My Camino Day August 26 2022 – or Getting lost when I was already lost
My Camino Day August 26 2022 included getting lost when I was already lost so it was a truly memorable day! I knew hiking the first half of Etapa 26 was to be on my penultimate day on the Camino for 2022. I didn’t expect to get lost or to discover that I was lost because I got lost while I was lost.
But that’s a bit of a “shaggy dog story.”
The plan.
Etapa 26 is from Soto de Luiña to Cadavedo. It’s advertised as 18 kilometers (11 miles) and moderately challenging, a difficulty of 3, on Gronze.com, so I woke up early, packed my stuff and got ready to hike just the first half of it, from Soto de Luiña to Santa Marina, where my wife, Janis, had arranged a bed at a Pensión.
The reality.
From my journal: “The pension [Casa Vieja in Soto de Luiña] had no food. I started with left-behind instant coffee that was terrible. Forecast said dry so I packed my rain gear. It started raining between the time I went out to check & when I saddled up. Unpack rain gear. After a block or so, there was a tiny panadaria. No coffee or breakfast stuff so I bought a chocolate thing that was ok, but far from what I wanted. So another block and a hotel [Hotel Valle Las Luiñas] with a nice restaurant that’s open for breakfast! Bacon & eggs …”
One wrong turn …
An entirely satisfactory breakfast behind me, I headed off toward Santa Marina. The trail seemed well marked leaving Soto de Luiña, too well, or perhaps not quite well enough for a peregrino who may not have studied the map, and noted the dotted line Gronze provided, as he should have. Etapa 26 has two options for getting to Cadavedo, one via Las Palancas and one via Las Ballotas. Somewhere, probably when the plaque directed me off the pavement and onto a one-lane country road (thanks, Google Timeline), I ended up on my way to Cadavedo by way of Las Palancas … that dotted line … instead of by Las Ballotas where Santa Marina is, north of the Autovía limited access highway, the solid line. Thus, I was lost almost from the start and well before I realized I was totally lost.
But all seemed very well, indeed. The plaques and arrows were easy to follow and I hiked happily along the wrong Camino route. The one-lane country road, two dirt tracks, was easy to follow. Then a seashell plaque directed me off the small road and onto a narrow dirt path. Since this was hardly the first time that such a signpost had indicated a turn away from a clear path, I thought nothing of it as I headed happily off into the vegetation.
Later, another plaque directed me off to the left and into the vegetation once again. This time, the path became even narrower than the earlier one. Then it appeared to finally return to the road after a more significant distance.
Two wrong turns …
I continued to hike along, but with growing unease as things were finally starting to feel as though something was wrong. There had been a difficult section of trail. Then I realized (duh) that I had stopped seeing Camino markers.
Again, from my journal, “The trail was very well marked so all I can think of is that, while head-down and climbing with all I’ve got, I was looking at the ground and missed the arrow or medallion.” At this point, I knew I was lost. This was progress! I just didn’t know how lost I was as yet.
Google Timeline provides a nice map of my wanderings that day. My first error, just after leaving Soto de Luiña is marked with the red oval. The missed signpost, which would have kept me on the wrong path all the way to Catavedo, must have been where my tracks became backtracks near Resielles, the general area shown by the red cloud outline.
But at last, I knew I was lost. Just not that I was on the wrong route and on the wrong side of the Autovía del Cantábrico.
Revelation!
¡Soy idiota! Or, in English, “I’m an idiot!” But at least I knew that the path I was on had to be wrong when I found myself in the muddiest road I’ve seen in a LONG time. Even picking my way carefully along the driest part of the mini-swamp, I sank down beyond the ankle-high tops of my hiking shoes. My pant legs, shoes, socks, and feet were soaked as a result. (Note to self: call it “mud” if you want, but you know darn well it’s not just machinery on these farm roads.)
Back to the plan.
But the Camino takes care of idiotas antiguas, that’s “old idiots,” like me. When I backtracked and extracted myself from the mud, I somehow ended up on a paved road, found some fellows working on a house that was under construction, and – despite all the odds – asked the right question: “How do I get to Santa Marina?” Had I asked, “How do I get back on the Camino?” I probably would have found myself on the way to Cadavedo once again.
Things I didn’t know then included that, had I found and followed the yellow arrows, Cadavedo was 10 or 12 kilometers away. I did not have a room reservation of any kind in Cadavedo, something all the more important given that the town’s annual fiesta was in full swing August 26th to 27th and rooms for that particular night were in, uh, very short supply.
Well, short supply might be a bit inaccurate. There were tents pitched behind the municipal albergue when I arrived there on the 27th, apparently having been used by some of the fiesta attendees.
But the Camino Fates had chosen to get me to Santa Marina despite myself.
“On the road again,” sorry Willie, I was reminded why the even pavement and clear path are not always as desirable as they might seem, even after being lost on a mud filled country road. As I followed the directions to Santa Marina, which seemed strange at best at the time, I found myself hiking on a series of two lane paved roads. Those roads eventually got me back on the right Camino route, the solid line version of Etapa 26, and on the north side of the Autovía.
Success!
But I finally found myself looking at Bar Gayo, quite literally a bar and the “office” part of a very nice Pensión.
As I said, the Camino takes care of idiotas antiguas. Even without knowing “the whole truth,” that night I wrote in my journal “That error turned a 5 mile hike into a 10 mile one. Add in extra mud and wet and I paid the full price for missing the signal.” Only much later did I come to understand how totally screwed up my path had been that day.
What I did know was that Pensión Gayo provided a shared, this is a true pensión, bathroom in which to clean up a bit, a nice bedroom, a perfectly adequate bar in which to await dinner while watching both locals and other peregrinos come and go, a wonderful hostess who washed and dried my dirty clothes for a very reasonable price, a fine dinner, and a good night’s sleep.
