El Capricho de Gaudí

Day 16 Camillos

Today I made a voice note as I began to walk in the morning, just describing what I saw around me. I've transcribed it here, to give you a taste of what it's like to walk. Imagine this spoken. (I reckon I sound like Clare Balding in Radio 4's Ramblings).

Cantabria is really REALLY green, and it's so ... so pleasant, it's just a wide open spread.
I'm coming from Suances, where I spent such a comfortable night in the Casa Santa Ana.
Way over to the left in a huge long chain are mountains, with snow on the top of the mountains
... and closer to me here is just a bowl of green ... and gently rolling hills
... rolling is a good word for it ... it's a depth of rolling like the undulating ocean
... some of the fields are cut for hay already, which seems to me ever so early in the year ... there are smaller and bigger houses dotted about, which all seen to be cared for, improved ... although there are some that are fallen down, dilapitated.

And this morning the sky is blue ... blue blue blue , pale, bright, deep, blue, with gentle clouds ... although they are more grey in the distance ... it's gonna be a scorcher of a day.
It's just blissful really.
Walking round the other side of the flat mountain over there yesterday, with the industrial area and boatyards, and the estuary, was dry, and barren, quite ugly ... and arriving at Santa Ana was just .. just lovely, it felt kind. The two ladies at the desk were polite, but the man was really kind, the one who spoke hesitant German ... that was really warm and pleasant, and all the people that worked there were just sweet; that really helped make it a restful thing.
I'm going through cow land, it smells of cow,
... and it's vibrant and verdant in the hedgerows ... speedwell, wild garlic, speedwell, red dead nettle, buttercups, dandelion, mint, fennel, little-robin ... so, farmland, but soooo pretty, the birds singing as well

... it feels simple ... simple and comfortable.

(*AND, I later added: red, white and pink clover, dog daisy, sorrel, plantain, daisy, vetch, knapweed, horsetail, catsear, spurge, rape, hedge bedstraw, lesser trefoil, rockrose, stinging nettle,
spearwort, aquilegia, curly dock, white borage, and occasionally blue borage, lords' and ladies' slippers)Les mer