Day 18 – Unquera to Llanes

Very long walk today! We got away to a bit of a late start (about 10 to 9am) and crossed the Rio Deva into Asturias, the 3rd autonomous region of Spain that we will travel through (we’ve already travelled through the Basque Country and Cantabria and will finish in Galicia). As usual we climbed up out of the river valley into Colombres and then had a mixture of countryside and stunning coastal walking into Buelna for morning tea after about 9 or 10 kms.
After a short walk to Pendueles we turned off the Camino o not the GR E 9 as suggested by our guidebook. The book calls it a “… more pleasant option…” than the more inland Camino but although we were close to the coast we barely saw it: the path was a dusty dirt track with lots of people, cyclists and even cars and was the longest 8.5 kms we’ve walked – after a brief break at the Rio Purdón we finally arrived at Andrín for a two beer lunch at about 2:30pm. After Andrín we once again took the guide book’s advice to take the GR E 9 which was very scenic but again was a hot dusty track alongside a golf course that seemed to veer away for our destination, Llanes, before taking a sharp right and heading into town. We arrived pretty knackered just before 6pm after a walk that seemed a lot longer that the advertised 26kms. We fell into some of the previously mentioned traps – not enough protein for breakfast and too few stops – but we have a rest day tomorrow to recover! 382kms in total now and getting close in days and kms to half way (I have not mentioned before but despite the occasional gripes we are really enjoying the walk and have booked 5 additional days and 111kms to go to Finisterre and Muxia!)!