Working on It

Days 17-19

Etapas 12-14: Noja, Santander, Santillana del Mar, Comillas

After a quick visit from my sister, I was back following the yellow blazes. It was so nice to see familiar faces and just relax by the beach for a day. I felt a little homesick starting hiking again. I was even thinking that I could just go back to Madrid now, travel more, do something else with my final month in Europe other than hike all day. I’m maybe hitting a slump.

The excitement of the first two weeks on the Camino is starting to wear off. Or, maybe, I’m just transitioning back to being on the trail until I finish–nothing specific to look forward to. It’s funny–when I ran into my friend I met the first night on the Camino again, she said she’d also been feeling homesick and a bit of a lack of spark to continue. 

I realized that part of this feeling was coming from this section of the Camino following a lot of roads. The first two weeks were very mountain-heavy, lots of ocean views, and trails through the woods. Some of these sections through larger cities have much more sprawl and more paved surfaces the Camino follows. I think Cantabria generally just had a road-heavy Camino section. Kind of a bummer as a “hike.”

Heading back out

Starting in Noja and ending in Santander is almost 34km. My sister and her boyfriend are heading back to Madrid, so they’re dropping me off on their way. I’ve got some big miles to do today. After taking a zero day here in Noja and nero in Bilbao, I want to catch back up with the people I was hiking with last week. I’ve also got to pick up the pace a bit to make my timeline and flight back to the US in June.

I’m sure everything evens out at the end of the Camino, with 4 weeks left I will likely run into some familiar faces again, but I don’t want to fall too far behind. I struggle with that sometimes–this competition I’ve created to catch back up with people I was hiking with, stay ahead of people I’ve passed that day, crush the miles to have more time to relax in town rather than enjoying the hike, but what’s the rush?

I got dropped off at a yellow blaze outside of Noja, giving me a 5km head start to the day. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the difference between 18 miles and 21 miles. The Camino was very road-heavy this morning going through Güemes and other towns. (Here’s a pic my sister took of me when they dropped me off).

I cut back onto the coastal route to get to Somo where I could take the ferry to Santander. This gave me a bit of a break from the pavement. The trail hugged the rocky coast and gave gorgeous views of the ocean and beaches below. There were tons of surfers out. The Camino arrived at a beach where I stopped and finished a marble cake for lunch. Afterwards, I walked down the rest of the beach to wait for the ferry over to Santander. This is the first beach I’ve been on in Spain that has shells! I picked up two small ones to keep with me for the rest of my hike.

I walked through Santander’s main center after taking the ferry and resisted the urge to shop. It’s not like I’ll be wearing clothes other than hiking clothes in the next month and I’d have to carry anything I bought with me. Spain just has exceptional shopping, everyone is so fashionable–even just to walk their dog. 

Santander has an airport and the city is about ⅓ of the way through the Camino, so it’s another common spot for people to begin or end their section hikes. I saw quite a few hikers in town today.

It’s a Sunday following a holiday weekend and the only open dinner option around me was a Peruvian-Chinese fusion spot. I got some vegetable noodles and a giant spring roll for dinner, delicious.

I slept super well in Santander after my near-20 mile day. I woke up around 7am to start my trek to Santillana del Mar. It was extremely cloudy and cold today. I was back to hiking in my pants and even a jacket after a few days in shorts. The clouds were giving the promise of rain at any moment, and I hoped it wasn’t until after I arrived at my destination.

I took the train out of Santander this morning. I didn’t want to walk through the city, and I’d heard that leaving Santander via the Camino followed a busy road. After the busy road, the official Camino route even has you get on the train to ride 2 stops past this cliff that just has old railroad tracks to cross it–sketch. Because of this (validating myself), I took the train a few towns outside of Santander to start walking today. 

I made it to the train station, bought my ticket, and got through the entry machine just in time to run on the train as the doors were closing. The train was a nice 30 min ride which gave me time to catch up on listening to voice messages I hadn’t gotten a chance to listen to yet.

Even though I tried to skip the sketchy road part of the Camino today, I still had to walk mostly on or next to roads. Some of the Camino had large sidewalks which were nice. The ground was pretty wet and slick, but also covered in snails and slugs. It felt like a minefield trying to avoid crushing any of these little guys.

I arrived to Santillana del Mar around 12pm, got a coffee and chocolate croissant, and waited for the albergue to open. I did get caught in some rain earlier–not enough to pull out my poncho, but I did walk with my pack cover and umbrella up for about an hour. 

This albergue is an old converted convent and is super nice. There’s a large common space downstairs, big kitchen (with a fun, yellow Smeg fridge), and gorgeous garden out back. There’s a patio with tables and chairs to sit on and bask in the sun. The rain stopped for long enough to sit outside and catch up with my friend. It’s back to overcast now and I’m in all of my layers in the drafty building. The rooms are all doubles, so it’s just my friend and me tonight–no snorers!

Two nuns come over every night to this albergue to lead an optional pilgrim’s blessing. We all sat in a circle and they started by having us share our names, where we were from, and anything we wanted to share about our Camino (in our native languages). There were tons of different languages spoken, but the nuns gave all the instructions and explanations in Spanish, English, and French–impressive. After the introductions, they described the building and how it had been renovated to an albergue in 2016. We concluded with singing songs and them leading us in various prayers (in Spanish). It was a sweet evening and a reminder that, for others or the people that are a part of the Camino along the way, this can be a religious experience.

I slept great. The bed was comfortable, the room was private, and the view from our window was gorgeous. We took our time to leave because today we planned to visit the famous Cave of Altamira. It’s about a 30 min walk in the other direction of the Camino. They didn’t open until 9:30, so we didn’t want to leave Santillana del Mar until 9 which was conveniently when the albergue wanted us out.

The walk felt short and the museum was nice. They recreated a cave and the paintings to better preserve the original but allow people to still experience it. Once we were there, I vaguely remembered learning about these cave paintings in AP art history in high school. 

We spent about an hour at the museum, then walked back to Santillana del Mar. It was about 11am when we headed out to make positive progress on the Camino today. Just as we were leaving, my friend checked her email and found out she had gotten into her master’s program! Exciting start to our hike for the day. 

The trail followed back farm roads today. We passed tons of pastures and had to dodge plenty of livestock and horse poop. It started sprinkling rain so we covered our packs and enjoyed the light misting, but quickly, it turned into real rain. I put my poncho on and the wind was blowing, hard. We endured this for about 45 minutes before the clouds magically disappeared and we had blue skies again. 

We both admitted to eachother that during that 45 minutes (of near-silence between us) we were both thinking about how easy it would be to get off the Camino and be in a warm, dry apartment in our respective home bases. The rain didn’t return for the rest of the day, so those thoughts left and didn’t come back. (Here’s me smiling through the pain right before the rain stopped).

We happened upon a pasture with a mom and baby horse sitting close to the fence. The baby was wet and its fur and tail were extra curly. We couldn’t tell if it looked like that from being outside in the rain this morning, or if it was a fresh newborn. The mom was laying next to her baby and turned over on her side, squirting milk all over her own face and the baby. I love maternity in the wild. We watched these horses for at least 20 minutes, enjoying drying out in the sunshine. 

We continued onto Comillas to the albergue for the evening. This one was a bit fancier than the others. We weren’t allowed to put our packs on the bed (standard) or use or own sleep systems (abnormal). Fine by me, the comforter on the bed was bright white and plush. Honestly the bed was super comfortable and one of the best nights of sleep I’ve had in an albergue so far. I was on a top bunk and forgot to put all my stuff back down in my bag before the lights went out, so it was up in my bunk for the evening.

The albergue was busy. There was a full set-up in the kitchen, so everyone was taking advantage of the stove, microwaves, pots and pans this evening. It was crowded. I started early in the Camino season, but I feel like the trail is getting more and more crowded. I started off with less mileage each day, and I am only now kind of speeding up to 15-20 mile days. I’ve been told the Camino gets more crowded the closer you get to Santiago too, lots of section hikers want to get from their respective point A to Santiago.

Tomorrow I’ll leave Cantabria and head into Asturias. This is the 3rd of 4 provinces I’ll go through!

Keep Moving, by: Maggie Smith

“Accept that you may have to break on the way to wholeness, as counterintuitive as that sounds. Think of it as a reassembling. You will not be the same, you will not be unscarred, but you will be better than before. Keep moving.”

It’s hard to go through transitions, loss, change. I’m lucky to be working on my reassembling out here on the Camino. The big personal loss I experienced over the past several months shook me. I am grateful to have people around me that helped care for me and hold me up on my way back to wholeness. I certainly feel like I have lots of scars, but scars are pretty cool. I don’t quite feel better than before yet, but I’m working on it. 

xo