Day 30 - Avilés to El Pito

Date: Sunday July 14

Start:  Avilés, Asturias

End: El Pito, Asturias

Daily Mileage: 15.8mi (25.4km)

Total Mileage: ~341mi (~548.8km)

Today’s hike was an inland track once again, a bit ho hum. A nice walk, but nothing particularly special to report. Though we are fairly close to the coast, the routes for the last couple days have been inland and we’re itching to get back to more coastal scenery before the route turns away from the sea entirely.

Heading out of Avilés, we climbed the hillsides through the outskirts of town and into the countryside, where the route for the day was a consistent mix of forest tracks, gravel roads through farmland and pasture, and paved country roads, with the occasional short jaunt along a highway to get between all the other roads/trails. 

Walking along in the morning, we ran into Elena, a pilgrim who we’ve met several times. Shawn actually met and chatted with her a bit during our first week on the trail when he was hiking ahead of me. By the time I caught up, she was chatting with others, so I didn’t officially meet her until we ran into her again last week along the route to Ribadesella. She works in theater in some capacity and is ‘based out of New York’, though has been living in China for the past eight months for something to do with her theater work. 

She’s on a bit of a break, so decided a Camino sounded like fun. Owing to a knee issue, she typically hikes lower mileage days than us (from what I gather from the last few chats we’ve had with her), though must take fewer rest days, as we’ve been overlapping a bit over the last week+. She is super nice and always a pleasure to run into. She stays mostly at albergues and gets an earlier start than we do, so we usually catch her up while she’s taking a morning break. She and Andy have really been the two pilgrims that we’ve been running into the most consistently. 

Just another day on the trail with all these poof balls.

We’ve actually noticed that we haven’t been seeing quite as many pilgrims over the last couple weeks. Still some, but not as many as earlier on the trail. Many people hike the Caminos in stages, one week at a time. This is often a pretty easy option for those that live closer to Spain and can get here relatively easy and fairly cheaply. It seems that the sections from the start in Irún to Bilbao and then Bilbao to Santander have been the most popular/busy. We also expect the last week into Santiago de Compostela to be very busy. Some of the routes also begin to intersect for the last three days of the journey, so that should be interesting. 

View over Piedras Blancas

I little after 10am, we walked through the town of Piedras Blancas – nary a white stone to be seen anywhere, mind you – neither in the town or on our route westwards, with views over the town and the surrounding city. 

From the town, we climbed up into the hillsides, hiking along quiet gravel roads bordered by pasture land where cattle lazily munched on the grass. Shawn responded to all of their moos like a crazy person, making me happy that we didn’t run into many pilgrims along the track. Can’t take him anywhere. (I will try to capture this on video before this trail is over... )

Jackpot!

After walking through another small bit of town and hiking down a dirt track the wrong way for a short bit, we were back along paved country roads, bits of shaded path through the forest, and more quiet gravel roads. As mentioned above, we basically alternated between a consistent mix of these tracks all day long.

Turns out this is not the right way.

A little after noon, we passed around the edges of the town of Soto del Barco, where the Castillo de San Martin sat high on the hillside above the eastern bank of the Rio Nalón. The castle has quite a long history. While the current structure was restored in the 15th century, there is evidence that it was rebuilt atop a Roman fortress, as well as evidence that the site was occupied during the Iron Age between 600-700 BC. So people have been about that little hill for some time now.  

Castillo de San Martin

Staring to get a bit hungry, we ultimately continued through Soto del Barco, walking along - you guessed it – more quiet paved roads, a bit of highway/bridge, and some forest tracks – which brought us into the town of Muros de Nalón. 

Along the outer edges of the town, things were looking pretty sleepy and quiet. This is not what we wanted. We were very hungry. We wanted to see vibrant and lively streets, with restaurant doors flung open and people enjoying slow Sunday lunches at sidewalk cafes and atop sunny verandas. Both Shawn and I hopped onto Google Maps ... immediately needing to confirm that there were indeed places to eat here. Places that were open. 

Please let there be somewhere to eat here.

Not too far up the road, we stopped into a highly rated restaurant. I asked if they had a table for two. They did some checking. There was a table open, but we could only have it until 3pm. It was only 1:45pm. “No problema,” we said. 

It was Sunday. Spain has practically enshrined the long Sunday lunch. We’ve also been warned upon making an 8pm reservation for dinner on a Friday night, that there was a 10pm seating for our table. So we could “only” have the table for two hours. In the U.S., this would be so laughable. There would probably be three seatings during that timeframe. But in Spain, you are free to have nice, slow leisurely meals without worrying that the waitress is giving you stink eye. In fact, it’s expected. We have taken a few nice slow lunches ourselves, which have been quite wonderful.

So much yum. 

This said, we still had a little bit of hiking to do after lunch and didn’t necessarily want/need a slow lunch. If they could deliver the food in a reasonable time frame, we could hold up our end of the bargain and certainly be done well before 3pm. And so, we found ourselves at a nice outdoor table, Shawn enjoying another cochopo (the breaded veal/beef with ham and cheese) while I dined on a nice salad (go veggies!) and delicious Galician scallops. A light-ish lunch as opposed to Shawn’s lunch of misery (in terms of the amount – cochopos are rather large – and needing to hike afterwards, not the quality/taste). 

Obviously we had agua con gas (fizzy water) because I am an addict and cannot get through a day of hiking without it. There are certainly worse things to be addicted to than water. 

Following lunch (which we were finished with by 2:30pm, in case you were wondering), we made the slow trudge up the steep hill into the center of town, where we found all the Sunday activity - people dining at outdoor tables along the main town plaza, kids running around and kicking soccer balls, and people eating ice cream on benches. 

Palacio de Valdecarzana y Vallehermoso

On the way out of town, we passed by the crumbling walls of a very old palace with a very long name: Palacio de Valdecarzana y Vallehermoso. The exterior had been turned into a park, with shaded benches and picnic tables. 

You can see a tiny bit of the blue sea poking out beyond the houses.

From here our route turned onto a forested path, which we would follow for the remainder of our hike. While many people make Muros de Nalón the stopping point for the day, we were continuing on another two and half miles to the town of El Pito. We will have a long hike tomorrow, particularly with an additional detour planned (more on this tomorrow), so wanted to put a little more distance in today.

The forest path was nice, alternating between cool shaded sections and very exposed hot and humid bits. I could tell we were getting back toward the coast again. Shawn played a little prank on me, scaring me into jumping for a ‘snake’ – actually just a noodley bit of rope on the ground. And before we knew it, we were hiking into El Pito. 

El Pito is very small. There were only a few lodging options that Shawn could see when he made a booking – and one hope for dinner/a bar where we could watch the Euro Copa 2024 final tonight between Spain and England. GOOOOOO ESPAÑA!

We opted for staying at a Casa Rural that had good reviews. Basically someone’s large house that they have turned into a guesthouse. I would say BnB, but the second B is not happening here, unless we want to pay extra and wait until 9am. Because, Spain. Since tomorrow is a bit longer, we’ll hit the road before that. 

I’m pretty sure we are the only people staying here tonight... unless others arrive later... because the house is awfully quiet. After checking in and confirming with the hostess where we could watch the fútbol (soccer) game tonight, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in our room. Which is why I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I think we are the only people here. Fine with us. Hopefully it will be a nice quiet night of sleep.  

A little after 8pm, we walked down the street to the restaurant/bar. The game didn’t start until 9pm, but we wanted to make sure we got a seat. 

We did not get a seat. 

At least not in front of a TV, this room was full up with reservations and other that had arrived early to claim their seats. How people make reservations, I don’t know. No listed website. No listed phone number. Clearly locals know the drill. 

Anyway, we sat outside, eating a variety of appetizers for dinner - ham croquettes, calamari, and padrón peppers. All very tasty. We washed it down with cider and a beer for Shawn. 

When the game came on at 9pm, we ‘watched’ via listening to those in the main bar. There were several moderate level cheers - which crescendoed but then abruptly fell - that suggested Spain had tried to score a goal, but not succeeded. We had not yet heard any sounds of devastation, so England had not scored. Nor had we heard any cheers jubilant enough to suggest Spain had scored a goal. As of 9:33pm, the score was still 0-0. We requested la cuenta. Settling up the bill, we peaked into the bar. No space. 

We’re going in anyway...

I didn’t get a great pic of the bar cheering/atmosphere, but Shawn posted a video of the cheering in the bar at the end of the game on Instagram if you are so inclined to check it out.

Shawn got a beer and we squeezed ourselves in amidst the masses that had congregated in the one bar in town. Which also had just one TV.  I will spare you all the details. If you care about soccer you already know the outcome and if you don’t, then you don’t really care anyway, but SPAIN WON! Obviously super exciting. We were in Ushuaia, Argentina when Argentina won the World Cup and the entire town went absolutely mad - everyone parading in the street, cars honking all day, flag flying, singing - absolute pandemonium in the streets. This win atmosphere (here in El Pito) was a scaled down version of this – more of a small town bar pandemonium - lots of cheering, some singing, kids with silly string. It was a fun time. 

And now, bedtime. Tomorrow is a long day!