Day 34 - La Caridad to Ribadeo

Date: Thursday July 18

Start:  La Caridad, Asturias

End: Ribadeo, Galicia

Daily Mileage: 18.5mi (29.8km)

Total Mileage: ~402mi (~647km)

Heads up! There was an issue with our email distribution yesterday, so if you missed Day 33, you can read it here . 

Today marked our last day along the coast and our last day in Asturias, as we move into Galicia, the fourth and final region of the Camino del Norte. 

I decided to extend our time in Asturias a much as possible... more on that in a minute. 

The day started out cool and a bit overcast. Leaving our hotel in La Caridad, we backtracked a bit, walking back into town to get breakfast before heading out. (Yep, you guessed it – Spanish tortilla and coffee). 

Setting out, the first several miles of the hike were pretty boring, if I’m being honest. The route mostly worked at avoiding a highway – hiking mostly along paved side roads and a few small bits of trail and gravel road. The weed wackers were out in full force (the humans with grass trimmers, not the annoying mopeds), showing the weeds who was boss.

As an illustration of the ‘meh’ sort of morning hiking we had: I typically take a ton of pictures, but throughout the first seven miles of the hike, I snapped only six photos. A tree-lined road, a funny character with a buen camino sign set up on someone’s lawn, a church, a bit of trail carpeted in dried leaves, a mural along a cattle yard, and a few cows. 

The cattle yard confinement building had a large mural with cows painted on it, along with the words “Vaca Si, Oro No” - Cows Yes, Gold No. Not far down from this mural, there was less sophisticated spray painting that simply said NO MINAS  - No mines. Clearly a statement against mining in the area. 

For the last couple of days, Shawn and I have sent pictures of cows to our youngest niece back in Iowa. She is part of a program where she is ‘raising’ a young calf. She gave her calf the name Reeses. This in mind, we have been sending pictures of cows, giving them other candy/treat names. Yesterday, Shawn sent a picture of ‘Snickers and Gummy Bear’. Today I sent another one: 

Oreo, Butterfinger, and Twinkie

While the walk wasn’t all that interesting, my morning was soon preoccupied with the realization that I’d left my headphones behind at the hotel. Since the hike was fairly boring pretty early on, about two miles in, I decided I’d listen to a podcast, but my headphones weren’t in their usual pocket.

I took my pack off and searched in other pockets. Nothing. 

Catching up to Shawn down the road, I let him know they were missing and we stopped so I could create a bit of a road side yard sale, emptying the contents of my pack on the side of the road – just to make absolutely sure I didn’t have them. Still MIA. 

Shawn messaged the hotel and soon enough they replied that they had found them. I had actually left them in the lobby area when we were checking in last night, but since they were on a small side table, they hadn’t noticed them until now. 

Anyway, we were now over three miles into the hike and we weren’t turning around. We were also kind of in the middle of nowhere until we reached the first major town of the morning: Tapia de Casariego. We let the hotel know that when we reached town we’d look into getting a cab/bus back to La Caridad. 

If they were just cheap headphones, I wouldn’t have even bothered. I’d just pick up a new pair. But they were actually relatively spendy ones - the Open Run Pro by Shokz, bone conduction headphones that wrap around your head and sit on the bones in front of your ear rather than in your ear. I’ve always hated having headphones/ear plugs/etc. in my ears, so these headphones were great. I could also listen to music/podcasts while still being able to hear my surroundings, another plus when you are hiking along a variety of roads. 

By the time we were hiking into Tapia de Casariego, the skies had cleared and were now a beautiful light blue. Soft wispy clouds glowed under the sun along the rocky shoreline. It was a bit of coastal magic after several rather boring miles. 

In town, we went looking for a taxi. It was around 11am as we hiked in and we knew there was a bus back to La Caridad around 11:42am, but if we could find a taxi to take us there and back that would be much faster. Though we walked around to a few different ‘taxi stand’ areas, none of them had actual drivers in cabs waiting for customers. At one taxi stand there were names and numbers on a sign on the wall. We tried a couple but weren’t having any luck getting the numbers to go through. Eventually, we gave up and went to the bus stop. 

The bus to La Caridad took less than twenty minutes. That’s right...  

Dropped in the town center, we made the quick walk back to our hotel, where the friendly owner once again greeted us asking if we wanted any cold drinks. A beer? A soda? This time we declined, taking the headphones and heading back to the bus stop. If we couldn’t get a taxi in Tapia, it seemed unlikely that we would find one in La Caridad, which was much smaller. 

A bus back to Tapia de Casariego wasn’t scheduled to come through until a little after 1pm, so we had just under an hour to kill. With the bit of spare time we’d had back in Tapia, we’d picked up a grocery store lunch, which we now sat to eat the bus stop. 

We’d picked up simple sandwich stuffs, fruit, and chips. The meat we’d grabbed wasn’t that great though, not rotten, but just kind a cheap sandwich meat that reminded me a little of the Oscar Meyer bologna. I made due anyway, but Shawn decided to head up the street to the supermarket to find something better. 

Less than two minutes later, he came hurrying back. “I found a taxi that can take us back to Tapia for 12 Euro.” I quickly threw our lunch stuffs back into the grocery bag and we hurried back up the hill to the taxi.  Who knew what luck a little bad sandwich meat would bring.

In ten minutes, we were back in Tapia. 

We sat in the main plaza, eating our picnic stuffs, before setting out. Kids played in a small playground at one end of the park. The lovely stone town hall sat at the other end. A statue of Fernando Fernández Casariego, part of the town’s namesake, stood in the center of the plaza. 

It was a bummer that we’d added a couple of hours to an already long day, but as our last day along the sea, we set out to enjoy the coastal walk to Ribadeo.

Like so many other cities and towns along the northern coastline, Tapia de Casariego has a long history as a fishing village. We started our walk along the port, following along the coastal paths along the edges of the city, which weaved past the port and several stunning beaches with crystal clear turquoise water. We can only hope to find a beach this spectacular in Ribadeo. 

Piscina de Agua Salada (Salt Water Pool)

Winding around Playa Aguileiro, we followed roadways to a coastal alternative route to Ribadeo. While two different mapping apps offered up coastal routes to Ribadeo, I had actually found a third variant on All Trails that hugged the coast even closer in some areas, which only seemed right on our last day of coastal walking. 

And so, we wound down gravel roads and over grass tracks, stomped in with use. We walked along fields and through a bit of forest. Not all of the trail was directly along the coast, but there were large portions that marched us along the rocky coastline and above/along/by beautiful beaches.

Somewhere along here, I rolled my ankle and fell to the ground. Despite being a landing of grass and weeds, I somehow managed to crack my phone screen (just the protective cover). It seems like it takes a special kind of finesse to crack you phone in grass. At your service... 

(It also takes a special kind of finesse to roll one’s ankles as much as I seem to, but they are always fine. In case you were worried...)

About halfway through our jaunt, the route curved down by a busy beach, where there was a small beach bar/cafe set up. We sidled up to the bar for a couple of agua con gas and frozen treats. Shawn had what was essentially an off-brand MAXBON bar while I went for a lime freeze pop. Rehydrated, we continued on. 

Somewhere along this next section, we made an error. 

Have you ever been following directions and the map tells you to go one way, but you can clearly see that there is a different route that makes more sense? Well this is what we thought we saw on the map. Instead of going inland and then back out to the coast later, as the route showed, we could clearly see that the map had another trail that just stuck along the coastline. This made more sense, right? We could just stick along the coastline. 

Not too bad yet... 

Well, sometimes there are reasons why certain routes are not ‘the way’, and we found this out when – in order to make our brilliant plan work – we had to hike through a long patch of thorns and thistles, our legs getting cut and scraped to bits, like Peter Rabbit in the briar patch. At one point I had to reverse, because my leg was actually stuck in thorns. 

This is all spiky thorny branches. 

When we finally emerged from the mess of thorny bushes, our legs were scraped and bloodied. So the map was right... that is not a very good route. 

Surveying the damage later in the hotel.

Luckily, the remainder of the afternoon was less eventful. We weaved along along the coast on mostly tame gravel roads, Ribadeo eventually coming into view across the inlet. 

Passing more beaches and beautiful turquoise waters, we made our way to the very long A-8 highway bridge which, while carrying heavy traffic, also had pedestrian walkways separated out on each side of the bridge. Crossing over the Ria de Ribadeo (also called the Ria de Eo), we left Asturias and entered Galicia. 

Other interesting things happened at this junction. If you looked at the map, more beaches on this side of the river were labeled with the Portuguese word for beach, “Praia”, vs “Playa” in Spanish. And, as we made our way through Ribadeo, we would continue to see a combination of both languages. Galicia actually has its own language (beyond Spanish), which I don’t know much about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is quite a bit of Portuguese influence.

At the western side of the bridge, we exited the pedestrian walkway, weaving under the bridge overpass and around the streets that passed over Ribadeo’s port. The town of Ribadeo itself is built into the mountainside, meaning that there are some significantly steep inclines and staircases throughout the city. Weaving our way around the coastline and up into the central area of the city, it seemed like we were trying to find a number of these. 

Eventually, we hit flat road once again through the center of town, walking by the Plaza de España and down a lively pedestrian corridor toward our hotel. 

Arriving after 5pm, it had felt like a very long day. After getting ourselves cleaned up and relaxing for a while, we did finally peel ourselves off the bed and out once more for dinner. Here, Shawn made the mistake of ordering a ‘medio’ (half) cochopo, only to find out – once it arrived at our table – that it would feed four people. I helped him out a little bit, but had my own dinner to attend to. It only seemed right to kick off our entrance into Galicia with Zanburiñas, tasty Galician scallops. 

After dinner, we took care of rest day chores early, heading to a laundromat around the corner to make everything fresh and clean once again. However short lived this may be. 

We topped off the evening with a bit of ice cream and were all too happy to climb into bed. Looking forward to tomorrow’s much needed rest day!