Camino Primitivo: Poetry Everywhere 

The long 5 km climb out of Grado is brutal. The last push is steep enough that you almost want to scramble up on all fours. After this, the terrain is much more reasonable, though like yesterday there’s an awful lot of walking on concrete.

There’s a little in the way of pilgrim services the first half of the day – pretty much the same as yesterday. As we had done some grocery shopping last night, this was not as much of an issue today.

However, since we left before breakfast, and there were no open cafés in Grado that time of the morning, we didn’t get our coffee until 9 AM. The wait was worth it, however. We stopped at a tiny donativo place called “Casita Mandala “, run by an ex-pat Slovakian hippie named Patrick and his Asturian wife. (I regret that I didn’t catch her name, but halfway through our stay she vanished into the house.)

We had coffee, omelettes made from eggs from their own hens, and some delicious organic chocolate cake. The place was an island of serenity.

Here we ran into our old friend Enrique, who we had met walking our first day, and he walked with us for the rest of the day. All day we leapfrogged with an increasingly familiar string of pilgrims.

Along the way, we passed the monastery of San Salvador. Founded early in the middle ages, the current building is an eclectic mix of 12th century Romanesque and later 16th and 17th century additions.

The last few kilometers of the walk dragged, and at one point, Francine said to me that we were down to two circuits of Wright Park. I jokingly asked her if we would see the heron at the park today. She laughed.

But then our albergue – picked by Enrique and Callie who walked ahead – had a heron on their sign.

There are no coincidences, only God’s poetry.

Date: 10 May 2022

Place: Salas (Principality of Asturias, Spain)

Today started: Grado (Principality of Asturias, Spain)

Today’s Photos!