Day 26: Cadavedo to Luarca

A good night’s rest and food put a difficult day behind us. We arose to a cloudy but pleasant morning and had breakfast in the hotel. The man who closed the bar was the man to open it for breakfast today, and his wife was in the kitchen cooking. I asked when he gets a break. In January. Otherwise it’s 16 hour days 7 days a week and inflation is beating him up. He can’t raise prices because people like us would choose another place. Booking.com gives us all of the power to compare prices. We were glad to be able to give them the breakfast business and wish them well. It’s a tough life doing business here now.

We headed out and were greeted with a scene of the mountains that we hiked yesterday. “Hey, we did that”, thinking about the 623 meters elevation and the difficult weather, footing and conditions.

We were lighthearted knowing today’s walk would be short and easy. We would only have 15 km into Luarca and would basically follow the highways west, but be on smaller trails most of the way. The elevation gains would be small. We headed out of our small town and into the surrounding countryside, walking by farms and bits of woods. We noticed a gradual change in archtecture. The roofs are changing from red tile to black slate. It recalled our tour of Poitiers, France, in which we learned that the black roofs were from the north of France and the red tiles were from the south. I wondered why as we traveled west, that same transition was occurring here. Also the grainaries called hosseos were also showing a transition. The supports were increasingly from wood tree trunks or from cement rather than the precision-cut rock formed into tall pyramids.

It seemed like no time and we had covered 10 km, due to the easy waking. Just then, we came upon a hotel/bar where we saw pilgrims outside whom we recognized. There was an Australian couple and a young Spanish couple from Guadalajara, Spain, near Madrid. We stopped and had coffee and chatted. We did not get any food however, and after another couple of km climbing, I started to feel a little weak, so stopped for a granola bar and walnuts. That restored me and we moved on with renewed vigor.

We started our day with sandals to let our wet boots dry out, but now we put on the boots hoping to help dry them with our dry socks. We could wash and dry everything in Luarca because they have a laundry. Our key elements are : laundry, restaurant and grocery near our hotel. Luarca has them all.

Pressing on towards Luarca, we came upon an abandoned Muslim cemetery. The cemetery was created for Asturian Muslims who died fighting in the Civil War. I was surprised given the removal of Muslims from the country in 1492.

The Camino dumped onto highway N-632 again and we followed it for while until in angled north, aimging for the town of Luarca. In only 40 minutes we were at the overlook of the town which was situated at the base of cliffs surrounding a river dumping into the Cantabrian Sea. The walls and cliffs surrounding the port town were incredibly steep, making San Francisco look flat by comparison.

After we found stairways leading into the town, we arrived at our hotel. Fortunately we could get in right away, shower, and still have time for the midday fixed price meal at $15 per person. The three course meal featured 5 items as first course and 5 as second course, all but one were seafood.

After eating, we headed to the laundry where Alice washed and then I went on to shop for food. All of this done, we could rest and enjoy the town before a long day planned tomorrow.