DAY 14 – THURSDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 2019 

I have a confession to make. I’ve miscalculated my dates! Had I carried out my original plan I would be where I am now for just one night before moving on to Sarria to start The Camino the very next day, but upon going through my dates more carefully I could see that I didn’t actually start the walk until the following day. So, option 1, stay another night at The Casa Cayo, ruled out, fully booked ☹. Option 2, contact my hotel in Sarria to ask for an extra night, or option 3 book an extra night at the Palacio Arias in Navia. In the end I opted for option 3 because it was near the sea and I thought there’s probably a few more things you can do and see near the coast. As it turns out I may have made the wrong choice as Navia is actually on an estuary leading out to the sea and certainly on the northern side of the town it’s very industrialised with huge factory units and chimneys belching out smoke. To be fair I haven’t visited the town yet, but I’ll be venturing out for my evening meal soon, so I’ll report back on that later. I arrived at the hotel around 3.30pm and after dropping all my paraphernalia off and getting changed I headed back out on the bike to the nearest proper beach about 6 miles away. My plan was to have a quick dip, but although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky there was a keen onshore chilly northerly breeze and, discretion being the better part of valor, I took the easy option and had a stroll along the footpath leading down to the beach instead!. Once there I would have had to remove my shoes and socks to get across a freshwater stream that was blocking my way to actually getting onto the beach proper. Again, I chickened out because I could see that the only sole on the whole beach was a naked male sunbather and I didn’t want him thinking that I was some kind of pervert come to have a gawk! Now had it been a female laying there, maybe the shoes and socks would’ve been whipped off a bit sharpish and a valiant wade across the stream made!

On the way back to the hotel from the beach I spotted my first Camino sign, although this was referring to an earlier part of the walk as the whole Camino Francais is actually 800 kilometres long. I'm cheating as I'm only doing the last 100kms, but it does qualify me for my Camino Certificate Of Completion!

The journey today was initially thrilling and even scary, due to the twisty nature of the road heading north from Potes, especially when big 40 ton artics coming the other way were having to take big chunks of my side of the road to make it round the bend, just as I was leaning over on the bike mid-corner approaching from the opposite direction! Not only was the nature of the road thrilling, but once more the scenery didn’t disappoint as the road followed the route of the River Deva through a gorge as deep and as spectacular as Cheddar, but it just went on for about five times as long! Eventually the terrain flattened, the roads straightened and before I knew it, I’d hung a left and began heading west. Off to my right was the mighty Atlantic and off to my left the impenetrable barrier of the Picos D’Europa. Dramatic scenery, but a boring road compared to the beauties I'd been negotiating over the last few days. Boring, but from a civil engineering point of view very impressive. Before this road was built in the 70’s/early 80’s, I would guess, you would have had to either have taken the coast road or hugged the base of the mountains, negotiating all the ravines along the way. But with the coming of the motorway they simply blasted tunnels through the bits of mountain sticking out towards the sea and built huge viaducts to traverse across the ravines and valleys. Thank god for EU finance eh? Oh , yeah, I just remembered we won’t be qualifying for any of that soon , will we? Talking of which, since leaving our shores I haven’t had to put up with all the TV and radio doom and gloom speculation as armageddon day approaches!

On a lighter, more trivial note, for all those bikers out there who have an uncomfortable saddle and don’t want to spend a fortune on a little blow-up pillow (I believe they call it the Air Hawk!) then what I’m using now could be the answer! I’ve been using an orthopedic gel pad (on Ebay for about 12 quid) and although I initially had reservations, now I’ve got it positioned how I like it, it’s 100% better than it was, not only cushioning my bony bum, but also providing support for the upper inner thighs.