Today was 17 miles, bringing our total to 78 miles over all. Once again, it was a very hilly route going up and down quite a bit, and giving us about 2,500 feet of climbing.

This is been a fascinating Camino for people watching. 5 days into it, we met our second native English speaker, another Irish person. Mostly, the Camino is populated with Spaniards, then French, then Germans. We have also met people from Romania, Hungary, and Italy. Here is a picture of George (with Diane in the foreground) from Budapest, Hungary. He is on his third Camino.

We have enjoyed many of our conversations with these pilgrims, when they can speak either English or Spanish, but struggle with French and are hopeless in any other language. Nonetheless, most have a moderate command of English, making some communication possible and even enjoyable.

Diane would not let me complete this post without showing a picture of the baby horsies.

For probably fifteen hundred feet of one of our descents, the locals invested significantly on the trail. These high-end wooden staircases continued on and on down the mountainside. Apparently, this was to control the erosion from the earlier straight up and down trail that is a long side these wooden staircases.

And, to make sure we knew that we were in Spain, our first view of our destination town (Guernica) was rooftops. Of course we have to arrive from a high elevation and drop down a very steep descent to get to our town. (Guernica is the town in the distance).

We are now in Guernica, a town made famous because of Franco’s atrocities, and Picasso’s paintings about those atrocities. The past sadness is remembered but the city has moved on and is a bustling community these days.

For the record, today was 15 miles bringing us to a total of 61 miles over all. Yes, I had an incorrect total yesterday when I said we had completed 56 miles. Oh well.

Today we traveled inland from the coast. It seems that a few years back, a resident of Deba decided he did not like pilgrims. As a result, he woke up early one morning with a can of yellow paint and hand-painted numerous incorrect directional arrows throughout the hills in the area. The result was many confused and lost pilgrims. Eventually, those lost programs were located and sent about on the correct path.

Ultimately, this Wayward gentlemen was caught and the sign postings were corrected. Now, just about every half-mile, we have these elegant signs like this. No getting lost here!

The vegetation around here is substantially forest and meadow.

A couple of features about today’s walk were the lack of civilization for miles and miles. You were warned ahead of time to bring food and plenty of water. That proved to be the case, as Diane  and I found a nice open spot and made our own lunch in a wonderfully quiet meadow.

The other feature about today’s walk was the climbing. A little over 3,000 feet of climbing. And, just to make sure we knew we were in Spain, we entered the town of Markina with an extraordinary steep and very straight descent into town. Oh, to be fair, we did count three whole switchbacks over 15 miles. Spain does in fact know about switchbacks!

Enough for now. Showers and laundry await.

Today was a 15 mile hike, bringing our total to 56 miles. We continue to average about 2,000 feet of climbing each day.

We are learning something about Spain. Spain is a very efficient country. You can waste a lot of road and labor building that road by using switchbacks. A seemingly more intelligent approach is to simply go straight up the mountain and then straight down the mountain. And that seems to be the way the Camino in Spain works it. When it is time to descend, you go down a 25% grade slide. When it’s time to ascend, you go up that 25% grade. What could be more efficient? That is, except on your legs, your knees, your hips, and all those other body parts that don’t like the jarring.

We started this morning accompanied by scores of runners who enjoyed the morning Beach path.

After a distance, we arrived in the town of Zumaia, which seem to be populated with top end bicyclists. We were impressed! Here’s a picture of Diane with the town behind her.

There are many other pilgrims on the road. We are seeing somewhere between 25 and 40 each day. While we have only met one native English speaker, from Ireland, we have met many people with whom we could carry some conversation either in Spanish or in our broken French.

As we head into away from the ocean, the hills became forested and the valleys were beautiful.

Tomorrow, we head away from the ocean for 15 miles and 3000 feet of climbing. The guide books tell us it is fantastically beautiful; so far we haven’t been disappointed.

Enough for now. We hope all is well for each of you.

First, the numbers: we traveled 14.3 miles bringing our total to 31 miles.

After spending the afternoon, evening and early morning in San Sebastian, we understand why it is considered one of the most beautiful cities in Spain. It truly is amazing.

We left in the midst of rain and began the long westward hike to Zarautz. The views were breathtaking. 10 miles into the hike, we saw our first indication of how far Santiago is. So with 25 miles of walking already behind us, this sign tells us we still have about 500 to go.

We stopped in the town of Orio ( pronounced like the cookie) for lunch. We had five excellent Tapas between the two of us  and soft drinks, all for about 10 euro. More importantly, the food was excellent.

Within four more miles we had sight of Zarautz. Again, another beautiful waterfront town.

Almost as importantly, the Sun finally broke through after a day-and-a-half of hiking in the rain. It was beautiful! It is amazing how soon we forget that last week on the River Lot, we dealt with temperatures in the high nineties every single day. France was having a scorcher!

So now to laundry, bathing, and finding food to fuel the engine. See you tomorrow.

Day one: Our hike to Santiago de Compostela. We traveled 16 miles, with about 2,300 feet in climbing. Here’s a photo of Diane cheerfully looking forward to a day’s walk.  it is amazing how cheerful we can be when  we haven’t started the work.

Our first indication that we were on the right path was this beautiful sign in the sidewalk.

It was supposed to rain most of the night, but it didn’t. We assumed that we would be mostly safe from the rain then. Not a good assumption! Within 10 minutes of starting the walk, the rain came down. And it kept coming. 6 hours worth of rain. Here is a photo of Diane before we decided to put our rain gear on. Once appropriately attired, we thoroughly enjoyed the hike. After 11 miles we arrived in Pasaia where we enjoyed a wonderful lunch of anchovies and clams.

5 miles later, we arrived in San Sebastian, a spectacularly beautiful town which no doubt looks even better when the sun is out. We are now in the process of our daily routine, washing ourselves, our clothes, and exploring a new town.

We have been blessed with a day of health, new sights, and a few new faces to store in our memories.

For the past 10 days we have been in France. We have had a wonderful opportunity to self navigate the river Lot and explore some wonderful French countryside. Southern France is absolutely beautiful and with eight months of French vocabulary practice before we went, we successfully massacred the French language and created our own version of French English called franglish. The French were very forgiving and appreciated our attempts. Diane proved to be the most adept at actually communicating words that made sense. Tomorrow we will have the opportunity to meet mix Spanish and English and create Spanglish.

Unfortunately ( or fortunately), we were without internet the whole time on the river. We have many wonderful pictures and memories to share, but they will have to wait until we have a bit more time for me to create an appropriate post or two.

For now, we have many details to take care of before we start our Camino walk tomorrow morning.  We arrived in Irun after 10 hours of trains and need to repack bags and send our suitcase ahead to Santiago before the evening is up.

Tomorrow will be simple; walk, eat, walk, eat some more, walk some more, etc. We look forward to sharing that first day’s journey with you.

I guess two introductions are necessary here, perhaps three. While the word “camino” simply signifies a walk in the Spanish language, in Western Europe the capitalized version “Camino” means much more. For over a thousand years Christian pilgrims (peregrinos) would take a walk (camino) from various places throughout Europe to the final destination, Santiago de Compostela. This journey (pilgrimage), which might take several months, became known as the “Camino”.

Even today, many thousands of people take this trek. The reasons are no longer solely as a Christian pilgrimage, though for many that still remains the primary reason. For others, it is for culture, or health, or outdoors enjoyment, or all of the above. For Diane and I, it is for all-of-the-above.

While the journey ends in Santiago de Compostela, it can start in many places. The most popular location for starting is at the French-Spanish border, a French town called: St. Jean Pied de Port. Two years ago, we started the pilgrimage there. Here is a link to our blog: http://caminodewirewalker.com/

This time we are choosing to begin on the very northern coast of Spain, at the French-Spanish border again, in the Spanish town of Irun. The path is known as the “Camino del Norte” and will follow the coast of Spain along the Bay of Biscay for about 350 miles before dropping inland and finishing at Santiago de Compostela. It is about 500 miles in total length. Our hope, however, is to continue on to Finesterre, another 90 miles to the west of Santiago, making this about a 600 mile walk.

So now with two introductions down (“Camino” and “Camino del Norte”), I’ll work on the third. “Wirewalker” is the name of our old sailing catamaran that we sailed roughly 25,000 miles throughout the Western Caribbean and Western North America (mostly Mexico). “Wirewalker” came from a line in Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” song, where he asks: “Will you walk with me out on the wire? Baby we were born to run.”

Enough for now …