It was an interesting summer. I set out from Irun with the intention of following a network of caminos and gran recorridos along the Cordillera Cantabrica to O Cebreiro but it didn't quite work out like that.
My last post was made at the Posada Real el Prado in Quintanilla de Rebollar. I can't recommend this hotel highly enough; it's not cheap but it's well worth treating yourself. The hotelera, Olga, is a fellow pilgrim and has walked several caminos; she has some books about the Viejo Camino/Camino Olvidado which I spent a very pleasant evening perusing. Dinner was abundant and delicious, lots of home made produce; the next morning I opted for a 'small' breakfast but I was offered a large platter of fruit and home-made jam. A very friendly place to relax - and as a pilgrim I got my cold beers on the house.
There is a bar in the village but I think it's more of a social club, it wasn't open on a Friday evening.
Pleasant walk along the valley then a bracing climb to 'El Collado' where I made the mistake of following the yellow arrows to the right instead of making for the unpaved road about 100m to the left. The arrows led me along a vague and thinning path that would probably be impassable in anything other than the driest weather. Eventually the path petered out into gorse and brambles and for the second time on my trip my legs where shredded and lacerated by thorns as I made my way through the dense foliage down to the track.
At Pedrosa de Valdeporres I encountered a fellow hiker/pilgrim, the only one I would meet on the route. She was doing a three or four day exploratory walk and looking for a casa rural. She wasn't impressed by the lack of intrastructure and we both agreed that the heat was making walking difficult. I should probably have stayed in Pedrosa but I'd booked a room further along the trail so I carried on, across the viaduct after which I lost the trail so followed a path then track to the right which took me to the main road to Soncillo which I followed all the way. At San Martin de la Ollas I came across an arrow indicating the off-road route but I ignored it as it would have involved losing height and I was getting knackered. In any case, the road isn't too busy, it's a relatively easy gradient and the views back to the east were fantastic.
I passed through Soncillo and wished I'd stayed there, too. Susanna and Laurie's guide lists one hotel but there was another, can't remember the name but it was about 30Euros. Instead I folled the
nacional to Quintanaentello where I stayed in the Hotel Rural La Prader (48 Euros, okay but overpriced compared to most of the other hotels in which I stayed).
The next day's stage to Arija was a pleasant mix of tracks and minor roads, not too much along the main road. The bar at Herbosa was open; it was a Sunday morning and half the village seemed to be in attendance; not sure it's always open).
In Arija I camped at the campsite - 8 Euros, good facilities, bar with cheapish food; pleasant, relatively quiet in early July.
The next stage in Susanna and Laurie's guide is 31,2 km from Arija to Olea but I decided to make a slight deviation and break the journey in Reinosa, about 1,5 km from Villafria. The plan was to take a minor road from Reinosa to rejoin the camino at Juliobriga, which I did. From Arija to Villafria is entirely along a road; there are beautiful views across the reservoir and towards the mountains but although the road isn't too busy, hiking it all day was a bit of a pain. There is the possibility of leaving the road and following a gran recorrido, I'll look into this and post my findings on here.
I do recommend staying in Reinosa, especially if you get a room at the Hotel Golobar. Don't let its location on the industrial estate put you off, at 25Euros for a spacious en-suite it was probably the best-value in which I stayed, in six weeks of walking. The owner and staff are very friendly, the owner offered me the use of his computer to research the next stage of the walk. Good restaurant too. It's 800m from the centre of town but it's well-placed to get back to the camino via an underpass to the village of Bolmir. And, of course, plenty of services in Reinosa, including a station on the Palencia-Santander railway line.
I got fed up with on the road from Arija to Reinosa, not so much from the asphalt or the traffic but from feeling 'out of place' as cars and lorries passed me by. I'm not normally averse to tarmac but here it felt that I was just walking along a road, not following a camino. And with every kilometre the eastern peaks of the Picos de Europa got closer and closer, tempting and tantalising me.
I set out the next morning with the intention of hiking to Olea where I was going to stay in Casa Miguel. I rejoined the camino at Juliobriga then followed the track up into the forest. I was so enamoured with the forest track that contoured the southern slopes of Pena Cutral that I somehow missed the camino and came out on the western ridge overlooking the valley. Now the mountains loomed ever closer and I couldn't take my eyes off them; when the forest track came to an end I made a sharp left and followed a trail that led me back up to the top of the hill from where I located a track down to Cervatos. This was great walking, and more like hiking than pilgrimage (I know the distinction is vague but the six-week hike was an attempt to think about the differences between hiking and pilgrimage; it's a theme of my PhD research) and by the time I made it down to Cervatos I'd made my decision - I needed to climb mountains. I followed the
nacional back to Reinosa and the Hotel Golobar where the owner and staff were surprised to see me. The following day I headed north into the Parque Natural Saja.
As it happens, bad weather in the mountains led me back to the Camino del Norte for a few days but I ended up taking a bus from Oviedo to Leon and doing the Camino San Salvador which was the highlight of the whole six-week hike. Details at
http://ramblanista.blogspot.co.uk/ when I can get round to writing them up.
I felt guilty about leaving the Olvidado, I had intended to follow it all the way to Villafranca. The lure of the Picos was probably the decisive factor but the uncertainties of the Olvidado did play a part. It's not so much the solitude, the occasional lack of waymarking and accommodation or the amount of road-walking, rather a combination of all three; I was concerned that when waymarking became inconsistent I'd end up spending much more time on roads than tracks or paths. Plus, there were a couple of stages of 30km or more which wouldn't normally be a problem but I was walking in the middle of a fierce heatwave and I wanted the option of walking shorter days should the heat defeat me.
Will I go back and finish it off? I hope so, though I don't know when. During the summer of 2016 or 2017 I shall be carrying out fieldwork for my PhD which, for research purposes, will require me to walk along busy caminos - it will have to include the Frances - and lonely ones. I thought about incorporating part of the Olvidado into this route but it may not be feasible and in any case I think it's the sort of camino that should be walked from begining to end.
We'll see. In the meantime I would highly recommend this camino for anyone who enjoys getting away from the main drag and is happy to spend day after day walking alone.
