Day 1 - Phase II (Camino Primitivo: Oviedo to Grado - 27 km)
Up before dawn and on the road at 0700 - life is back to normal! It felt good to have a full pack strapped to my back, sticks in my hand, a decent day of walking planned, and my Camino brother Dan with me.
It took about 45 minutes of walking to get out of the city (plus another 10 for our first café con leche) before we were finally in the countryside. When I could hear the birds chirping, I started to get into my relaxed zone. Most of today's walk was along quiet county roads, farmers’ lanes, or quiet paths through forests. As a very pleasant reminder of my journey through France, we even passed by a few corn fields. As always, the views were beautiful throughout the day.
The thin overcast in the morning kept the temperature perfect for hiking. We ran into Rado from Slovakia, one of Dan's Camino friends he first met several days ago. Rado has been taking English lessons for only one year yet we had great, detailed conversations throughout the day. I was impressed with his language abilities after such a short period of time. At our first stop at a café that was open (well into the day), I spoke with Marcel, a Frenchman living in Spain, who is 80 years old and doing the Primitivo with Spanish friends. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation which was all in French; I'm missing the language after only a couple of days of being out of France. We arrived at our albergue early afternoon which allowed time for a refreshment, laundry and relaxing.
Dinner, when the restaurants opened at 8:00 pm, was with Dan and Rado at a local ‘hole in the wall.’ The fish was delicious as was the wine.
I'm grateful to be walking again and after a week of rest, I'm feeling great. There were quite a few ascents and descents today and although they were short, some of the descents were steep - a warm-up for future days.
By the way, many photos from my entire time on these Caminos were provided by my Camino family and for that, I thank them very much.
