Camino del Norte

Up and out shortly after 7, the city empty and the air mild with the promise of a clear day. Off I go, alone for the first time, excited, and yes, I notice I'm a little nervous. Not of the road or the distance, not of being on my own or the threat of others, but the bed question: if you want to sleep in the public albergues you have to arrive before the last bed gets nabbed by someone else! They don't take bookings. But on the plus side it's dead cheap, either by fixed charge or 'donativo'. You should give apparently something like €10.

Took the east side of the river, a shorter route and all on the flat, so that I would have the strength to go beyond the official stage today (Portugalete) and get to the albergue in Pobeña. I hopped onto the tree-lined grassy verges when I could, so as to avoid constant asphalt; 13 km of riverside industry this side of the river, and then 11km of towns and bypass bridges was a heck of a lot of man-made underfoot. But I enjoyed the views, all of them! Dilapidation and new-build, snazzy-ed up or merely functional, the route was well waymarked and varied. Vast shipbuilding areas made me feel like a midget!

Nipped across from the east to the west side on the ferry, legged it up the steep hillside of Portugalete, took an 'alternative Camino' path so as to find food and drink, stumbled across some (mad?) women (or just happy/excited/hair-down/having fun: it seemed to be a hen-event-cum-pub-crawl for the friends of the mother of the girl getting married, where the fiancée herself sat looking bored to one side)("mother-hen" party?) dancing to a Mexican band, so joined them, of course, (and accepted a glass of cerveza - just because they offered ("the Camino provides", they say, and I'm absolutely prepared to let it); found 'rosy garlic' in the hedgerow, so pretty, later found myself walking alongside Andreas from Köln so we finished today's increasingly rural and pretty route together. Back at the seaside!

And I got a bed! Alongside Anna-Maria from Switzerland, with a worryingly bad knee, and Elizabeth from Mannheim whose Camino partner was forced to abandon the trip with bad health so is continuing (nervously) alone. And 20 others, or so.
For me, all is well.

Here there are others from Mexico, Peru, Ireland, Holland, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany... Isn't it great?!Читать далее