72: Castro Urdiales to Laredo

In the morning the pilgrim shelter was lively as people were in various states of preparation. Lone left earliest. Anabel and the Austrians were taking their time, as they were planning a short walk to a nearby private shelter for that day. When I headed out, Matthieu was still getting ready and the French ladies had just left.

I lost the trail within ten minutes. An unlikely trail marker struck me as suspicious, and I followed a promising footpath instead. This lead me uphill and into a eucalyptus forest where it promptly lost itself. After trying a few times to find it again I realized that there was nothing to find; the trail had simply ended. I bushwhacked around the forest for a while and came to a rocky mountainside. I still had enough sense of direction to know that the most direct route would be over the mountain, but I also had enough common sense not to try it. I would not have believed how strenuous it is to walk without a trail when you have a pack to carry and worn-out feet and knees. I looked from my vantage point to the nearest road I could make out, then buswhacked in that direction.

I had to trespass through one or two farms, but when I came out on the road, I practically walked right into Matthieu's arms. I had found my way back to the trail. We walked together for a while, and talked a lot. The trail went through small Spanish farming villages, through pastures and through bits of forest. Fog rolled in.

Matthieu's father had died earlier that year, with an unfulfilled wish to someday travel the Camino de Santiago. Matthieu had now taken his father's hat and staff, and some of his father's ashes, to make the trip himself.

We came to a campsite which had a restaurant and an outdoor cafe, and there sat Lone. The three of us had breakfast together, then continued on our way.

The next thing I remember was that we were on the carretera again. Why, I ask myself in retrospect, did I keep going off the trail and onto the highway? If I remember correctly, it had to do mostly with the condition of the trail, especially on days when it had been raining heavily. But I was eventually to get heartily sick of walking on highways as well.

The talking decreased; we walked in single file, Matthieu first, then me, then Lone, with the distance between us gradually increasing. We eventually reached a sort of picnic area and had lunch. I took off my boots and tried to do something to alleviate the pain in my feet. Then we continued along the carretera, through beautiful Spanish landscape on a day that had become beautifully sunny, all the way to Laredo.