Home to Santiago – Day 62
Piñeres de Pria to La Isla: 40km
My first thoughts this morning, on setting out: why doesn’t everyone take the coastal path?
A little later, my next thought: I wonder when the official path first went by a café for second breakfast.
My third major thought: what would a Stone Age man think of these beautifully carpentered steps going up from the beach? Would they understand how to put grooves in planks? But obviously, by this point, I’m still really thinking about second breakfast and just trying to keep my mind off it.
A bufón is a natural sea blowhole, where the waves force water and air up through holes and fissures in the limestone. However, I arrive at low tide, so the bufones of Pria aren’t working. I watch a YouTube video of the bufones at high tide with a massive surge, and that’s enough to fill the gaps in my imagination. The underground roar is impressive on its own.
What I do come across, and what doesn’t seem to be labelled anywhere, is an extraordinary place where the sea has worked its way well inland, and former bufones, I imagine, have eventually collapsed and opened up to leave a series of sea bridges.
This is what seems to be a river, but starting from the wrong end. I wonder when it will stop. Eventually, will a river find its way to this sea-built inlet? Obviously, my main thoughts are still Second Breakfast.
For a while, the scenery becomes so spectacular that even thoughts of second breakfast become secondary. As does any sort of lunch, or food at all, or ever reaching anywhere ever again.
At this point, second breakfast, which has merged into lunch, does come into prime position again. I’m on the most direct path, physically, but I’m being slowed down by the beauty of it. I consider momentarily turning inland onto a longer, but less beautiful route, before realising the lunacy of such a consideration.
The turning point comes when the path does turns inland, and part of me is pleased that I will be going away from any distractions and views. Then I hear the familiar roar of waves and realise I’m not going inland, just in around another beautiful, crashing rocky bay.
I appreciate it, but I also appreciate my initial reaction. It is time to find a route that will get me some food and a bed tonight.
There’s just one more attraction: the inferno, a little bit further along. I’ll go and see that first. Turns out that last sight I looked at was the inferno and the only thing I added to my journey was the car park.
From here, I can carry on towards Ribadesella, where I see pilgrims stopping for the night. In fact, most of them have already been to the albergue, unpacked and are out again in the town.
It’s tempting to stop. I look online and see I’m meant to check in at five o’clock at my destination. And by the time I’ve had my little park picnic in Ribadesella, it’s already four.
Almost as a gift, I am met on the promenade by Peruvian Eduardo, whom I don’t recognise at first, only when he decides to communicate with me in German. I’m a mess of languages at this point. He tells me there’s a camping site with cabins and plenty of space, just a few kilometres up the road. I bear this in mind. I’m hoping this will be my destination now.
But when I speak to the albergue in La Isla, they tell me I can arrive as late as I like, as long as they know what time I’m coming. How very nice of them, I force myself to think.
And so I carry on on the directest route I can find, which luckily includes some beautiful beaches and, slightly less happily, some unexpected hills.
When I arrive at eight o’clock in La Isla, I check in and go to the albergue. As I walk through the town, it’s full of people I know from the albergue.
The first person I see at the albergue is German Thomas, spending a night of luxury in the fifty-bed hostel. There too is Work Hard, friendly and nice as can be.
When I see Sven, he’s taken aback when everyone welcomes me by name, which is primarily the result of turning up so late.
“You know everyone?” he asks.
And I guess I do, a little bit. And everyone knows me a little bit too. A little bit goes a long way.
Not bad for a solitary walker.
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