Where there’s a will

The weather was cool and overcast with encouraging signs of blue appearing; ideal conditions for our approach to the mountains of Asturias. An easy ride brought us quickly to one of the most important junctions on our entire journey. At the tiny hamlet of Casquita there is an even tinier chapel dedicated to San Blas.

You will note that it provided an opportunity to self-stamp our credencials, as well as offering a registration book for pilgrims to record their passing. We dutifully did both, and then re-committed ourselves to our task for this is where we leave the Camino del Norte to begin the daunting task of travelling to Santiago on the Camino Primitivo, the original way.

Linda made sure I didn’t miss the turning although I suspect she would have preferred to remain on the Norte given some of the monumental ascents still to come.

In the entrance to the chapel someone had posted a poem addressed to us pilgrims. We would be enormously grateful to our Spanish-fluent friends for your assistance in translating this. We suspect it might be more of a prayer than a poem, but there again there is a great tradition of bawdiness and earthiness in pilgrim writing as we know from Carmina Burana and the Canterbury Tales!

As we moved inland away from Villaviciosa the scale of the terrain became more evident and the sense of the overwhelming providence of nature was palpable. The verges and hedgerows were humming with bees and we were only able to identify a fraction of the wild flowers growing in profusion including potentilla, aquilegia, hardheads (reminiscent of small thistles), saxifrage, veronica, and endless others that were beyond our botanical ability. Suffice to say that our gentle progress through this wonderland was pure joy.

And then we (i.e. me, your blog author) made a very poor decision. We had reached a junction and we had a choice. We could follow our official route which would take us to an ancient church and Cistercian monastery, or we could take a short link out to a provincial, numbered road and follow a reliably good surface to the alto marked on our map.

Both routes appeared from the mapping to have a similar character, and so we (i.e. I) opted for the monastery. Big mistake: huge!

The approach to the monastery was a steep descent on good surfaces into a deeply cut valley.

The gates to the monastery were locked – we were well before eleven when they offered tours, so I was only able to get a snatched photo through the fence. My navigational reputation descended into the basement, however , when the tarred road was swiftly replaced by a rough concrete road which then ascended aggressively to the col above. I hoped it might be just a few hundred metres of pushing but, at an estimated gradient well above 20%, we reckon we pushed the bikes for nearly two kilometres. It was immensely draining and both bikes were close to being dumped in the depths of the steep sided valley below! Linda’s failed attempt to muster a smile says it all and the photo gets nowhere near to capturing the steepness of the climb.

Eventually, we reached the Alto de la Campa and the main road. We were treated to a brilliantly engineered, smooth surfaced glide down into Pola de Siero where two coffees each were consumed to settle our frayed nerves. Pola was a great coffee stop but we could find little else to say in its favour. And lest you are thinking that all we do is cycle through wonderful pristine landscapes we have included a photo of some typical town landscape we had to negotiate on the outskirts of Pola.

Eventually, we freed ourselves from Pola’s urban constraints and commenced a complex and pretty back route into Oviedo without using the busy N-road. As we were nearing Oviedo we spotted this Casa cum restaurant and thought it might be trying to hint at something. Sure enough, by the time we had arrived at the portals of the Cathedral we had climbed 9698 metres, and travelled 530 kms since leaving Irun. We had climbed more than the total height of Everest from sea level! And it was beginning to feel like it!

Around 2pm we had our first view of the Oviedo skyline and we were relieved. Because of the pushing it had seemed to be one of our hardest days. Fortunately, we have our first rest day tomorrow before setting off into the highlands of Asturias.

Before we close for tonight we simply want to thank Judith and Tom McInally. We awoke this morning to a notification from the Hospice that they had made a generous donation to the Hospice on our site, and had posted a lovely message. Although we do not know you we are hugely appreciative of the support you have given. Along with the many other donations and comments we have received, it is this support that makes it possible to continue when we have days like today! Fortunately, Oviedo is proving to justify its reputation as one of Spain’s most beautiful cities. We hope to share with you a ‘postcard’, from our gentle wanderings tomorrow. Time for bed!