70: Mioño to Castro Urdiales

While I don't think I slept, I did actually doze off in spite of the noise. I picked up and started walking again. A minute later I passed by a park, with an attractive lawn and a playground and some shady trees.

Isn't that the way it always goes, I thought. You try to catch your siesta on a hard bus stop bench next to a construction zone, and there's a park just a few steps further.

But the reason the park was there was, of course, because I had taken a nap on that bench. Had I walked on looking for a pleasant place to lay my head, there would not have been a park for hours.

A short while later I found myself walking through what looked like recently constructed suburbs. I was already in the outskirts of Castro Urdiales. When I eventually stopped at a gas station to ask the way to the pilgrim shelter, the attendant knew nothing about a pilgrim shelter, but one of the clients told me that it had been recently constructed, but was quite a ways away, "near the bullfight arena". He was giving me a long description of the shortest way to get there, but I had already decided I would just walk downtown and hit the tourist information office. They at least have maps.

It was a good thing I took this approach. Not only would I have gotten hopelessly lost otherwise, but I would not have gotten in to the building even if I had found it. At the information office they gave me the all-important map and circled the place where the brand-new shelter was. They also circled the police station, where I would have to go first in order to register, get my pilgrim stamp, and get a key to the albergue.

There was an older Spanish couple there who were also doing the pilgrimage. They had passed me on the pavement just a few minutes before. "Not...A...Race...!" I'd repeated to myself through clenched teeth as I tried to pick up my tempo to not lag behind a pair of senior citizens. Now I had the satisfaction of seeing them ask about hotels. For a moment I felt smug that I was doing the "real" pilgrim thing with all its gritty asceticism. Then I realized how pathetic my sentiments were.

On my way to the police station I met a few boys playing on the streets. They were impressed with my look, my trenchcoat and walking staff and floppy wide-brimmed hat. They asked me where I was from and how far I'd been walking, and those statistics impressed them as well. And I thought they must see pilgrims all the time.

Castro Urdiales is a beautiful town. As I walked towards the albergue I made vague plans of coming back after a shower and without my backpack to hang out on the beach for a bit or to shop around in the narrow streets or visit that cathedral on the hill. I met Anabel, who was coming from the shelter with, apparently, similar plans.

Immediately upon arriving at the shelter, I set about putting my plan of taking a shower into action. I took some clothes into the shower with me and washed them there as well.

Helmut and Helga from Austria were there too. There were two French sisters who I could not communicate with, and there was Matthieu from Quebec. Later on Lone from Denmark joined us, so we were a merry little pilgrim gathering.

In the end I did not have the energy to go back downtown like I had hoped. My feet felt like fire and like leather, and there were some more blisters to operate on.

But I did shop around locally and found a bookstore which did, indeed, have a pocket-sized New Testament. I also picked up some groceries.