Another great day today, this time under clear blue skies! The forecast was for a cool start of 13 c warming up to 20 c with clouds all day so we waited around for breakfast at 8am and got away at about 8:30am with the sun already warm. Because we are walking east to west, we spend most of the day with the sun behind us then slowly coming up on our left. Today the breeze was in our face all day, so the perfect combination of sun on our backs and a cool breeze in our face all day!
We wasted no time getting lost today: right from the get go it seemed like, although we were following the shells and arrows, we were on a different track to the one in the guide book. This was especially true of the first 4 hours where we seemed to take forever to get to our first stop, Soto de Luiña. We had planned to stop for a coffee only but we were so late getting there we made it lunch. Bit of a translation error – I ordered a tortilla expecting about an 1/8th which we normally get and ended up with a whole one!
We crossed about 7 rivers or brooks today, all of which involved an descent from the ridge down to the river then back up. One of the photos shows a couple of viaducts going over the second (and largest) river – when we got to the bottom I said to Al, that highway is a bloody long way up: half an hour later we were looking down on it!
A beer at each of Novellana and Santa Martin, then one last river crossing to get to Ballota about 5pm – a great day with a mix of ocean and valley views and lots of dappled paths through forests. 25kms today and 555kms so far…
steelewalking 