Day 27 - Villaviciosa to Gijón

Date: Thursday July 11

Start:  Villaviciosa, Asturias

End: Gijón, Asturias

Daily Mileage: 18.8mi (30.3km)

Total Mileage: ~308mi (495.7km)

Despite being a longer mileage walk today, thanks to the company of Andy, most of the miles ‘ticked’ by fairly quickly. 

While getting breakfast this morning, I read a few notes about the route, including that there were few to no places to stop for food/beverage along the way. Despite going through a few small towns, most of them either didn’t have any restaurants/bars/cafes or what few establishments were along the route wouldn’t be open until after we’d passed through. With this in mind, we grabbed a couple of extra sandwiches at the cafe to take along with us. 

Setting out, the route was mellow for the first three to four miles. The walk out of Villaviciosa went by several nice plazas, through a nice park, and headed through the outskirts of town to country roads. 

We saw quite a few bike packers along the roads throughout the morning – some likely also doing the Camino while others may have had other adventures/routes afoot. There are a number of people that bike the Camino routes rather than walking. While there are certainly stretches where I think this must be nice, there are also areas where I feel like they are missing out. For example, many/most of the spectacular coastal walking paths through the Basque Country, bike packers certainly could not ride. As well as number of other small trails. This said, they can certainly get through the mileage much quicker, which also (potentially) leaves them with more time to explore the towns/cities along the route. We are keen to do a bike packing trip at some point, but that is an adventure for another day. 

Not far into the hike, in the small town of Casquita, we reached an important route split, or as the Buen Camino app so professionally labeled the juncture: “Important Bifurcation”. 

This was the point on the Camino del Norte where you could choose to continue to Santiago de Compostela via the northern coastal route (i.e. stay on the Camino del Norte), heading on to Gijón, or split southward toward the city of Oviedo. From Oviedo, you could either continue southwest along the Camino Primitivo or return northward, rejoining the Camino del Norte route in the city of Avilés. Sticking to the Camino del Norte through Gijón, it was a two day walk to Avilés. Taking the detour through Oviedo to Avilés added an extra day.

From the pictures I’ve seen, Oviedo certainly looks like an amazing city. The capital of Asturias, it is a medieval town with amazing architecture, museums, and historical sites. It looks like the kind of place that is worth a visit. Maybe we will one day. 

For now, we decided to stick fully to the Camino del Norte route and continue on to Gijón, mostly because we want to stay along coast. Gijón also has a nice beach and we are still crossing our fingers for a beach day. It seems most of our rest days have been rainy and cool. Will Gijón be the exception? We shall see. We are quickly running out of time though. After leaving Gijón, the route will only be along the coast for another week before heading inland for the remainder of the journey to Santiago. 

And so, we continued straight. Not long after, the route met a series of climbs, each longer and higher than the last. The first two climbs didn’t feel like much – the typical undulations through the hilly countryside. Some work uphill, but nothing too crazy. The last of the three climbs would be about a mile and a half from bottom to top. Some of which was quite steep. As we started the climb, Shawn went ahead. I settled into a steady pace.

We see houses with such amazing landscaping and flowers each day – beautiful gardens, flowering bushes, fruit trees. It really adds a splash of color to the country landscapes.

Not too far into the climb, I looked back and saw Andy heading up the hill. I waved back to him and continued to slowly plod my way uphill, the route moving from paved rural roads to small rocky and muddy paths through the forest.

As a reminder, Andy is the pilgrim from Australia that we’ve been running into quite frequently. We seem to be on about the same schedule. He is also mostly staying in hotels/private accommodation rather than albergues, so – like us – often starts a bit later than those that stay in albergues. Andy is the one that basically hunts for ticks for a living, in addition to a lot of other cool work/projects with big cat rescues, which have taken him around the globe. With so many unique and eclectic travels and experiences, he is always fun to chat with.

And this is good, because we ended up walking and chatting with him all the way to Gijón. 

Catching up to me on the climb, I figured we would exchange a couple of pleasantries and he would continue by me, but instead we started chatting... a conversation that spanned topics from mental fortitude on long trails to global politics. It was a nice way to take my mind off the ascent. Meeting Shawn at the top of the climb, the day continued like this. Chatting about travels, injuries, work, shoes, more politics... and really just anything that came up. There is a lot you can talk about when you’re walking 12+ miles together. 

Like us, he has no set timeframe for the hike, so is just enjoying it day by day. Planning his lodging only a day or two in advance and spending extra time in many of the cities. He talked about meeting several other pilgrims that were on quite strict timelines, hiking 30-40km (18-25 miles) every day. This didn’t sound like much fun to any of us. While Shawn and I know how to make miles when it’s a necessity (like the long trails in the U.S. where you are working with specific weather windows), we’ve already mentioned here that this is not a hiking style we’re interested (or need) to do for the Camino.

The day took us mostly through quiet rural roads. The scenery was pretty but not exceptional, making it a nice day to have a bit of distraction. A little under halfway through the day, we made a stop at a restaurant. Though it didn’t open for another 45 minutes (which meant it probably wouldn’t be serving food for another hour and a half), it did have a couple vending machines outside, which we made use of for a cold drink (singular, one drink... because we only had enough coins for one and the machine did not take bills or credit cards). 

We ate the sandwiches that we’d packed along while we chatted with another hiker from Poland. She was hiking the Camino as a bit of a 30th birthday present to herself, a milestone that was soon coming up soon. She was also using the time to try and figure out ‘what she was going to do with her life’. Like so many people, she didn’t want to sit at a computer from 9-5 (or longer) every day for the majority of her life. I was mostly concerned with how much stuff she was carrying. She had a huge pack on her back, on which many camping accessories were tied to the outside, and was also carrying a medium size backpack on the front of her. It looked so uncomfortable, and I couldn’t for the life of me think of what you needed along this walk that necessitated so many bags.

Later in the day, after another long, hot climb, we descended through the outskirts of another town where there was a restaurant open. While Shawn and I didn’t need any food, having eaten our sandwiches not too long ago, we were keen to get some ice cold fizzy waters, so we sat with Andy while he ate lunch. As noted before, due to his Lyme disease and resultant food allergies, he’s quite limited in what he can eat in many of the restaurants, but luckily the staff at the restaurant was super accommodating and after hearing his long list of allergies, had just the thing for him. Andy also helps the situation by providing a list of several things that he can eat. He ended up with some sort of potato salad with tuna in it.

From the restaurant, we only had about five miles to go. The vast majority of this was actually through the suburbs of Gijón, slowly winding our way toward the center of the city. For the last stretch, we took a short alternate that led us along the Rio Piles and out to the coast, which we were all happy to see again.

Gijón had a massive beachfront area, with a long wide promenade along Playa de San Lorenzo, where many people were out enjoying the sunny day – sunbathing and splashing in the waves. Walking along the boardwalk, we stopped at a kiosk and picked up a couple of lemon ice drinks, which hit the spot at the end of a long hot day.

About halfway down the promenade, we bid adieu to Andy as we peeled off to head toward our hotel. No matter how many times we meet him, neither he nor us ever asks to exchange any sort of contact information. We all just seem to know that we will run into each other again. 

Shawn had been in contact with the pensión where we were staying the next two nights a couple times throughout the day. Because they were a small hotel, they didn’t keep the desk staffed around the clock, so we needed to let them know when we were arriving. “If I’m not there, I’ll be in a coffee shop around the street,” the woman had told us. We simply needed to send her a WhatsApp message when we arrived. “Be there in five minutes,” she said now.

Checking in, she went through a map of Gijón with us, pointing out all of her favorite restaurants, where we could hear live music, and a number of other popular spots. Then she gave us a short tour of the small common space and a key to our room and was back out the door again. 

After we’d showered and relaxed for a bit, we were back out the door ourselves. We walked around to a couple shops, picking up substitutes for a couple of other small things we had lost in ‘the melting’ and basically killing time until Spanish dinner hours would begin at 8pm. 

This cheese was perfection.

For dinner, we treated ourselves to a nice restaurant that our hotel owner had suggested, getting the delicious tuna belly. A dish that, upon arriving, we realized we could have split – particularly after having a couple of tasty appetizers, including a plate of amazing Manchego cheese, which comes from the La Mancha area of Spain. (Yes, the same La Mancha popularized through Don Quixote... “I AM DON QUIXOTE, THE MAN OF LA MANCHA”). While Don Quixote is a fictional character, La Mancha is very much a real place and their cheese is very good. 

Another excellent day in the books. Still crossing our fingers for beach weather tomorrow. The forecast is not looking good, but it cannot be trusted – we shall see what tomorrow brings.