La Isla to Barzana
Distance covered: 9.3 mi / 15 km
This day on the Camino del Norte crosses a few small beaches to get back to the main route before heading inland. Much of the route follows along rural roads with sustained, gradual climbs up hills covered in sprawling greenery.
On the day that I hiked this route, it rained quite a bit, so I didn’t have my camera out as much as I would have liked. While the hike was fairly uneventful, I did end up staying at an interesting albergue just outside a town that had a unique vibe to it.
If this is the first post you’re reading and want to start from the beginning, check out my Camino del Norte page, which features all of my Camino posts in chronological order. If you want to learn more about the Camino de Santiago itself, check out my post breaking down the basics of the Camino de Santiago.
Morning in La Isla
After a good night’s sleep, I woke up feeling refreshed, but had to wait for a group of cyclists to get out of the bathrooms before I could leave. They had arrived later in the evening and had taken over the restrooms while I was eating breakfast the next morning. Once I saw that they had fully set up shop in both bathrooms, I made another cup of coffee and accepted that I wasn’t heading out any time soon.
I ate a simple breakfast of jam on buttered toast with black coffee, and figured I’d grab some food when I found a supermarket. After eating and getting the last of my clothes off of the laundry lines outside, I set out from the small albergue.
This day was cooler and rainier than the day before, which meant that my camera stayed deep in my backpack in a waterproof pouch for most of the hike. Coming across a small supermarket, I loaded up on snacks for the day, uncertain of where the next store would be.
My feet were still hurting a bit from the long distance hiked a few days ago, but the shorter day yesterday and soaking them in seawater had improved things significantly. Compared to most other pilgrims, I was still doing pretty well with regard to blisters and other injuries.
Passing through Colunga
After making my way back to the main Camino del Norte route with signs clearly marking the way, I was able to worry less about navigation and enjoy the walk more. When I came to the first large town along this route, Colunga, I took some photos around town of the architecture and road signs. I also took advantage of the supermarket since I wasn’t sure when I would have another chance to pick up some snacks.
I stopped to take a few quick photos of some buildings along with the Camino signs around town, and the Iglesia de San Cristobal. After the quick stop, I carried on with enough food and fruit that I was didn’t have to worry about stopping for lunch.
Wandering off trail near La Llera
A few miles into the hike, I met a girl from Czechia (Czech Republic) as we both took shelter from the rain under the awning of a small church building. She had been there waiting out the storm for a few minutes when I walked up, and we got to know each other while I stretched a bit and shook the water off of my gear.
She told me a bit about herself and her pilgrimage, and we walked together a while once the rain had let up. Caught up in conversation, we eventually missed a turn-off and ended up walking quite a ways before noticing that we weren’t seeing any markers. She decided to backtrack to where we missed the turn, and I kept going since the trails appeared to join together on the map.
For the second time on this pilgrimage, I bumped into a stray dog that seemed quite familiar with the local trails. He kept his distance ahead of me but seemed to be taking the exact route I was following to get back to the Camino trail. At every major intersection, I would pause to check the map on my phone, and he would stop and look back at me as if to say, “What are you doing? I know where I’m going.” I guess I wasn’t the first pilgrim to miss that turn.
As I made my way back down to the official Camino route, I came across a group of chickens just out for a casual stroll along the side of the road. Gotta love rural Spain.
Arriving to the albergue in Barzana
Once I was within a day’s walk of Gijón, I started looking around for a supermarket to get some food for dinner and to find a place to sleep. I saw that there was an albergue donativo that was slightly off of the main route, but that had good reviews online.
For a full list of albergues along this route, check out the gronze.com page for Colunga to Villaviciosa. If you’re having issues making sense of the map, remember that you can translate the whole page within the Google Chrome browser by hitting the three vertical dots in the upper right corner and selecting “Translate”.
After the quick stop at the supermarket, I arrived at the albergue some time around 6:00 P.M. Upon checking in at the albergue that was slightly off the main route, I set my things down and made a quick meal. I hadn’t really eaten a proper lunch yet, and dinner wasn’t for another two hours. After quickly eating, I let them store my food in their private fridge until the next morning, since there was no fridge for the guests. After settling in, I took a quick shower and hung my hiking clothes up to dry.
Feeling refreshed, I sat out in the garden and chatted with a few other pilgrims from all around the world. I mostly talked with a journalist from England who was on holiday, and a few French pilgrims, but there were also people from Brazil, Japan, and a few other European countries.
Dinner at the albergue in Barzana
We ate a communal dinner at a long table consisting of a few large dishes at the center of the dining table that we all served ourselves from. We ate a paella-style rice dish with chicken and vegetables cooked into it, which I was very excited to eat. Despite the fact that I had just eaten less than two hours earlier, I was still starving from the cumulative miles hiked over the last few weeks.
Once we were done with dinner, some pilgrims played the acoustic guitar and sang a few songs that would be considered pretty cheesy by American standards. It’s always interesting to see how songs are perceived in different cultural contexts, and how they go on to live lives of their own. After the music, I was feeling pretty tired and figured I would head to bed early to try to catch up on some sleep.
As the night went on, people kept coming in and out of the bunk house and leaving the door wide open, which was letting more and more mosquitos in. Granted, where I come from there are significantly more mosquitos, so I wasn’t really too bothered, but it still wasn’t the best idea. When the other pilgrims finally came into the bunk house for the night, several of them started yelling about mosquitos and trying to shew them out… Needless to say, I didn’t catch up on any sleep.
Final thoughts
This rainy day of hiking was pretty uneventful aside from the one accidental detour, but I met a good number of interesting people from different countries around the world. At this point, I was still trying to strike a balance between too much and too little social interaction, and figure out the ideal distance to hike each day.
If I were to do it all again, I think I would try to be more consistent with the distances I walked and be more rigid with my sleep schedule if possible. I found that I was capable of covering long distances if I needed to, but I usually ended up paying for it the next day or two. Ironically, the next segment of the Camino del Norte covered nearly 23 miles, which I think was probably a bit much.
I had a great time on my hike, but there were unusually high numbers of pilgrims for the Jacobean Holy Year celebration, which was slated to happen right as I would be arriving in Santiago de Compostela. Between the post-pandemic travel boom and the Holy Year celebration crowds, this was probably the one year that I really should have considered booking some lodging ahead of time.
If you made it this far, you may enjoy my piece on walking the Camino as a solo traveler, or my piece discussing the types of people you’re likely to meet while walking the Camino. Let me know down in the comments what your ideal daily distance is for walking trips. And as always, ¡Buen Camino!
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