Day 176 – 179
Day 176 – 179

Day 176 – 179

Km 5527 to km 5675, Quintanilla de Valdebodres (Spain) to Potes (Spain).

Day 176

16/10/2022 – 45km

All day on roads and pavement (well, almost) and my joints are knackered. Progress was slowed by a very strong wind that kept knocking me off balance and preventing me from walking normally.

In the afternoon I arrived at what was supposed to be a large lake, according to the map. However, half of it had dried up. Perhaps it’s been like that for a long time, but it still looked sad.

Day 177

17/10/2022 – 43km

Another morning, another dried up lake. Hopefully not a recurring motif.

I passed through some lovely villages. One of them (Bárcena Mayor) is supposedly one of the oldest villages in Cantabria.

The hills are starting to get bigger again, and I got my first view of the Atlantic, only 30km or so away to the north.

Day 178

18/10/2022 – 43km

I walked across a couple of burnt mountainsides, still smouldering in places. Presumably this is to try and control the rampant gorse, but who knows.

From my campsite (next to a church) I can see some mountains again (the Picos de Europa).

Today I also crossed another milestone, I’ve now completed 90%.

Day 179

19/10/2022 – 22km

Only a half day today so that I can take a break in the town of Potes. I was planning to camp, but both campsites near here are closed. I only found this out after walking 3km out of town to find the one I thought would be open to be all locked up. So that’s 6km more walking than I needed to do, but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes.

Now that I’m at the crossroads, I’ve decided to take Dylan’s original route, heading to Oviedo, then following the Camino Primitivo. This is for a number of minor reasons that I feel add up to an important reason, which is that I think I’ll enjoy myself more. Sometimes when I’m sweating up hills and plodding through mud I forget that this is largely why I do it. If you look at the map on my homepage in the next two weeks you’ll see that I’m not on the blue line.

As a side note, after my hike I plan to update this map with the actual route I hiked, since I’ve taken a few alternate paths.

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