to Madrid In about ten minutes.

    Thank you Ana, for coming up here and sharing the fin del camino with me!    Lue lisää

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  • Laurie ReynoldsCamino Lebaniego CastellanoLaurie Reynolds
    31131

    One day in Madrid

    24. toukokuuta, Espanja ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    I decided to stay in a part of Madrid that I hadn’t been in for a while — near La Latina. It’s close to the plaza mayor and a little gritty. My hotel was a standard-issue Catalonia chain hotel in a beautiful old building. Nothing special, but the location I wanted.

    I spent most of the morning wandering around, peeking in at the edges of the Rastro, the Sunday flea market turned junk fest, filled with scam artists and pickpockets. I very much enjoyed an hour in the Museo de San Isidro, located in a building on the spot where the patron saint of Madrid is said to have lived (the well where he miraculously revived his son is in the courtyard). But most of the museum is dedicated to the pre-history of Madrid— a wooly mammoth skull, artifacts from early settlements, some Roman mosaics, with timelines challenging my ability to comprehend.

    Since it’s Sunday, public spaces are even more mobbed than usual. Finding a free table in a café to have an agua con gas was a challenge!

    In the late afternoon, I walked over to the Retiro, an enormous park filled with gardens, statues, small lakes and thousands of madrileños. Wonderful way to spend the last few hours here.

    Tomorrow I fly home, so this trip is done. I love Madrid!    Lue lisää

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    26. toukokuuta 2026