NOTAS DE UN BAGABUNDAJE

 I awoke refreshed by my vacation from the camino,  and somewhat rested.  The lumbering antics of a pre-verbal, yet not quiet, toddler in the room above me the night before, in combination with a crashing sea meant that I didn't sleep until sometime after two.  And here I was at seven, already 5k from town.  This was one of my favourite mornings of walking of the whole camino.

I stopped for a bread and cheese breakfast outside San Esteban de Leces.  As I sat on a the cover of a cistern by the roadside I could see the ancient buildings of the monastery and the brand new looking village.  It was an odd contrast but I didn't think anything of it until recently when I learned that the first mention of the village was in 1259, and that it had been destroyed during the civil war and was rebuilt in 1953.  You couldn't tell from where I sat that day that anything at all had happened there for the last millenium.  It was so  quiet and flower filled and dewy.  The worst thing that I saw was a dead sheep.

From San Esteban it was a quick walk through the countryside to La Vega.  Being a seaside town, I thought it might be a bit touristic, which to me meant a washroom and coffee.  However, it was anything but.  It was a lovely quiet aldea, a hamlet, on the side of a steep hill going down to the sea.  It wasn't until I got to the beach proper that there was any kind of commercial development, in the form of a couple of bars, which were closed.  I tried to wheedle a coffee out of one guy, but it was no go.

Even though I was in the middle of nowhere, my education wasn't forgotten.  It turned out that the beach was a natural monument.   In the park at the beach was a huge signboard telling about the bridge which crossed a streamlet there and how it was mentioned in a travel book by one of Spain's major writers, Camilo Jose Cela called Del Mino al Bidasoa; notas de un bagabundaje (think vagabond).  I just loved saying it!  Bag - a -bune- da-hey!   I wish I'd known about the fossilized dinosaur footprints at the other end of the beach.  I might have made a day of it.

As it was, it was a morning of one delight after another. For a while, the way followed the Camino Real, the Royal Road, but to me  Camino Real = Real Camino.  While I hated walking on asphalt, I loved walking on ancient cobbles, between banks of brambles higher than my head.  

For a while the path ran high above the sea, through open pastures.  To the south, I could see the tail end of the Sierra del Sueve, whose name commemorated an ancient Germanic tribe who lived in Spain in the post Roman Empire years.  All around were small herds of horses and cattle who seemed to be enjoying the sun and the fine weather just as much as I was.

I passed blithely through one pasture, realizing only as I passed through the stile at the far end that there were not one, but two! bulls in the field.  They were pretty laid back!

In the area known as the Arroyo de los Romeros, I passed a sparkling, gurgling stream lined with yellow iris which threw itself over a small waterfall into the sea.  From there, it was down to the Arenal de Moris for a stretch of beach walking.  I followed the beach to La Espasa,  where I got back on a paved walkway to La Isla, where I stopped for more food.  I got  tick on me and sat in gum in the space of one minute, so I picked up my stuff and headed onward.

After a stretch along the highway at La Isla, I was thrilled to head off into a field which led to woods and even some mud.  In the Arroyo de Bueno, a marshy little river crossing, I came upon the remains of a rustic medieval bridge.  All too soon I was in Colunga.