Day 56: The Halfway Point

Yesterday we hit a big milestone. We stayed in Ribadesella which is the halfway point on the Camino del Norte. We are estimating that we’ll be done with this Camino by the end of this month.

Follow up to our “The Wedding” post from yesterday. Five of us passed by the reception venue just as guests were arriving. Several fellow pelegrinos arrived hours later when the event was in full swing. Not only were they invited in for beer and some snacks, the happy couple posed for pictures with them. Maybe we should have tried to crash it. Timing is everything.

In 2019 we were walking The Way of Saint Francis across Italy and were caught in the open during a thunderstorm. For two hours we slogged though pouring rain with no place to shelter, worried about lightning strikes that were getting close. We arrived at our destination, soaked. This morning on the trail the clouds closed in, rain started to pelt us, and I started to have flashbacks to our Italian experience.

Good thing we were right outside waterfront hotel with an open cafe. A cup of coffee and tea later, we were back on the trail. Again, timing is everything.

On the Trail Today

We are now in the Asturias region and are starting to see elevated huts. They reminded us of Galician hórreos—an elevated grain storage bin that we saw on our first camino. The joke was that they were homes for bad husbands. There must be many bad husbands in Galicia.

Turns out that these huts are for the same purpose, even though they are much larger in Asturias. The husbands here must get more privileges, or they just have more grain to store.