Day 20 - Comillas to Unquera

Date: Thursday July 4

Start: Comillas, Cantabria

End: Unquera, Cantabria

Daily Mileage: 16.3mi (26.2km)

Total Mileage: ~231mi (~371.8km)

Well, today was a day. There were some ups. There were some downs. We melted some of our clothes. And other things. But we’ll get to that. 

First though - today was Shawn’s birthday! It’s a pity he has to share it with the rest of America, but it is nice that (when in the US) they put on a firework show for his birthday every year!

If I might say so, despite the lack of fireworks, the birthday started out quite fabulously. 

The sun was shining. The skies were a perky blue. Life was good. 

Before leaving Comillas, we stopped into a cafe on the main plaza for birthday breakfast – which, I admit, was the same as most of our breakfasts along the Camino – slices of Spanish tortilla and coffee – but good nonetheless. We are typically just lucky to find a cafe or two open in the morning. 

After topping up our water bottles in the beautiful Fuente de Tres Caños (Three Spout Fountain), we continued our way along the Camino. This marched us out of town past the Sobrellano Palace and the pizzeria where we had eaten lunch yesterday, the sidewalk eventually morphing into a very nice pedestrian path, which we would follow out of town for several miles.

Walking the winding path through the hillsides, the trail looked over several areas of marshy and muddy tidal flats before entering the lush green countryside, where we had our first views of the Picos de Europa in the distance. The very highest of the summits and shaded gullies were still dusted in snow. 

Winding by several beaches, we eventually crested to a spectacular view of both mountain and sea, with the Picos de Europa forming a dramatic backdrop to rolling green hillsides that dropped to a nice wide beach.

Winding our way down the road, we dropped down to the beach for a nice birthday beach walk along Playa de Puntal, where several surfers were heading toward the waves. Others staked out their spots with beach umbrellas or strolled along the shoreline, enjoying the beautiful morning. We kept toward the firmer sand along the back of the beach, our route along the beach saving us from the work of walking the undulating hillsides on the road above the coast.

Exiting the beach at the opposite end, we walked along a small frontage road filled with surf shops and cafes, popping into a cafe for a midmorning break. It’s never too early for beer if you’re also drinking coffee, right? That’s what Shawn was thinking.

After our break, we continued on, hiking over the Puente de la Masa – a stone bridge from the 15th century (don’t worry, there have been updates over the centuries) – with grand views of the 13th century Castillo del Ray on the opposite hillside. The views for the day certainly were not disappointing. 

Weaving our way up into the hillsides, we left the coast, heading inland over a series of both short and longer climbs through the country. While most of the miles were covered on sleepy low traffic roads, the last few miles before our lunch stop were along a slightly busier narrow/no shoulder road. While there wasn’t constant traffic, the vehicles that did drive by were in a hurry. There were actually road signs along this stretch of road, reminding drivers to be alert for pilgrims along the road.

To me, Spanish people seem laid back about almost everything – opening hours, siesta times, etc. – but they do not have this kind of calm on the roads. And it seems in the last few towns along the route there has been an increasing penchant for using the horn.

Not long after passing the scaffolding-laden 12th century Torre de Estrada (or Torre de eScaffolda, as I renamed it), we entered the town of Serdio, where we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch, really the only logical place for a lunch stop along the route. We had the menu del dia, though it was nothing to elaborate on, so I won’t. Certainly nothing befitting a birthday...which was unfortunate.

Following lunch, we had only a bit over four miles to cover until our stop for the day in Unquera, a town name that for the life of me I cannot remember without looking it up each time, even to type it just now. Every time I would try to think of it, I would run through similar sounding names in my head... eUreka, UniQlo... before finally looking it up again. It would turn out that the town was equally as forgettable as its name.

The final miles were a combination of quiet back roads and a bit of gravel trail/road through the forest before hiking into the outskirts of Unquera, where we were greeted by a billboard for a robo lawn mower. And now when I see one in a lawn, I will address it as Tomas. 

From here it was less than half a mile to our hotel. We walked along the sidewalk of a busy road. Train tracks paralleled the other side of the road. We passed shops selling building materials and furniture. A couple of kayaking outfits. An optician. There were no amazing medieval stone buildings like Santillana del Mar, no fantastic seaside and Modernist architecture like Comillas. Unquera seemed far more utilitarian. Not the most exciting place to celebrate a birthday. It was certainly no Pie Town. 🤣 (A little joke for any of you that followed along with our CDT blog).

At any rate, this was fine. We had some very practical tasks to tend to here. Like melting our clothes...

Time for that story.

After checking into our hotel, Shawn and I prepped all of our clothes, stuff sacks, sleep liners, backpacks – really nearly everything we were carrying other than our electronics and toiletries – to take to the nearby laundromat. You see, midday through our hike yesterday, Shawn noticed that he had a few bites on his legs. We had read that bed bugs could sometimes be an issue along albergues on the Camino, though this is more often cited as a potential problem along the more popular Camino Frances route. Paranoia set in. While his bites did not exactly fit the bill for bed bug bites, out of an abundance of caution, mixed with a healthy amount of the aforementioned paranoia, we decided to disinfect everything by drying it on high heat, which would kill any potential hitchhikers. We were sure we weren’t carrying any hitchhikers, anyway – but still, paranoia. Better safe than sorry. 

And so, we hauled ALL of our stuff to the nearby laundromat. Some of it went into the wash first (a lot of the clothes). But the stuff that was already clean, or that we simply wanted to ‘disinfect’, went straight into the dryer. This included some of our clothes, various stuff sacks, our travel towels, and our backpacks. We turned the dryer on high heat, set it for 30 minutes, and settled in to wait. 

Probably less than 10 minutes into the dry cycle, we noticed that the vents outside of the laundromat were working overtime. At first I thought there was smoke coming from a nearby building. But suddenly, we were like – shit... is that from our dryer? Shawn hurried to pause the cycle and pop open the dryer. 

You know how hindsight is 20/20? When we popped all that stuff into the dryer, I didn’t think anything of it. But now that we were pulling it all out, yelling ‘ouch’ as we dropped each item onto the floor, like having touched a hot pan without an oven mitt – we were feeling pretty dumb. Had we thought to consider the materials of what we’d popped in there? What our waterproof backpacks or stuff sacks might be made of? What those materials might do under high heat? No. 

Our backpacks, in the very short amount of time that they were in the dryer, had MELTED, completely shrinking, with parts of them crumbling and disintegrating like the Wicked Witch of the West. MELTED. Several of the stuff sacks had met the same demise. Any of the clothing that we’d put into the dryer was also ruined, covered in the dried melted bits of other items from the dryer. A few things were salvageable  - though not much. A few of the stuff sacks survived. A small handbag I had. A couple socks. A few other little bits. 

This is what barbeque backpack looks like. 

Shawn felt horrible. It was his paranoia that had led to this project in the first place. It wasn’t an unreasonable plan though. In hindsight, next time, we would probably check the melting point of the materials we were placing in the dryer. Something that we had obviously not given any thought to. 

But things can be replaced, And there’s no use crying over spilt milk. What was done was done. We just felt so terribly stupid. And, umm...  now we don’t have backpacks. Kind of a big deal when you are backpacking across Spain.

As if we hadn’t done enough damage, there was more to come. You see, we had one load of clothes – most of our clothes, thankfully – in the washer. Those were all good and in the clear! When it was time to dry this load, to be on the safe side, we used the lowest heat setting. After a 15 minute cycle, some of the clothes still weren’t dry. Previous experience would suggest that we should simply run the dryer on low for one more cycle. But no, this time it was my turn to take the reins of idiocracy. I thought, well – low obviously isn’t very warm, it’s not drying anything. Let’s set it to medium. 

Now here, I place part of the blame on the laundromat. We did not have any special fabrics/materials in the dryer this time. Yet still, after less than 15 minutes on medium heat, we pulled out our clothes and had ruined more things! Anything that had any sort of elastic in it - shot. A set of Shawn’s shorts, ruined. A fleece of mine must have had some patches of a fabric that also decided to melt, sticking to pieces of the fuzzy part of the fleece, which then tore away when you tried to pull the fabrics apart. I think these were the only two things in this load that were completely ruined, but still. They were nice clothes. And now they are in a dumpster. And I feel like a medium heat setting should not be doing that.

Having melted our most important piece of gear (our packs) and destroyed many of our clothes, we decided to drink a little. 

After gathering up our remaining possessions that were still of use and dumping them back at the hotel, we went to a taco joint down the street and made use of the free beer coupons that had been at the check-in counter at our hotel. And ate tacos, of course. 

To be honest, the situation sucks. Especially the packs, they were nice hiking/travel packs that were not cheap. However, what’s done was done. In the end, it was just stuff, which can easily be replaced. I moved on to the “someday we’ll laugh about this” phase pretty quickly. I’m already laughing about it. 

Anyway, since we don’t have backpacks, and are not currently in a town where we can find a good solution for this, our walk is on a very temporary hiatus. Tomorrow we will set about rectifying the situation and replacing the necessary gear/clothing to continue on. We’re still sorting some that out... so, more to come....

If nothing else, this will go down as a birthday to remember. Happy birthday, Shawn!!