Soto de Luiña

Sleep found us in the wee hours of the morning, so we end up sleeping in later than we had anticipated. We both get up bleary-eyed and start getting ready, we have a 16km day ahead of us which will turn out to be closer to 20km. We have some breaky with coffee and head off. Our walk today is overcast with the odd shower of rain here and there, we have a beautiful walk through forests that leads us into our first town El Pito, as we enter the main part of town and are waiting to cross the road, a man walks up to us, bids us a “Buen Camino” shakes our hands and gives us a little gift, it is a little plastic hand that has Camino del Norte on it, it was a lovely surprise and another little memento we will keep from this journey. In this town you will find Quinta de El Pito referred to as the Versailles of Asturias, this place was built by the sons of a local grocer, unfortunately, it was closed to the public when we walked through, we were looking forward to checking it out, but it wasn't meant to be so we push on. We are soon back in the forest enjoying the birdlife and sounds that are always in abundance in these areas. We get 3/4 through our walk and come to a ‘T’ intersection, to the right the sign says restaurant 200m or to the left we can continue on the Camino path, we decide to go right off the Camino path, we are both hungry and in need of a sit-down. We walk for what feels longer than 200m and eventually come to a beach, at the far left end there is a restaurant, we ask to be seated and we are seated, but we both get a distinct feeling that we aren't really welcome/wanted here, we quickly eat, drink and get back on track. We crisscross over the train tracks multiple times throughout the day, we also walk through lovely little towns and when we reach the higher sections of our walk we feel like we are walking in the clouds, we have mist all around us with the views of rolling hills, lucky for us there are seats positioned halfway up these hills alongside the road to rest our weary legs. We arrive at our accommodation for the night, tired and ready for a shower, we do this then head out to the terrace for a drink. This place is super interesting - it was built in the 1890s and has served as a priest's house, the headquarters of the guardian civil, a prison, a tailor's shop and a guesthouse. We have a lovely dinner here at the restaurant and enjoy an early night for we are both tired and had little sleep last night, we are lulled off to sleep by the sound of rain, it doesn't get much better than this.Read more