Day 11 Castro Urdiales – Hazas

So there was no fish supper last night. We walked for about hour along the harbour front and all the back streets. There were two problems… First nowhere was open. This is such a problem for us walkers… The Spanish prefer to eat after 9:00pm but walkers like to be thinking about bed by then. Second we could either find bars or expensive restaurants. In the end we had to admit defeat. We stumbled on a little casa-made burger restaurant. It was open so we stayed. The moral of this story is… Don’t dream of a certain dish because you can be sure you won’t find it when you want it!

We returned to our hotel just a tiny bit disappointed… But Castro is still a beautiful place to visit.

My cold is really fizzing so I was looking forward to my bed. I’ve tried to book us single beds in our hotels forthis holiday, because we know from experience that Spanish beds can be a tad cosy. However we find that owners assume we’ve made a mistake and so they give us a double anyway. Last night was one such occasion. Not only did we have the cosy bed… it wasnt quite so cosy… hard as nails was how Gerry described it. Added to that, Gerry’s pillow only had about six feathers in it whereas and mine had the rest of the goose. Let’s just say that neither of us slept well.

We left town as the sun was rising and stopped to explore the magnigicent church overlooking the harbour. My cold is worse and my throat feels bad so we stocked up in the chemist before heading off up the hill and away from the coast… But only for a while.

We were walking behind another pilgrim for a while… he was faster than us but we figured he must have been having a bad stick day… As he mounted the crest of a hill he launched his stick in the air and threw into the bushes… Which did cause much giggling from us making up reasons why he could have fallen out so badly with his walking aid.

We walked on a lot of tarmac today and it’s hard on your feet. When we finally left the road we ended up on a really tough trail, it was very rocky and uncomfortable underfoot. We’ve left behind the view of turbines at Portulagete… which is good because it felt like we were never getting away from them! And… we were back beside the sea which does makes everything feel better.

Everything except my cold… It’s a shorter blog tonight… Mainly because I can’t be bothered (sorry). We arrived at our hotel and I climbed into bed and slept for a couple of hours. I hope I feel better tomorrow!

It’s not all bad… There is a kettle!