Pagans on a Pilgrimage

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 a...

Cold shower to start the day. Not sure why there was no hot water. Packed and on the road by 7am. Nothing open in Comillas so we head towards San Vicente which is 10km away. Rolling coastal road with glimpses of the ocean and little traffic.  As we hit 5km we find a beach side cafe open.  Worst tortilla on the planet, stale bread and well below average coffee to boot… but it lined the stomach and provided much needed fuel as we didn’t have dinner last night.  Meet a guy from Ireland and a girl from Germany at the cafe and walk with them for a few kms. They are walking to Colombres 40kms away as they haven’t been able to find any other accommodation. Hmmm same problem Kim was having last night scouring the web for beds. 40kms is WAY too far for us do, so we decide to walk until we were tired and then catch a bus to Llanes.  The terrain is steep and the day is humid but overcast. We hike up the hills and are drenched in sweat. At the top we ...