Thank God for industrial strength ear plugs. My flophouse room at the Hotel La Ronda was anything but quiet last night. It was Friday night so the local Spaniards started to party at about 10:00 PM and when I woke up this morning at 6:00 AM they were winding down their long night of revelry with much fanfare. On top of the Friday all night fiesta outside my window I also had the guy in the room next to mine snoring with such gusto that if he had been Paul Bunyan, Babe The Blue Ox would have gored him.
Good thing I have a deluxe set of wax earplugs. Before I hit the sack in the evening I jam these babies so far down my ear canals that sometimes I need a corkscrew to fish them out in the morning. Almost any sound, below the decibel level of a jet engine at full throttle, gets blocked out by these earplugs. I couldn’t do the CDN without them.
I was packed and out of the Hotel La Ronda by 6:30 AM and decided to take a detour off the Camino and walk out of town along the harbor side promenade. I was rewarded with these gorgeous views of the sunrise at the harbor in Castro Urdiales.
After I got to the outskirts of town the sun started peeking over the horizon, heralding a bright, sunny and hot day.
The municipal alburgue in Castro Urdiales is on the western edge of town. This alburgue has a very limited number of beds and if you don’t get there early, you wind up sleeping in a tent.
As you can imagine the TripAdvisor reviews on this alburgue have not been five star. One guy compared it to the kennel where he takes his dog when he goes out of town. Now that’s a bit harsh.
This is the steeple of the church in Allendelagua, a little town 5 kilometers west of Castro Urdiales.
I stopped here and said a prayer for Anna and everyone else on my prayer list.
West of Allendelagua the Way hugs the coast. The sea views were unbelievable.
When I got to Cerdigo it was about 9:00 AM, time for a break and second breakfast.
Potato, egg and cheese tortilla, bread and an ice cold Radler. Nine o’clock in the morning sounds like a bit early to start drinking beer, but this is the Camino.
In the town square in Cerdigo I found this two sided drinking fountain with a goat on top. There was an inscription on the other side of this fountain that told the following story, as explained to me by an English speaking Spanish gentleman who was hanging around the town square.
The long time and beloved bachelor mayor of Cerdigo had a pet goat named Ignacio that went everywhere with the mayor. After a long life, in goat years, Ignacio died and the mayor was bereft. The mayor fell ill shortly after he buried his best friend Ignacio. On his death bed, after the parish priest gave him Last Rites, the mayor, just moments before he expired, exclaimed: ” A good goat will do that!”
In his will the mayor left the town enough money to build this fountain and dedicate it to his boon companion Ignacio, with strict instructions that his final words be carved on the base of the fountain.
“A GOOD GOAT WILL DO THAT.”
This is the church in Islares, the next town we walked through on our journey today.
This is the alburgue in Liendo where I am staying tonight.
This is a view of the mountains we had to walk up and around this afternoon to get from Pontarrón to Liendo.
At 7:30 PM the bells 🔔 in the church steeple of the church next to the alburgue started ringing like it was the end of World War I. I went over to see if the church was open for business or was there some crazy Quasimodo in town who just loved to ring the church bells on Saturday night. The church was open and this is what I found when I went inside.
What a beautiful altarpiece. I lit a candle 🕯 and sat down in the front pew and said a prayer for Anna, who is back in the hospital with pneumonia, and all the other people on my prayer list. As I was sitting in the front pew, deep in thought and prayer, people started streaming into the church for the 8:00 PM anticipatory Mass. It was such a serendipitous treat to attend Mass tonight at this beautiful church.
This is St. James the Moorslayer. See the sword in his right hand and the slain Moor on the ground getting trampled by his horse’s hooves.
Today I walked 31,000 steps, 22 kilometers.
That’s it for today.
I hope everyone had a great Saturday. Good evening from Liendo, Spain.
AbeAndMarkontheCamino 