A section of the route to Santiago de Compastella – through Lebanon province

We continue on from inn to inn: Casa Tollo to Casa Oso is 14.5 kilometer. Don’t even bother to convert to miles. It is a very long day. We get confused finding the first part of the trail; at midday, I find I am climbing an extra mountain, and by late afternoon it is a crazy traverse through a wide unmarked field where Michael and I find the muddy sections. As we descend through the apparently uninhabited village of Cosgaya, it is one more kilometer down to turn left into the front entrance of Casa Oso, “Bear House”, our third hotel, This means that the next morning after breakfast, thankfully served early at 8 am, we will be turning right to a first ascent!

After this hamlet, I’ll take a wrong turn for a few kilometers up the wrong mountain, but I see from the app how to drop down to be ahead of the others!

We were a muddied, tired, and windblown couple after a beautiful trek. (Sandy & Ellie made much better time than we did today.) Our disarray is a stark contrast to the manicured entry, the nicest one so far. In sock feet we shuffle our way to the second floor, dropping very dirty clothes in a heap in a corner before a hot shower. Yes, it is a relief that restores us; a lovely dinner, nice white wine, a soft bed with a warm cover and the soothing rush from the river pour in through an open window. I am feeling particularly grateful for first class on the trail. Our boots are returned cleaned up thanks to the attentive, but furiously busy attendant who calmly found a plastic bag to store them. (Make up your own picture of this!)

This morning’s breakfast is an enormous buffet of choices and the coffee from the worst coffee maker ever designed, ubiquitous in Europe, the Nespresso. At least thIs one actually makes some dark liquid stuff!

Off we go, daypacks laden with tap water, (safe and tasty right from the tap) picnic sandwiches of ham and cheese between large white roll. These we transfer immediately from the unnecessary gold paper bags they have just dropped the sandwiches into. This bulk doesn’t stuff well in day packs that need to carrying extra layers for sun, rain, cold and what ever blows at us. A piece of fruit is a miracle. A piece of chocolate would have been, too. It’s fine, it’s fine.

My blisters are not a topic for mealtime conversation, but while I have you here on the page, let me suggest to any hikers a new type of flexible bandaid called Nexit. Also, pack in the suitcase an extra pair of old favorite boots. I had my Ahnu’s that became a game changer.  (The company was sold to TEVA but no longer the same!). No more rubbing thanks to these same old reliables that had taken me over the Torres del Paine in Patagonia, through the Rockies, around and about the Berkshires, and now these Picos de Europa. Boots and bandaids!

The paths are usually dirt roads. Narrow trails begin higher in the mountains with thin signs to mark which way is which. Hmmm. Most of the time they are helpful. Many times the historic ones are extremely weathered.

See the black flecks on the field? Goats.

Cows and sheep of all colors, goats and strong healthy horses dot the landscape. Some are near farms, visibly fenced. Others seem to be left to roam, though it is early in the season. Most stock are brought up after June 1st when their young are raised and ready.

Still iin the field in town; maybe a dozen calves with their mothers here.

New life!

Hiking – one step at a time is the cliche after 12 or 15 thousand of them. A numbing takes place. The energy is directed to the legs, the lungs. The pump system, the heart, pulses fuel through the streams and canyons of the muscles circulating oxygen where it is needed; a miraculous process. My brain just carried on relaxed, up here for the ride.

Michael in his own time and place

When legs get truly sore, the  best strategy is to rest ‘em, add a sip of water, a bite of chocolate, pause for the views, take a close up pix of new plantings, pause for the expansive vista, look back to reflect.  Then it’s onward like a new day is just beginning.

Thankfully, most trail of this trail is relatively stable underfoot. Hours of views of green pastures, gravel roads, abandoned villages, one with the”for sale” sign has me amused. Fun, I think to myself, I’ve found my next fixer-upper. Heck with a castle I saw in France; let’s go for a whole village in northern Spain!

Large goat on the left (looked like a yak to me!) is the billy goat, luckily very shy!

At one point, my reverie is interrupted by a large van full of birdwatchers that appear on the far side of another abandoned hamlet at a paved road access. I had not seen or noticed paved roads before. The “watchers” are trying to see birds behind the new leaves that we have watched spring forth on all the trees. 3 days ago, as we began our trek, the view was open. Amazing to be able to watch the spring leaves grow right in front of our eyes.

One of the bird watchers comes up to me to ask, “Where are the people here?” “ Well you are the first I have seen”, I reply. Their tour guide is quickly herding this one back to his flock to focus on the leaves, I mean birds. It’s true that we saw no other people on the trail for most of the 8 days. Exception: at the parador in Fuente De, where large groups of travelers had rebooked past tours at the large hotel. We found motorcyclists, a group from Great Britain, and the 4 of us!

Tomorrow, we will be in Fuente De, the fountain or spring of the De River…..one step at a time!

Potes & Porcida & Descent to Casa Oso

Side street in Potes. Flowers blooming in pots of all shapes are everywhere…

By lunch time on Day One, the town of Potes looks great! We descend from the worn dirt trail to the first asphalt road to the square with church, castle, bridge over a river: yes the most beautiful Pueblo in Spain just like the sign says.

It is remarkable how few people we see!.

Tourist in front of castle..

Good bye Potes! (See it down there?)

We will arc up and down a couple more mountains at the 45 degrees you see in this picture. The altitude graph below is deceptive, but still helpful. See those little wiggly lines? It’s lungs and legs, repeat, lungs and legs.

This forecast for our trek comes in an odd shaped green notebook that MP has room for….dangling preposition.

Later today, spread out on the path from the others, I find myself in the midst of an empty village. (They turn up in 15 minutes, ahead of me, just around the corner.)

Hello Porcida, a pretty little village completely abandoned. A “For Sale” and telephone number is scrawled on a beam over one of the doors. Great fun to imagine this place alive and restored. Only a 6 hour trek from nowhere. It may take a while to promote, but looks like this guy is trying it on… about to move in?

I will spare you the day by day blow by blow of every step I took. But there comes a settling in, a rhythmic pacing between steps and breath and the brain on a long trek. All systems in the body stay in motion. It is actually very soothing, meditative.

We are each keenly aware by late afternoon that we must cross the town of Tollo before we arrive at the Casa for tonight. It is a very long 3 more kilometers. We are simply thrilled to be at the second inn after a first hiking day. Bags arrived! The hostess is effervescent to see us. Mui candsada, si si. Her gardens are lovely, manicured, but it is still very early for blooms. We are So tired I have no pictures. We are the only ones staying here, the first of the season. except at the parador.

This low brick building was a monastery according to a sign we find on the other side of this valley where those dark green trees are….farther down the path.

The Wikiloc app downloaded to each of our cell phones drains their batteries, but in the mornings, it usually works pretty well, hmm, or until it turns itself off or it looses the trail!

Day 2 Tollo to Casa Oso turns into the longest of the trip – especially for me! To start, we spend an hour trekking back and forth losing the trail right out the front door of the posada. Later in the day, I end up way off course. While chugging up one more extra “mountain”, my back pocket sounds off. I hear “you have lost the trail!” My app had shut off, then turned itself back on. So, with a few grumbles, I find a short cut I remembered passing that drops straight off the mountain back down a goat path to a ridge to a lower path.

Ellie in the morning identifying more plants..

Meanwhile, the other 3 stop for lunch, enjoy a nice 30 minute rest. Michael texts me while they decide to move on instead of wait any longer (our basic agreement). They come into their next village where I have already arrived, found the ubiquitous water trough, learned from a local farmer how to disconnect the faucet to work the spigot for the best water. My very tired feet are up! Sandy and Ellie are so surprised to see me that they don’t recognize me! It will not be a long rest. Soon I resume my slower paced zone at the back of the line, but this one was luckily fun and funny!

These old sign posts show up on occasion offering a little history about the trails, if they are still readable. Many are badly weather worn. Luckily we have other resources!.

This is the District of Liebana or Lebanon. Peoples here cooperated with the Basques, never assimilating with Moors nor the Romans who they fought off for decades. It is their sheep trails and cork trees we see. And their farms. What an experience!

Most villages have asphalt roads now over ancient rock walled thoroughfares.

Stay to left on the field?? resume trail at the barn at the lower end of field…

This glorious view belies the incredible end-of-the-day descent down, over, across the “last field” on the trail. They said it was “not marked”. By contrast to what it looks like, our steep zig zagging boots waded through pot holed mud and poison oak. Cows hooves settle sink into this soft turf. How strong their legs must be. Michael’s foot disappears up to his knew, he looses his boot! Mine is almost as bad to my ankle. We are a muddy mix by the lower left of this pix.

It is 2 hours later when we trek up to the front door of Casa Oso, the nicest hotel I have seen since Bilbao. I hail a bellman who quickly finds us a plastic bag for boots! We are too late/tired to get a swim, or play tennis (!) but find plenty of time for a good hot shower and a meal! What a day. We sleep with windows wide open to hear a river rushing by. We will be crossing that bridge tomorrow. Until then, Thanks for reading!

All sorts of company on the trails – no other hikers in either direction….

We drive from Bilbao to the inn at our first trailhead in the town of Cabezon. The freeway from the city turns into a narrow road meandering along a river between an uneven railing and a stone cliff that almost scraping off the rear view mirror. Alex, our guide for the drive and “orientation” manages to maintain a breathtaking speed on these, his, roads. “I’ve lived in these mountains my whole life. My kid goes to a little school with not to many others and my wife…” It is raining. We don’t see any views, but the inn keeper is all smiles. We are the first trekkers for the season – May 1st!

Alex sits us around a large table in the “bar” opening up two large topographical maps he had for us to carry. Orange marker lines highlight our trail. There are a couple of “extra optional routes” in addition to the 10 miles expected each day. Maybe not, I think. The elevations are spelled out in a small wire waterproof (luckily) booklet one of us will carry. We expect 2300 meters up, 2600 down, not all in a row. It will be up, down up, down. Can we do it? Well, here I am. I am glad to say now – yes we did!

Alex isn’t done yet. He brings out his own phone, opens to the app he emailed to us for our own phones to download back when we had strong wifi in the city. (I have the wrong app!) He tries to explain, but hours later we are/I am still heads down. Patiently Alex takes each of our phones to set them up. My wrong app has recorded my “trek” since I left Bilbao. I have gone 120 miles. All my local trails are gone. I turn it off, delete the app, reload with name and password. Oh I am tired now – for sure.

Our first meal, we choose the “typical local plate” as Sra smiles gently, again. After a yummy salty thin noodle soup, a huge plate of garbanzo beans with pieces of cow bacon , stew meat and sausage arrives for each of us followed by a big bowl of flan. The red wine we order washes it down – and lots of water right from the tap. Anything green here? Chalk it up to carb-loading.

Our luggage will travel first class on this trip – inn to inn; it’s an option to join them.

By morning, skies are clear to reveal snow capped ranges in 3 directions right from the futon feather bed. Hikers have stayed here for 30 years with Lucille,I learn her name by now, the proprietor, a grandmother, offering dinner at 9 and breakfast at 9. She runs the two story house as if we are family who will all be here over holidays.

For breakfast, as we are eager to get on the trail, Sra. is flexible, serving us by 8:30. Toast, white cake in packets, apple fritters with sugar that look like curled pancakes and thin coffee. We fill our water bottles from the tap to wash down more carbs.

Our boots newly tied over new socks, hiking polls out of the suitcase with day packs carrying extra warmth and rain gear (for good luck), sunblock, hat, etc. etc. I wear a waist pack – no shoulder weight for me!

Ready, set, GO!

OK – a selfie! Sorry!

Trail out of the town is really beautiful climb to a long stretch thru fields and forests.

Hard to leave this first farm – all of this belongs to the Sra at the Posada.

First day – finding heather growing along the shepherds’ paths. Ellie & Sandy check out flora and fauna everywhere. Gentle start.

All sorts of farm animals along the way, but rarely do we see any people! Cows and horses wear thick leather collars with cow bells that resonate across the fields. Soothing.

All week we find the fences & gates are rewired plastic rope that tie to something!

At one turn, we find goats, too, including this large male billy goat with horns in the shadow on the lower left! He is just as skittish as his family, so there is no issue.

Large goat on the left (looked like a yak to me!) is the billy goat, luckily very shy!

Sometimes a cow or horse will come up to their fence for a short conversation – I wish I had a full pocket of carrots! (for me, too!)

Still in the field in town; maybe a dozen calves with their mothers here.

We are in Potes actually earlier than lunchtime (2 pm!) but Casa Cuyo takes us in, serving us a drink, then at the stroke of the hour, out come pre-ordered salads. An unforgettable meal. Energized, we focus for a long haul to Casa Tolle – posada dos!