Everything still hurts, but at least the weather was on our side today.

The day was split in half by the town of Liendo. We got there in the morning by following the not-so-pleasant carrettera nacional 634, like yesterday. Today, however, large parts of it featured some sort of dedicated trail for the peregrinos. This dramatically decreased the risk of being run over by incoming traffic, which was nice.

Yesterday, on the other hand, it was criminally dangerous to walk. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with this crap again.

We haven’t met Helmut today, as he stopped around 10 Km before us, in Castro Urdiales. Unless we take a break at some point, it’s unlikely we’ll see him in the next few days. I hope he’s doing better today than he was yesterday.

After Liendo, we left the carrettera and hiked up a nicer trail which led us above the very scenic Playa de San Julián. All around us, and close to the cliffs which overlook the Playa, a group of griffin vultures came to see what was going on, and probably wondered about whether or not we were food.

Our hero from today was a gardener who was taking care of the area surrounding a small hermit church. He saw the sorry excuses we had for walking sticks, which I found two days ago (thanks Vueling, by the way, I’m still waiting on my lost baggage), and decided to cut two bamboo trees to make new sticks for us. It was very nice of him, and a great upgrade in the sticks department.

It’s nice to see that kind people are around to help us out. This encounter reminded me of my walk in Japan, and the many gifts, a.k.a. osettai, I received from strangers throughout the walk.

After a steep up-and-down on the cliffs, we entered the town of Laredo, which stretches on a four-kilometer-long sandy beach. It’s a very touristic town, and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

Our final destination was the town of Santoña, divided by Laredo by a tiny strait. Luckily there is a small boat that continuously makes the short trip to ferry pilgrims and other people from one town to the other.

We took the boat and arrived in Santoña. The town is an industrial fishery hub, especially famous for the anchovies (anchoas del Cantabrico). We had some for dinner and then retreated to our hotel for the night.

Physically speaking, we’re bent but not broken yet. My feet get quickly on fire, whereas Laura is constantly juggling different sorts of pain between the knees and other joints. Her feet are fine though, so it seems like we can only make a single good pilgrim between the two of us: what is painful for me is good for her, and the other way around.

Tomorrow we should head inland and say goodbye to the sea for a few hours. It’s been a good companion over the past two days, even though we haven’t managed to take a dip yet.

So far we haven’t had much time to spare. Hopefully with more training and acclimatization, we’ll be able to enjoy our “free time”, once we arrive at our destination for the day.

But that is a problem for next week. This week is about sheer survival. If we hang on for the next couple of days, the worst should be behind us.

In the meantime our daily lives and all the things that keep them busy already seem so distant and, to a certain extent, superfluous.

The Camino is already working its magic, and taking up all the space it can in our lives.

It is more than welcome to it.

That space is usually wasted on meaningless stuff anyways.

Until tomorrow. Cheers.