Today was one of those days where I didn’t want to get out of bed. But it was a 33.4km day today. Luckily it was mostly flat. There is a variant of this route that takes three days while the A route takes two days. The B variant today goes through the mountains and To tell the truth, I just wasn’t up for it. A total elevation change of almost 2200m. The B variant was also what I had originally planned to do as there is a trail through rocky craigs. I sat at the intersection for a good 10-15 minutes contemplating which way I should go. I ended up taking the A variant.

So – the A variant: it was 33.4km, 10 on farm track, 10km through little towns on asphalt or concrete and 13km on highways.

There were not a lot of historical items to visit, but there were some. So it was basically walking through much of the same as the past few days.

For about 10km towards the end, there were some beautiful farm track roads with everything budding out in its springtime glory. The wildflowers were in bloom, the grasses were emerald green, the trees were in varying stages of budding out. It was beautiful. The one drag is that this is pasture land too and where there are pastures, there are flies. And these little suckers swarm your face and like to land on my glasses. Inhaling them is always of concern.

The highway walking was tough, this wasn’t a country road, but more like a two lane state highway – at least there was a shoulder.

It rained on and off today but not really enough to get me wet – at least not wetter than my sweat. I opted to cover the pack and pack my rain coat at I would have been wetter with the raincoat on than with it off.

This morning I met another pilgrim in Boñar at the cafe. We chatted a little and then he left. I never saw him in the trail, although there were many places where the rain hadn’t washed out the fresh footprints.

This afternoon, I met a couple of pilgrims headed to Oviedo. It looks like this town is a crossroads of multiple ways.

Today was pretty evenly divided in three by towns with bars in them. The first on I rolled into at 10:00, the bars were closed. Just at the dar side of town I heard a blaring horn blasting several times. It ended up being the bread delivery so I waited by the side of the road and bought some bread to eat on the trail. That made me happy

Summary:

While the last 10km of was really beautiful, it was a long haul and I probably would have enjoyed 13B better but I was just not in the mood. Rain, mountains and me not knowing the area made me chose the valley route for safety. I probably would have been fine – I definitely would have done the mountain route if I had someone with me.

A good day on the Camino