It was a long day. (I think I have said that a few times already.) Nineteen miles to the hotel, which is over a mile outside of the town, and not only outside the town, on a highway that does not have a shoulder but does have narrow lanes. Annoying and dangerous. This is a town that definitely has places to stay. What was the tour company thinking? The hotel itself is basic, with a traveling salesman kind of vibe and convenient parking, which adds to the traveling salesman vibe. They even play cringy music in the most sterile lobby you ever saw. Although absolutely nothing is going on here, there is not a soul around, the woman at reception is engrossed in her computer.
The location is not a disaster for me for two reasons: 1) there is a supermarket, by the cute name of Masymas (More and More) next door and not a bad one except that they were really low on greens. And before going on to the next reason, I have to tell you about an oddity of that super. After you get your basket, and head to the produce, what display is first, and not featured as a special, but first? Cat food! At first I thought, OK, I will pick up tuna before heading to the lettuce, but, no, it was not the white, North Sea, packed in olive oil variety. It had little kitten faces on the tins. 2) Tomorrow is a "rest day" so I am going to do a chunk of Wednesday´s walk, scope out the town, for which excitement I had not desire today, and take a taxi the next morning to where I leave off: in a town by the name of Celorio.
The guidebook promised a relief from the pavement today, and indeed it was so.
But not completely:
There were choices for several segments: beautiful but more difficult and longer, cliff side, or, by the road. For choice # 1 I opted for the beauty. As I was trying to figure out the path (unsigned), a trio of women showed up and even though the "path" did not conform to the apps instruction—that happens—it had to be right for if one took seriously the admonitions such as "you are off the path. The path is 70 feet to your right," you would be in the sea or at the bottom of a gulley. I thought I would follow these women but it was clear that they didn´t want a hanger-on, so I forged on ahead. As varied and lovely as the walking was,
it was also a lot longer than the beside-the-road variant, that and that it was remote, not a formed path, and completely unsigned was a bit unnerving. When it came time for choice # two, I opted out of gorgeous because it was much much much longer than the straight shot. Think of a giant omega and you will get the picture. (There was more to it than that, but that is enough chit-chat.) I looked back, and wouldn´t you know that the trio of women also made the same choice.
There was much variety in the day´s exertions. Here is a nice wide track, exactly the kind that tour companies use to promote their tours! Just sick a couple of people with backpacks on a sunny day on that there track and you have your add.
One comes to a wooden bridge:
Upstairs Downstairs:
Cow scratching an itch:
One of the reasons the mileage was so high is that toward the end there was another choice and this time I again opted for the longer, prettier route. Gee, I wonder why I did not see a soul on it! Not only was it long, it had an enormous amount of elevation. Climb after climb after climb after climb to give you an aerial view of the city. And this is at noon, not 9:00 a.m! At least it was cool and cloudy. But it seemed to go on f o r e v e r. Pulling into town, I espied an heladeria (ice cream stand) and got a crema asturiana, which is vanilla with a brown sugar swirl running through it. Just the ticket!
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