So this morning we headed to the train to skip the industrial urban sprawl of Gijón. Described in the guide as the “ worst walking day on the Camino del Norte; many roads, industrial areas, and cities”. We took the train 20km out of Gijon to Avilés and started walking from there. There was a noticable drop in temperature which I must say was welcome. At about 5km out of Aviles, I felt something wasn’t quite right so I stopped and as expected bloody hell I had a blister on my second smallest two on the right foot. John had a blister plaster for toes and I got some more in the local Farmacia. We headed on and left urban area and climbed up out into the forest. We passed by what looked like an old quarry that had been filled in and the tress were now large eucalyptus trees. The paths were wide and clearly had been used by large forestry or quarry machinery given the very large deep tracks(see photo below). We were lucky as it was relatively dry but I had seen photos where this was a quagmire. We then passed up and down through ltwo valleys which were step but views were good. We stopped at El Parador for lunch. Then we crossed the Nalon River over the main road bridge using the very narrow gap between the railing and crash barrier. We then had a steady climb into Muros de Nalón. Here I had made a mistake in booking a hotel at the top of a hill nearer the beach, not what you want after a long day. However I can say it was worth it. It was a nice hotel who did our laundry for a fee, provided and excellent meal( see below for the starters).
This was mine and Johns last night as he was heading dirbthr 07.50 bus to Aviedo and then on to Bilbao.
