24 km (316.3 km)
Saturday 17 June 2017
A group of pilgrims at the train station seemed a rather incongruous sight but at least I didn’t feel so bad knowing that everyone was taking the safe option. On alighting from the train I stopped to turn on my GPS and when I looked up there was not a pilgrim to be seen and more confusing were the yellow arrows pointing east and west. One would presume that as long as I go west I’ll be ok but today the route took a circular route to avoid the main roads. A helpful local stopped his car and pointed to the right so off I went, only to hear Marianne shouting that I was going the wrong way. To cut a long story short it turned out about half an hour later that I was in fact on the right trail and all the other 15+ train takers has taken the wrong route. The walk was beautiful today, it was on minor roads for the majority of the time but the rolling hills and the Picos looming up in the distance made it all very bearable. I had decided to go 6km past Santillana Del Mar but after 24km my troublesome feet were starting to ache. I bid farewell to Marianne and checked into a ‘Pension’. I am now a bit behind schedule and will need to rethink my mileage and timescale over the next few days. The main problem is no access to pharmacies; today I kept asking when we went through villages but there were none and when we arrived here they were shut until Monday. In lieu of real medicine I have now resorted to vodka (for medicinal purposes) and honey, which I googled and discovered had antiseptic properties…Dan backed this theory up by relating a story about a dog that he’d seen on a Vet’s program the other night which had been lathered in honey to fix an infected leg, the leg fixed and the dog lived – so it must be alright then!
The new medical kit….why is the honey called la vaca? I don’t know !
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