34.5km (373.9 km)
Monday 19 June 2017

I have never had to queue for the bathroom at 5 am until today. I thought we’d be creeping around in the dark making a stealthy exit from the Albergue but no, almost everyone was up and out by 5:30am! It was a beautiful morning and it isn’t very dark here even before sunrise, because we are so close to the coast, so another good start to the day. We had about four hours of comfortable walking before the sun came up and roasted us and then it became very hard work to walk. We kept coming back to breath taking views of the coast throughout, and I apologise now for the numerous photos of the sea.

I decided to stop every 6km to try and keep blister problems to a minimum and this worked well for the most part. As luck would have it there was a cafe at each 6/7km break so by the time we were on the final leg of the day I had managed nearly an hour of stops and a change of socks at each stop to try and keep my feet dry. As we were approaching our last stop I became aware of the heat from my phone and when I took it out of my pocket I discovered that it was dead and boiling. At the last stop I took it to an electronics shop where they tried to charge it up before informing me that it was indeed dead and that I could find an Apple shop in Oviedo to try and get it fixed; Oviedo is 153km away. I asked where I could buy a new phone and the electronics shop staff didn’t know of anywhere within 50km. I became resigned to the fact that I’d have to live with no phone and we continued on to Colombres. We had called earlier to reserve a bed at the Colombres Albergue, with 120 beds to be told it was ‘completo’, hard to believe but true. We continued on to La Franca and are now at Albergue Raciner; run by a rather opportunistic woman who is charging a lot for rooms in her converted garage…but she did do our washing so all is forgiven for ripping us off.
Tomorrow we are going to Llanes and once again there is no room at the inn, so to speak. I didn’t expect this problem here so I really need to get organised and book, where I can. Sometimes it isn’t possible and then you just have to hope for the best; not something I’m particularly good at – I am not good with not knowing if I have a bed or not. Anyway there is a huge storm around us this evening so hopefully tomorrow us a little cooler.
….as a last ditch attempt at resuscitating the phone I reset it and it came back to last life, it’s still a bit hot but hopefully it recovers and doesn’t fail again.