Day 6: Gernika to Bilbao

32.4km (161.9km)

Sunday June 11 2017
I was up and out this morning by 6:30am, determined to make it to Bilbao even with a missing insole, which I appear to have misplaced at the Albergue yesterday and two feet covered in blisters (par for the course!). I met a Spanish lady at the start of the day who seemed intent on going to wrong way so she stayed with me, navigator extraordinaire(!!), so that she didn’t get lost. She looked about twenty years older than me but after 12kms or so I had to admit defeat and stop to recover from the pace she was setting, hopefully she made it to wherever she was supposed to be going. It was on odd experience walking along with someone who spoke no English but who kept chatting away in Spanish although she knew I didn’t understand, still all very friendly! There was a good warm up climb at the start of the day followed by a pleasant amble through the woods. I had it in mind that I could stop at Lezama; most of the walkers seemed to be stopping here, but when I arrived I decided I would push through to Bilbao and try and ignore the pain in my feet, my rationale being it would be better to deal with the sore feet in Bilbao than in the back end of beyond. After Lezama the pleasant walk more or less stopped, giving way to industrial sites and a lot of road walking. The industrial sites were deserted, as it is Sunday, but as bad luck (for me the dog lover) would have it the deserted sites were mostly guarded by ferocious dogs. Yes they were all behind gates but that didn’t stop me steeling myself before passing each gate, anti-dog spray at the ready (anti dog spray does not do the dog any harm, so says the tin). Having made it through, legs intact I proceeded down the road, having to stop every few kilometres to massage my feet to enable me to continue. I arrived at 3, having walked 32 km feeling very tired, I signed into the hostel and just lay down for a while to recover. Whilst in recovery mode a young girl, who was not only in the dorm but also seemed to have taken up residence as her belongings were taking up every spare inch of the small 4 bedroom dorm, came in. She didn’t seem to register my greeting, sat down in the bed opposite and started spraying perfume around the room…now I’m not one to take things personally but…
I recovered enough to venture out to a nearby, probably famous, square and grab some food before retiring. Bilbao is lovely, as was San Sebastián and I’m thinking a non-walking Spanish city holiday is on the cards. Tomorrow I’m missing out 10k of the walk; I have lost an insole and have subsequently ended up with my feet being even more pulverised than normal so I have decided to stay around Bilbao until the shops open and find some insoles and new socks before continuing. This will make it impossible to complete the day so I’m taking a metro for the first 10k.