Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

[peregrina2000]

I walked the norte in May and have finally figured out how to put the pictures on the web. You can see them at
http://picasaweb.google.com/laurie.reyn ... DELNORTE07

I'm also happy to answer any questions people might have.

[rioja routard]

I really loved your pictures.

The Camino del Norte is fascinating me. It looks so picturesque skirting the coast and it seems so remote and empty of the hoards. Some of the views appear breathtaking. After reading the 'Emily on the way' blog I really fancy doing this Camino. If I go again then this is surely on my wish list.

Is is easy to follow the arrows, is the way well marked?

Are there many albergues on the way?

These questions have probably already been answered via the forum so I will search and look. I visited Getaria last March so I have an idea of the area between San Sebastian and Bilbao.

Thanks for sharing your wonderful walk with such excellent pictures

[Chev.Jerry]

Laurie,
I loved your pictures, thank you so much for sharing. I know there is quite a story that goes with them.
Jerry

[lynnejohn]

Thanks for posting these stunning pictures! They are so unlike everything I had heard about Norte. I had heard that very little of the trail was along the ocean, which seems to be untrue. We were considering Norte but along with the above, heard that the ups and downs were exceedingly difficult and frequent. Did you find this true (the pictures seem to bear this out) - and how does it compare to other caminos in terms of difficulty? Were the etapas long or was there accommodation at reasonable intervals?

Thanks again for sharing these pictures/memories.

Peace.

lynne

[peregrina2000]

Here's a copy of an email I sent to a friend who asked about our etapas and lodging. Hope this helps everyone, and I will answer the specific questions later today or tomorrow. Laurie

Albergue in Irun. Opens at 4 p.m., very nice.

Irun-San Sebastian 25 km (stayed in pension b/c albergue is out of town).

San Sebastian to Zarautz (20 km). Well this was one of those silly days. A man Jose Mari who has a little "information kiosk" for pilgrims right outside of San Sebastian told us that we really should stay at the albergue in Orio. We did, and it's really nice, private run by a woman who has walked, it's right in her house, in what used to be a garage. Nice new bathrooms, small number of beds. But that was such a short walk that, at his advice, we walked on to Zarautz and then took the bus back to Orio, and repeated the process (took the bus back to Zarautz) the next day. Silly, but we did it.

Zarautz to Deba (22 km). Again we stayed in a pension. There is an albergue but when we got there it was almost full and it is very very tiny, with three beds on top of each other and absolutely no room. Pension was right on the beach, very reasonable, and it was a nice evening spent in cafes next to the water.

Deba to the monastery at Cernautza (28 km). The monastery has sleeping room for about 14 people, but there is a HUGE private albergue nearby. It wasn't open when we were there. The monastery was full about two hours after we arrived. The priests serve an evening meal and breakfast, but we really should have brought some food with us.

Cernauzza to Gernika (20 km) nice albergue but doesn't open till 3 pm

Gernika to Sta. Maria de Lezama (28 km). Some people stayed in the school on the floor. I went to a hotel rural and paid 38 euros. http://www.ruralmatsa.com (it has both a "casa rural" and "hotel rural" and the casa is much cheaper, though I'm not sure what the difference is).

Lezama to Portugalete (32 km). Walking through Bilbao and through a very industrial, ugly part to Barracaldo, and then on through Sestao (where we walked through a scary site with a 6 or 7 story building that had been abandoned and was being occupied by families and lots of men. Looked like some not so good things were happening there, we saw a couple of fancy new BMWs come down and quickly leave, so we assumed there were drugs involved). Portugalete is actually the last stop on the Bilbao metro line and we met others who instead of taking the roundabout way we did, just walked straight from Bilbao to Portugalete, which is probably 15 km (?). There is no albergue here, though.

Portugalete to Castro Urdiales (27 km). Last 9 km on the highway. A long slog. There is a detour possibility here that adds many km to the trip, but didn't have an albergue there, so we were kind of stuck. (this is one of many places where the http://www.mundicamino site was not helpful, nor was the confraternity site. The German guide is absolutely precise and very accurate, we were lucky to have met some Germans who had the guide).

Castro Urdiales to Islares. (10 km). Sort of a rest day, we stayed in a two star hotel on the highway, las Arenillas, which had some of the best food we had all trip. Paella, fish soup, all was fabulous. There is a camping here.

Islares to Laredo (29 km). Very nice walk. Two albergues in town, but they told us they were both full, even though people who arrived after we did were given a place to sleep. Maybe the sisters didn't like the way we looked.

Laredo to Guemes (26 km). Another very nice walk (we got lost once about 4 km outside of Guemes). This albergue is one of the "must" albergues, though actually its original purpose was not as an albergue but as a sort of "religious expedition center" or something like that. The man who runs it is the village priest. It was a very nice stop.

Guemes to Santander (who knows, anywhere between 9 and 15 km). The priest gave us a detour that would take us on the coast, turn off at a place called Galizano, and it was beautiful. Very glad we did. Then many kms walking on the Somo beach across from Santander, again beautiful, and finally the ferry to Santander. Nice albergue but only opens at 3 p.m. and you have to "get in the line" at a restaurant nearby, it's well marked. (only 18 beds, and it filled up early the night we were there, May 15). The restaurant serves a not-so-great meal to pilgrims early, but we found a cafe down the street with some excellent platos combinados, with all kinds of fish and seafood.

Santander to the Albergue Arco Iris outside Santillana (about 29 km). This albergue is also on a lot of people's lists of top albergues on the Norte, but the five of us thought it was AWFUL. Bad hygiene, terrible bathrooms, run down place, a very sad and probably dysfunctional family of three (aging couple and their son in say his 40s). The setting is very nice, but we really had to eat there because there wasn't any alternative, it's very rural. I thought it was a bad choice. The camping in Santillana is also pretty bad, people told us (I don't know that for a fact), but in Santillana there are lots of private pensiones, etc. But probably pretty pricey because Santillana is very touristy. This was a stage with a lot of pavement, we arrived at a town with an albergue around 1 p.m., right before we did the prohibited walk across the railroad tracks. It's not as hair-raising as the books make it sound, and many villagers confirmed that "everyone does it."

Arco Iris to Comillas (about 24 or 26 km). Very very nice day. We stopped for a couple of hours for breakfast and to visit the church in Santillana, and then on to Comillas. There is also a monastery in Cobreces where some people stay, but we went on to Comillas and stayed at the new municipal albergue (so new it wasn't in the German girls' guidebook). It's one of the nicest, very good place to stay. And the town is very nice as well. Our dinner in the Bar Filipinas was outstanding-- very simple, cheap, but yummy.

Comillas to San Vicente de la Barquera (about 15 km ?). We took a short day because one of the German girls had to catch the bus from San Vicente. There is an albergue there, where we stayed. For some reason, the hospitalero just didn't like us from the very beginning. In the morning when we left, he told me that the problem with Americans (though only two of us were Americans) is that we are so arrogant. I was pretty stunned. Anyway, it's a nice town, castle, long medieval bridge, old church up on top of town.

San Vicente to El Peral (19 km). Cheap and very clean pension here (24 E for two of us). Excellent restaurant across the street. Took an afternoon walk about 6 km to the coast and back, where there are some ancient caves. Others stayed at a youth hostel a few km before El Peral, but I liked our choice.

El Peral to Llanes (20 km). Beautiful walk (we took the Coastal route, the E-9, instead of the Camino. Our general rule of thumb was to take the E-9 whenever it was a possibility. It always comes back to the camino, and it is always on the coast and beautiful.

Llanes to Ribadesella (28 km). Great looking albergue across the river from town on the beach (but we didn't stay there). It's also a youth hostel, not just a peregrino albergue.

Ribadesella to Colunga. (24 km). Another absolutely wonderful day, lots of km on the beach, lots of totally deserted beautiful beaches. Did not go to the albergue a few km before this town. There are several possiblities for private lodging. We stayed in a very nice rural hotel, http://www.mardelsueve.com/ Nice place, also we went over to Lastres (about 6 km away) in a big group in a taxi to see the town and have an excellent fish dinner. Lastres is, they tell us, an overrun tourist town in summer, but in mid May it was just a pretty, cliff-hanging town

Colunga to Villaviciosa (23 km). No albergue here, stayed in a hotel. Pleasant town, and the walk was nice.

Villaviciosa to Pola de Siero (Siera?) (30 +). After Villaviciosa we took the turn off for Oviedo. Everyone else we knew stayed north along the coast. But then they missed (or had to take a big detour) to get to Valdedios, which is a BEAUTIFUL 9th century church in a meadow with a monastery that has an albergue. People who stayed in the albergue said it was nice, I wish we had, because it was a very long walk to Pola de Siero. No albergue, just one business *** hotel. About 55 E for the two of us. Kind of like a Hampton Inn.

Pola to Oviedo (17 km). There's an albergue here, but when we got there we learned it didn't open till 7 p.m. Lots of pensiones, etc. We stayed in a very nice hotel, and took a rest day. http://www.hotelvetusta.com/c_donde_estamos.htm Rooms were large, tons of windows, an excellent breakfast, and I think it was around 60E for the two of us. We had a great time in Oviedo. I can give you the names of some good places to eat. For tapas, don't miss La Paloma -- their trademark tapa is something that can best be described as a "shrimp corndog." Hard to imagine, but it's quite good.

Oviedo to Aviles (28 km). About half way back up to the coast to rejoin the norte (by dropping down to Oviedo we missed the stretch between Villaviciosa and Aviles), in the totwn of La Posada, we lost the arrows, and no one in the town, absolutely no one we could find, knew anything about the camino. So we wound up walking the 14 km from La Posada to Aviles on the highway. Very bad idea, very dangerous, lots of trucks, no shoulder to walk on. The only good thing about this part was that the entrance into Aviles (which is a very industrial city) did not take us through the industrial part, but rather through the residential part. People who came straight west from Villaviciosa-Gijon-Aviles had to walk through heavy industry. Stayed at the albergue in Aviles. Nice hospitalero, nice old town.

Avilles to Cudillero (29 km). Cudillero is actually about 1.5 km off the camino, but it is a beautiful little place. We stayed in a hotel here, we're suckers for those hotels in old redone stone houses, La Casona de Pio, http://www.arrakis.es/~casonadepio. And the restaurant in the hotel is outstanding, a bit pricey, but it was really great.

Cudillero to Santa Marina. no idea how many kms, just know that it was a LONG day, getting lost, going through lots of muddy, overgrown paths. Maybe 9 hours walk or more. We stayed at a 24 E pension on the road, it's the only option in town, but we were tired. Dinner in the bar was about as bad as they come, but hey.

Santa Marina to Luarca (31 km). nice walk, but mostly all on asphalt. Stayed in a hotel in Luarca, one of those casas indianas/casas de indios, I forget what they're called, the Hotel Villa Argentina.

Luarca to Navia (19 km). Short, good walk. No albergue, we stayed in a hotel. There is a very nice walk down the river to the ocean here that gave us several hours of walking in the afternoon.

Navia to Tapia (23 km). Ont of the nicest walks of the trip. Again we took the E-9. The albergue is right on the coast, just beautiful. Nice places to eat, too.

Tapia to Villamartin el Pequeno (24 km). Here was another "fake" day. Walked to a town named Villamartin el Pequeno, where there was absolutely nothing but a few houses and a church. Then we called a taxi to take us back to Ribadesella (about 8 km from Tapia). Ribadasella was a very nice place to spend a day, we splurged and stayed at the parador, beautiful views out on the ria. The next day started with a 20 E taxi ride back to Villamartin. It turns out there was an albergue a few kms beyond (Gontan, Gondan, something like that) that our friends liked a lot, so if we had forged on ahead a bit more we could have avoided the out and back.

Villamartin el Pequeno to Mondonedo (18 km). Albergue is new and fine, but there's no hot water (a sign says it's "not working", but people who were there last year say it "wasn't working" then either.. Nice town, good food.

Mondonedo to Gontan (16 km). Very nice walk, some old bridges, beautiful off-road scenery (not on the coast, we left the coast in Ribadesella). No albergue here, but one was scheduled to open in a couple of weeks (this was in early June 2007), it looked fine. Stayed in a room above a bar, I think it was 18 E or something.

Gontan to Villaba (20 km). Very beautiful walk, very easy, very flat, very nice. Villaba has a relatively new albergue, but it's about 2 or 3 km outside of town. Not much going on in thte town, either. Albergue is in a black new building. Ugly but functionql.

Villaba to Baamonde (19 km). Very nice albergue in the oldest building in town. Small rooms and nice outside space. GREAT restaurant, "Galicia" with quite a character running it (he's the guy with the long white beard in my picture). The food was really excellent and not expensive at all.

Baamonde to Miraz (about 15 km). the new confraternity albergue, very nice. The village has one bar, no restaurant, nothing going on. But there's a nice big yard, and of course they serve tea and cookies all afternoon.

Miraz to Sobrado dos Monxes (26 km). Albergue in the monastery. It's a huge old monastery, there are private rooms for about 30 E for full pension, but we stayed in the albergue. Everything is fine except for the bathrooms, which are really unsanitary. I would hate to be here when the albergue is full. There were about 20 of us, and I think there must be room for more than 60. Town has shops, restaurants. Nice stop.

Sobrado dos Monxes to Arzua (24 km). There is a new private albergue beyond the official one, and the official one has been remodeled, so Arzua is a fine place to stay. We were just dumbstruck by the numbers of pilgrims, though, it was such a shock to hit the camino frances. Thankfully we only had two days to walk on it. You jsut can't believe it -- every bar you pass along the road after ARzua has about 20 backpacks piled up outside.

Arzua to Sta Irene (16 km). We like the private albergue here and we spent the night.

Sta. Irene to Santiago (about 25 km). Of course this meant we missed the pilgrim's mass on the day of arrival, but we just didn't want to stay in Monte de Gozo.

[William Marques]

Thanks for such a detailed post with the photos and the description and details I now have a really good picture of the route in my mind.

[peregrina2000]

I'll try to give my reactions to the questions posed in earlier posts -- others may have different opinions, so join in if you think I'm off.

Waymarking -- Asturias is the weak link in the chain. The Basque country has been completely marked recently, in Cantabria and Galicia it's very well marked as well. So that's roughly from Unquera to Ribadesella where we occasionally went astray. There are several places where we either couldn't find the bollards/arrows and stayed on the road, or got lost for a short while off-track. For instance, after Cudillero, we got lost in a pine forest for about 45 minutes wlking all around looking for an arrow; on the same day, between Magdalena and Soto de Luina my notes say we went through some very poorly maintained trails -- dense thickets, tons of swampy mud, etc. Another bad stretch was on our way back up to the norte from our detour to Oviedo, we didn't get lost exactly, we just lost the arrows in a town, but then we had to spend about 16 km on the highway, a bad highway for walkers. But those events were not terribly common. The somewhat surprising thing to us was that in some of the towns we couldn't find anyone who even knew about the camino. So sometimes getting directions was difficult.

My advice: find a German walker-- the German guide is fabulously detailed and precise. We never got lost with our German friends.

Albergues -- It's not as easy to do an "albergue only" camino as it is on the frances, but we met people who only spent several nights in private accommodation. You can see from my stages that we frequently stayed in hoteles/pensiones. For the most part the private places were very nice and not extravagant, but of course the downside is that you get out of sync with the walkers because on the norte the albergues are not always in the same towns as the private places. For instance, we stayed in Cudillero (a really pretty fishing town, about 1 km off the camino) and Colunga where there were no albergues -- that means that at night in the restaurants and cafes we were unlikely to meet others. In other towns, like San Sebastian and Castro Urdiales, the albergues are a fair schlepp out of town so we decided to stay in pensiones to be close to the restaurants, churches, etc.

On the ocean -- There was a LOT of walking right on the coast. My impression is that when we hit Asturias, less of the walk was right directly on the coast, because the coast has lots more "fingers" jutting out, so it would be incredibly roundabout to stay on the headland paths if there were any. There are exceptions, of course, because some of our prettiest coastal walks were in Asturias (going into Llanes, from Tapia to Ribadesella). But even on days where we didn't walk all the time "on" the coast, we were usually only a km or two away from a beach and could walk on down in the afternoon (Sta. Marina and Colunga are two examples that jump into mind).

Ups and downs -- There are more ups and downs perhaps because you have to get from headland to beach and maybe my walking partner would disagree with me, but I didn't find this route to be very strenuous. A day with a 400 or 500 meter elevation gain was the exception. I'm in my mid (soon to be late) 50s and am in reasonably good shape, but I'm not an alpine hiker or a marathon runner.

My overall reaction when people ask whether I would recommend the norte or the frances -- I love them both, and here are some differences: more asphalt on the norte; more of a touristy feel on the norte; unsurpassed coastal beauty on the norte; but much less of a camino "feel" on the norte. At the same time, the norte didn't have the same "solitary" sense that vdlp walkers have reported, because after all you were walking from tourist town to tourist town. There were many many days though when we never saw another walker and occasionally days when we saw only a handful of people. We were definitely more of an attraction or curiosity on the norte than on the frances -- people working in bars or just outside when we passed by would ask us about it and what it's like. If you've walked the frances frequently, you know that the novelty has worn off for the townspeople. As we walked into Oviedo, for example, a woman walking on the other side of the road pulling one of those shopping carts on wheels put down her cart and stood facing us and applauded. The norte definitely seems not to be a "first timer" camino. I think we met only one person on the norte who hadn't previously walked the frances.

Hope this is helpful for the future norte walkers out there!

[lynnejohn]

Thanks so much for this information. It is invaluable. I am really considering the Norte for my next camino, and have been drawn further to it by your pictures and your descriptions.

Peace.

lynne

[Deirdre]

The photos were beautiful! I'm considering el Norte for my next Camino... it is a tough decision!
Buen Camino,

[peregrina2000]

Hi, Deirdre,
I'm feeling a bit nostalgic about the Norte right now, since it was a year ago that we were just starting out. May is an absolutely perfect month to walk, in my opinion. I know what you mean about it being a very tough decision, but reading the reports on the crowds pouring through the Camino Frances right now might make it a bit easier! I think that if I were to do it again, I would pay more attention to where my fellow walkers were going to spend the next night. The albergues are few and far between, so it was frequently the case that when we stopped for the night we couldn't find any other walkers. But with a bit of determination, you can find that Camino community. Laurie

[cruiser]

HI ,
Greetings from Ireland. I have the Camino bug since I finished the Frances in 07 and finished the Camino from porto in 08. now im looking for your advice for the Camino del Norte. I only have 10 days and based on cheap airline travel from Ireland I could start this camino in either Irun and Finish in Bilboa or start from Bilboa and finish in Santander. Im trying to avoid road walking and get good coastal walking. which start place do you recommend to achieve this. ? thanks

[peregrina2000]

Sorry, I just saw this question, as the original poster, I should have responded more quickly! Anyway, to answer your question, Irun to Bilbao is very pretty, but after Deba (day 2 more or less) , not much of it is on the beach.

Bilbao to Santander has a lot more coastal walking, but it's only about 5 days.

In my experience, the bus system in northern Spain is quite good, so I don't think you'll have trouble getting back into Bilbao no matter where you finish up. If you're just looking for pretty walking, I think going west from Bilbao might be the better option.

Laurie