Bulls and Beards

 Hiking Day 14    Santander to Santillana Del Mar

Miles    13.5

Total miles    186.5

Ascent    784’

Descent    624’

Today begins with something we have never done before on a Camino hiking day…we take a taxi to avoid the first 7 miles of walking along busy highways and through industrial areas. The taxi was included as part of our booking package and it was “free” so why not? Plus it is raining in Santander as we hop in the taxi and it continues to rain lightly all the way to our drop off point.

Out of the taxi and the rain promptly stops. We don rain jackets just in case but it never rains on us the remainder of the day! We are having good Camino weather karma….I tell Scot that the good karma is because he buses our table after every coffee stop. Regardless, we have been blessed so far with never getting rained on while actually outside hiking, in spite of some very close calls.

Once the taxi departs we start out along narrow roads through farm country. We see a few bulls and lots of cows. One bull is an enormous muscular fellow who is separated by a road and two fences from the admiring cows…watch out ladies, he is indeed a brut.

 

It continues to be overcast as we slug along paved roads which seems to be our destiny for the day. We get a few distant glances of the ocean far in the distance but today is all about inland walking along roads and through industrial areas.

                                Just sluggin’ along down the road to Santillana

                                                Ocean views in the far distance

After long stretches along roads and some not wildly scenic road walking, wishing that this part of the Camino had been routed more through fields, we do manage to spot one graffiti artwork that is so well done it lifts our spirits! It was done in pencil on a concrete wall.

                                                        “The Bearded Man”

There are two special highlights today. The first is that we meet a few English speaking Pilgrims. Because we took a rest day yesterday we are seeing a whole new “batch” of pilgrims. Today we meet and hike with Percy, a 19 yo girl from Atlanta who has lived in Germany and now attends Pepperdine in LA. We meet Amanda, a darling gal perhaps early 30’s from Brisbane Australia who, like us, hiked the Camino Frances in 2019 about the same time we did. Have we met before? None of us is sure.

We also met Tina a 40ish lady from Denmark who speaks better English than I do. It is great to finally meet other pilgrims, something we have missed on the del Norte but were able to experience daily on the Frances.

On an unrelated note we see our very first pig on this Camino. Although pork loins are often served for dinner it has been a mystery as to where they are raised….certainly on none of the farms that we hike past each day.

The final highlight for the day is the town that we are staying in for the night…Santillana Del Mar. Although the last part of the name means “the sea”, it is no where close to the sea, at least in hiker terms. But it is considered one of the prettiest town in Spain and is a bit of a tourist town. The streets are paved with stone, the buildings are old and of stone, and the streets are narrow. Just a darling European town and we are sleeping in an old palace tonight! Plus we have the longest pillows we have ever seen!!

                        

                                                                A 5+ foot long pillow!

Santillana is filled with shops and restaurants, so our dinner choices will be many. The sun finally pokes thru the clouds and the late afternoon warms us as we sit outside the palace Hotel and enjoy a few drinks with our friends.