Day 4 Deba to Etxebarria 29 km
Today’s video update if you’re interested is here…. https://youtu.be/tEkFhTj5IP0
Yet again, another fabulous day on the Camino.Today we left the coast and headed inland. As usual, most of the day was spent going up, then down, then up, then down - in the book this is another ‘challenging’ day and yes I can attest to that. We haven’t really had an easy day yet. One challenge though that the guidebooks don't mention has been breakfast. As we understand it, on routes like the French route, you get up early so you can walk in the cooler part of the day, have breakfast en route in another town, and are often in to your destination by around lunchtime. Not so on this route. Firstly, the other towns are few and far between. If we had followed that model on the first day we wouldn’t have had any breakfast until mid afternoon. Secondly, leaving very early isn’t really an option, because many of the cafes and supermarkets in these towns don’t open until after 8am. In a way this makes sense as the sun doesn’t really rise until 7.45am or so. It makes it particularly challenging when Russell has to take voltaren for his knees, and that's best taken with food, so we really do need to have breakfast.
Because we had to stay in Mutriku, some 6kms off route, we had to get the 7.15am bus back to Deba. We found a cafe at 8am and had a croissant and coffee (I am a bit over all the bread and pastry products - there’s no English breakfast here!). The supermarkets weren’t open and today’s route apparently didn’t have any services on the way so we picked up a bocadillo to go (more bread!) and set off.
Not far into the route we were joined by a young German guy called Malte from Copenhagen. He was fantastic company today and we really enjoyed walking with him. He comes over to Spain every year and just does a little bit of walking, as long as his holidays allow, and then comes back the next year and does some more - like most Europeans, we have found. Whilst he is prebooking accommodation like us, he is doing it on the fly - he looks ahead each night to see how far he thinks he'd like to go the next day, and then books something on booking.com. He was really very fascinating to talk to and it was lovely to have someone else to share the day with. He was telling us the background story for another lady we had seen on the Camino - a German lady - who we had noticed with very heavily bandaged knees. It turns out that she has walked from her home in Germany! Such a long way...
We enjoyed a well earned coffee and pintxos (Basque tapas) in Olatz, which was the only place open on the route today. Several hours later we made it into Martina Xemein, which should have been our stop for the night, but like last night, we couldn’t find any accommodation, so this time we had to walk the extra 2 kms to Etxebarria. Before we did that though, we enjoyed a ‘menu del dia’ with Malte, having a well earned rest prior to the last little push.
We are holding up very well - I have a slightly squished pinky toe, but other than that, we’re feeling fine. Because we ate so late we didn’t need to go for dinner (just as well because they don’t eat until very late here). It’s astonishing to believe that in 4 days we are almost 100km into our journey! Technically we have 742kms to go…
No comments:
Post a Comment