Day 5 – Deba to Markina – Xemein

Very challenging walk today but well worth it. We hiked out of Deba fairly early to get a good start on the day (8am – very early for Spain!) with a nice walk along the river for a km or so before the normal steep ascent out of the town up to Cavario de Maria – a climb of about 200m over 5km. From there we turned inland and left the coast behind for a few days. From Calvario we continued to climb to over 300m before dropping down again into a beautiful valley and the town of Olatz. Little did we know the fun was just starting – we then climbed up over the coastal mountains out of Gipuzkoa and into Viscaya with a 5km uphill to over 500m (just a bit higher than the Petronas Towers!). The maps shows the elevation then slowly decreasing over 11km but I can assure you there were plenty more steep little tester to give us over 900m total ascent and 830m descent into Markina-Xemein where we rewarded ourselves with a few beers. This is supposed to be one of the toughest stages of the Camino and it felt like it but it was also a wonderful walk with soaring views both inland and over the ocean and villages.
For some reason I don’t understand we are booked some 3km out of town tonight so we had a bit of a struggle over the last hour to get in. I’m calling it 27kms today and now 96.4 in total!
We have learned a few things over the early stages of the trip:
We’re carrying too much – going to be jettisoning clothes at Bilbao!
What goes down inevitably has to go back up again.
Socks take two days to dry.
We wouldn’t have made it this far without the walking poles!