2 August - Day 8 - Llanes to Villahormes 16 km
Kim didn’t get much sleep last night. Bed bugs. The beds and pillows are covered in plastics sheets but bedbugs can live in the wooden frame of beds. All our other albergues have had metal bunks but not last night. Around midnight she hopped into my bed and kept on being bitten.
I don’t get affected by bed bugs like Kim. I feel a bit of the ticklish crawling from them, but Kim gets munched and comes up in welts.
She’s made the mistake of trying to sleep through while being bitten (she ended up looking like she had done a round with Tyson) so she decided to try and find an alternative.
She tries the sunroom with two wooden chairs for an hour, then remembers the bench at reception. Walking downstairs to reception she triggers the alarm and the night clerk comes running out of a room in his boxers looking startled. Kim indicates she has been bitten and wants to sleep on the bench. He shrugs ok and goes to get her a pillow which is lovely but she declines incase it also has bed bugs.
Her watch alarm goes off at 6am so must have managed some sleep between 2 and 6.
We checkout at 7am and roam the old town’s cobbled streets looking for coffee. It’s a quaint place and even better when everyone else is still in bed. We will come back here but in shoulder or low season.
Find a local bar for tortilla and cafe con leché. Caffeine has no effect on Kim. She is still tired. It’s going to be a hard day.
First village we walk through is called Póo. Of course we had to take a photo! It made us giggle like children 😂
Walking past a valley stream we pass a herd of goats who are eating, bleeting and their bells ringing. Would have been a nice place to 🧘♂️ but Kim would definitely have fallen asleep 😴
Continue past two little beaches, the second we stop for more caffeine. The water looks inviting but fresh as the sun is struggling to make it through the clouds. Kim says she could stay here but we know we need to get a few more kms under our belt.
Walk from little village to little village through country lanes. We wonder the age of the lichen covered stone walls as we pass. Perfect Camino trails.
Arrive in Naves and there is no accommodation, our feet are done 😩
Find a bar sit down try the local cider which is poured as far from the bottle as possible, apparently to aerate it but we can’t tell the difference, so probably just local showmanship. Kim has a micro sleep.
We push on. The next town is only 1.5km away and google maps shows a few pensions. On the road we spot a sign for a pizzeria and an albergue. Perfect. Ironically/annoyingly, had we continue on the camino route we would have found it 20 minutes sooner.
Checkin at 2pm. It’s a dorm of 8 with 4 downstairs and 4 upstairs but with lots of mozzies. Kim kills 5 immediately. We close all the windows and hope that keeps them out.
Hot shower and then really hot handwash all our clothes to kill any bedbugs. When you are tired hand washing is exhausting.
Walk back to Naves to the taverna next to where we had cider. Order the menu del diá. Entree, main, dessert, bread and wine.
Entree: Kim orders chickpea and monkfish stew and gets the next item on the menu, pasta with clams 😞, Darren has the local butterbean stew with chorizo black pudding and chicken 😋
Main: Kim has grilled whole bream , Darren had beef stew. Both excellent.
Dessert: Darren Cheesecake, Kim Lemon mousse. Shared, Yum!
So good, and so hungry we forgot to take photos.
Stuffed we waddle back to the albergue for a 2 hour nap. When we wake and our room and the rest of the albergue is full. Thankfully our laundry is dry.
A few of the other pilgrims we met a day or so ago have arrived and we chat about each others journey. Some have done big days - up to 40km a day. Ouch. 20km a day is our sweet spot.
We start chatting to Alfonso from Amsterdam. Kim asked if they had “met” in the unisex showers at the last albergue when he had walked out of the shower stall nude and then quickly whipped his towel around him. It was the size of a tea towel. They had a good laugh.
Alfonso shouts us a beer, it is the locally brewed Pilsner called Gold and Girls which had the silhouette of a naked lady in heels as their logo. Classy!
0 stamps today.
9:30pm bedtime.
For some reason my Garmin stopped during the day. So there are 2 records with a few km missing in between.
Miss about 2.5 km then continue on to Villahormes 8.3 km
Bed bugs are terrible. Laugh later. Shit at the time.
ReplyDeleteThe worst and they love me!
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