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Camino accomodation, Camino del Norte, Camino hiking

Camino del Norte – Day 11 Güemes to Santander

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If friendship is a treasure, thank you for being part of my fortune – si la amistad es un tesoro, gracias por ser parte de mi fortuna.

Date: 17th July, 2022

Section: Güemes to Santander

Region: Cantabria

Distance: 23 km

Average temp: 33 degrees

Time walking: 4 hours

Ascent: 241m

Decent: 314m

Staying: Santander

Hotel Hoyuela – Hotel on the beach €125 per night

Recommend, yes ✔️. Super clean and very comfortable bed, restaurants close by. A bit of a walk when you arrive in town but worth it for me to wake up near the beach. It’s my last night – a treat. Very much a hotel in a tourist location though – not camino vibes.

Instagram: Link to extra photos and daily caption.

Today:

I am so tired! There is a flip side to the joys of the shared accommodation I was spouting off in yesterday’s post and last night I experienced these too. That other pilgrim who was allocated to our cabin, the middle aged guy who spent most of the evening out socialising, well he finally returned to the cabin. We went to bed before him and at some hour he came back and was up and down sorting himself out. When he was up he was switching the lights on and off in the bathroom without the door closed, rustling in his bag and when he was down he was snoring – like a truck. I get it shared accommodation comes with all the people, but sometimes your unlucky. You get the normal things like snoring and early risers but also you can get the people with a complete lack of self awareness and consideration for others. He was all that.

I was also kept awake by some little bites, not excessive which tells me the cabin was not infested with the dreaded bugs, but they were there. A problem I am sure they are used to dealing with given that tonight there were 70 people staying, everyone passes through this albergue. And I thought the camino was quiet! To be fair the bugs are not only to be found in the public style albergues. I have been bitten in a small private albergues and even once in a hotel. Ho hum another example of comfortably uncomfortable. I always hope for the best but I am always prepared due to my sensitivity to bites. So I took my anti histamine, applied the itchy cream, had some breakfast and set out for the day with the said 70 pilgrims.

Lots of people meant lots of photos with my favourite muse. The hiker. AND yes, that is a bunch of celery hanging out the side of Eva’s pack. Aside from the lack of sleep I am richer today than I was yesterday. Richer with the experience of having walked a day with my friend Kate from Madrid, Sunshine and her daughter from Ireland and Eva from Slovakia. Each of them with their own stories to tell and a whole day to be curious about each other. It is a sweet thing the camino family. I don’t for a minute think of them as my actual family but on this day they were. There was interest, caring and a kind of closeness that comes from sharing yourself in deep conversation. It was a special day – another way in which the camino becomes a part of you along with the people you meet. I have been inspire by my little camino family of today.

Walking on this day with Sunshine and her daughter I wondered about doing a camino with one of my kids. They were walking for the summer, they didn’t have to finish but maybe they would, they were just walking to see how it goes. Spoiler edit … I did go on to walk a camino with one of mine! In the October break of this same year, Lucas (12) and I would begin the Camino Frances. We walked St Jean Pied de Port to Puente la Reina. We plan to go back for more. And Sunshine and her little one … well they walked the entire Camino del Norte in this summer of 2022!

A beautiful day of cliff walking and more of my favourite, the barefoot sand walking. The coastal towns along today’s walk were more of the beach holiday rather than quaint Spanish village vibe. I also like this vibe. My husband together with our 4 kids spent one summer camper-vanning along this coast looking for surf waves. This vibe also brings cool beachside cafes with different food on their menus. We sat down to a really tasty tofu poke bowl, a dish I’ve never seen along a camino. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, walking across a country is truly one of the most wonderful ways to travel.

Cheers y’all! After a comparatively shorter walk today (23 kms) and another boat crossing, we arrived in the capital city of this region and my final stop of this trip along the camino, Santander. A major port city that was founded by Romans and one I’d like to explore but will save that for when I return next year to walk another section. Back to the moment, today I finished and celebrated another stage of the camino with a cold, hard earned beer, my first for the trip. I then followed up with a siesta after last night’s shitful sleep (I’m Spanish now), a refreshing swim in sparkling sea waters, some Calamari and some Cantabrian tomatoes (do put these on your list).

No longer a pilgrim! A tourist with one night to relax before heading home to my incredible family who are often more excited for me than I am for myself each time I set out on a camino adventure. I am so fortunate to have such cheerleaders in my life. Now it’s my turn to go home and cheerlead for them.

Highlight:

All of this experience. The astoundingly beautiful landscape that is the Camino del Norte, the people I met along the way, family for a day, the big hugs goodbye and the knowing that this is what it is. An experience, a moment, a time to treasure.

Ho hum:

I am a part of the camino and more so this camino experience is a part of me.

Camino del Norte, Camino pilgrim stories

Everything has a time and place …

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Yet again the camino calls. ‘Come’ she whispers. ‘It’s warm and sunny, your toes can sink into the sand as you walk alongside the ocean that awaits where you last left off. There will time for you to ponder, people for you to meet, delicacies for you to enjoy and all manner of surprises for you to uncover.’

Yes. Yes, I will go. I will answer the call. The pull this time is strong. The camino is magic like that. I am curious for what I will find along this next section of the camino. Once again I feel ready to hop on where I last left off to simply walk. To walk a long walk. Although if I am honest this pull, coupled an excitement that is growing is somewhat surprising to me given that last time I wan’t sure I’d ever be back on the camino again.

It was July last year when I last set off on along the camino del norte. A camino that lasted three days instead of the ten I had planned. I was done with the camino when I left. So done. I didn’t want to be sharing rooms, I was frustrated at being injured (through stupidity) and I didn’t love the realisation that was revealing itself to me, that in this time of my life I’d given away my power. I’d completely lost myself. I had no idea how to use my voice anymore.

But in those three days of walking and the three days of stopping I met some incredible women. Women who each gave me something to ponder throughout this past year. Women who I’m sure without realising gave me what I needed. I needed a place to begin and some questions to ask myself. When I left I knew I needed to go home. It was the first time I’d ever stopped for a day along a camino and surprisingly I was completely ok with it. This time the camino was not about distance, days walked or reaching a destination it was about stopping and the women who walked into my life. Women I would never see again but who would always be a part of me.

Of course you haven’t yet met these characters, these women and what they inspired me to go and learn about myself because I came home and let these stories and this blog sit on the sidelines. It didn’t quite fit. The stories I thought I was going to write didn’t come home with me. I came home different. I needed to take what each of these women had provoked in me and to go and be with that in my life. To take those questions and go on a long walk, to live with them. Life is a camino! I’ve been walking almost a year with some of these thoughts.

Everything has a time and place. When I started writing this blog it was with good intention, to create something for and with women. But there was also perhaps an egotistical intention and the desire to create what others expected I should do – to build a camino something. As the call came this week to walk again, so did the call to write here. As I started writing, the title changed from ‘your camino’ to ‘camino tales’. I can’t tell you how to walk your camino, that’s not really me. I can however share my camino tales with you and connect with you through my camino stories. That is me. Ph-ew, this feels peaceful, now this blog is synchronous with how and what I want to write. Flow.

These women, these characters you’re yet to meet them in my writing and what they inspired in me during my last camino. Oh and the preventable injury, that’s a doozy! It’s going to be embarrassing to write up that one. I’m excited to answer the call to walk the camino again and with that excitement I feel hopeful for this space. I think I get how to use my voice now. Just be me. It sounds simple enough but I feel this will be my challenge. One I am looking forward to actually. One I will be thinking about as I reread ‘Big Magic’ while I walk in a few weeks. There are still things I want to change and learn from about how I’ve blogged in the past. I hope these changes will see this blog grow into something beautiful.

Ho hum … the first challenge in the next 10 days or so is to enter a writing cocoon to catch up on all my camino del norte posts. If I can do this I can blog live from the camino. I find live blogs from the camino such a joy to read. I would love to extend myself to do that, to get in amongst that joy. I don’t love typing on an iPhone when travelling so much but the connection with fellow adventure lovers – that’s fun! And fun is good, fun is definitely worth investing time in. So, if you’ll have me I look forward to sharing this space with you over the next few weeks to share some camino tales.

Fran x

“Say yes to every single tiny clue of curiosity that you notice around you. That’s big magic too. It’s big magic on a quieter scale and on a slower scale, you just have to learn how to trust it. It’s all about the yes.”

– Elizabeth Gilbert