Well, the festival certainly went off! Music started about midnight and continued until about 5:30 or 6:00 am – the stage was about a throw away from our room so double glazing didn’t really have an impact. They are very organized here: the music stopped and immediately they started emptying the bins and cleaning up everything. The stage was on a semi-trailer and was gone by the time we were up!
Bit tricky to get things organized for today – the forecast was for hot (high twenties) so we wanted to get away early, however breakfast was not until 9am because of the festival. Most of the supermarkets were closed yesterday for the festival but I managed to scurry around and find some yoghurt, cake, bread, cheese and ham, so we had an early breakfast and hit the road by 8am.
After the usual climb out of town, the going was very flat and mostly easy through small villages and farms until we skirted a small hill, Pico Faro, dipped down past the Rio Barayo and up again to Villapedre, where we stopped for a coffee: 12.2 kms in 3 hrs which was pretty good going. Similar countryside and good roads then through Piñera to La Colorada, a bit of a nothing town on the outskirts of Navia, where we had lunch in the shade in an old car yard! Some days there have been parks and shaded seats everywhere, but today nothing until our descent into Navia, 2kms from La Colorada.
Al’s been troubled by a big blister on the bottom of her right foot since Gijon – we picked up some better plasters on the way into town so hopefully she can recover soon!
One of the pictures show a path down off Pico Faro – it wasn’t to bad but many of the paths over the last few days (and even the whole trip) have been very boggy despite it being the end of summer – could be a very different walk in wet conditions. This one, like a couple of others, has been there long enough to become a watercourse on its own right!
Same distance as yesterday – 22kms – but a much easier walk and we were in our hotel by 2pm compared with 5:30pm yesterday (we started an hour later yesterday but still a big difference)! The hotels are a bit of a lucky dip but we got a good one today, the Palacio Arias, with a beautiful big room and balconies! Breakfast at 7:30am, so I don’t have to go shopping for it! I broke my routine and crashed out for a couple of hours before doing my washing – stuffed after two disturbed nights sleep – hopefully no party tonight!
I just ducked out to have a look at the river and got a snap of what looks like one of our surf boats, only smaller. It is a replica of an old whaling boat, which they now race.
599 kms in total now.
steelewalking 