I had taken a full day's rest to allow my knee to recover. The second night at the hostel had cost me more, since my pilgrim's pass only got me a discount the first night. I called my parents in Germany again, then set out to continue the walk to Portugalete.
It immediately started with a long flight of stairs. A long flight of stairs. Great, I thought. My knee is going to love this.
This picture does not show the whole thing.
From Bilbao to Portugalete there is practically only a series of cities and suburbs lining the coast, but the trail occasionally dipped behind a ridge so that the cityscapes weren't visible and one could walk among greenery. There were many ramshackle huts of the rural poor, and a lot of garbage was lying around. It reminded me of some parts of Ecuador.
As I was puffing up a steep hill I saw the Danish lady I had met at dinner the night before. She was resting on a bench. I stopped and we spoke for a bit, and then continued on together. She had a pair of nordic walking sticks. We talked about why we were taking the pilgrimage and about where we lived and worked. Her name was Lone, and she lived in southern Denmark just north of the German border. She had four children and a few grandchildren. She said she needed some space to air out her mind, so she came on this pilgrimage.
Some sections of the trail have apparently been there since Roman times. We passed a point where the trails divided. One led to Burgos and the Camino Frances, the other one continued along the coast. A trail marker helpfully indicated that it was still a good 730 Kilometers to Santiago.
We came to a small chapel. Since I was on a pilgrimage and all, I tried to stop at each of the chapels along the road and enter for a bit of prayer and silence, but I hadn't been very successful because most of them were locked. It was the same with this one. We drank some water and walked on.
The trail returned into suburban landscapes. We eventually lost track of the trail markers. Lone read from her guide, and I saw a road that could be the one we were looking for. It started going steep uphill. For some reason I always speed up when I walk uphill, and Lone was having trouble with the incline so she was lagging behind. We hadn't seen trail markers in a long time. Eventually an old car came down the hill. I flagged the driver to stop and asked if one could get to Portugalete by following this trail.
"Dear me, no," he said. "This keeps going up, and up, and when you get to the top of the hill, there's no way to go but down again. You can go down the other side, but Portugalete is that way." And he pointed.
"Well, you'll see we came off the trail a bit here," I said. "If you're heading back down the hill, could you take us with you to where the trail continues?"
He hesitated for the briefest of moments, then opened the passenger door. Lone was just coming into view at that point (it must have seemed strange for me to be talking about "us" when there was no one but me in sight). We were given a lift back down the hill and got off at a traffic light. It ended up taking quite some time until we were all out, with our backpacks and Lone's nordic walking sticks and my pilgrim staff and trench coat, and the driver explaining to us what our options were to continue our walk to Portugalete. The light changed several times and the car just stood there, a line of cars forming behind it. I made an apologetic gesture to the woman in the first car, but she laughed. I guess she enjoyed the sight.
