Stage 14: Camino Norte - Solares to Santillana del Mar

Laid over in Bilbao to repair the bike, got riding glasses too. The Guggenheim was closed but enjoyed the day, friendly people everywhere. Also, a fantastic trekking store. I am going to miss the Basque Country, healthy and fantastic food, good people, and everything just… works. They are not insular, they go out into the larger world and bring all these ideas back home and Basquenize them. The place is happening. You can see it in the construction sites too, full of activity, equipped and safe too. I hope Andalucía can head this way, open up.

Up at 6:30 with time for coffee, rode downtown to take an old mountain train out of Bilbao toward Santander. A complication because the train was down and they had a bus replacement for the leg to Karrantza but the bus driver was cool and we got the bike into the bottom luggage space on the bus.

From there, the train old train was great, but I was forced off outside Solares due to more rail problems and the next bus couldn’t fit it. Cool driver, we tried.

But I’m glad, after getting bearings and another coffee (no pinchos, I’m in Cantabria, I will miss the fantastic food), I followed a beautiful river down and out of the mountains and then popped up to Santillana del Mar. Finally riding again, I was high as a kite, good air and it felt good to be on the move. It’s too late and I’m too tired to list the little things, but it was a lively day.

I must remember the little bar in Solares, a small industrial town. The two women, one in the back shadows, dressed in almost city elegance offsetting the locals, her face in a concentrated stare at the wall over a glass of wine. The other sitting in the window, dressed in a green pantsuit, sitting over coffee with a sad face and over and over I catch her looking at me with a face that said “Get me out of here, please” and looking down and away each time I met her eyes. Two stories there, both in their 50’s, both with vigorous bodies, both anchoring a little circle of space between them and the crowded bar at noon.

Tons of energy today, but when I hit Santillana I hit a gumption trap.

Arrived in Santillana del Mer and though the convent is beautiful, the insularity and hardness of the Cantabrian got to me. Zero eye contact, invisibility walking the streets, not just to me but to each other too. Even rudeness. Bad, over-sweet food in the shops. Some of that is probably this village frozen in time and seeming more a movie set than a living village. But they were even that way amongst each other, no one interacted with other tables, other families. Anyway, all that openess from these weeks hit a brick wall of utterly closed faces and bodies today.

I sat in a garden to book out the days to Gijón, but then a panic as the only train to accept a bike south disappeared. I really thought I was trapped. I looked and looked for options, and thought I would have to ride over the mountains and into the meseta…. It took two hours sitting in the convent gardens (Renfe’s app is useless to plan routes, it just sells tickets) to find a way between train problems, closed routes, short legs where I have to wait all day to catch the next leg, testing city-to-city possibilities…It will be really hard but I’ll get there. I think! It starts with the day I ride into Gijón from Colunga (love it there) and taking the only train that can get me to Leon, but at midnight. So I got the ticket, booked and routed the next two days, all I need is ti find a midnight bed in Leon.

Never do this in Spain, try to roll on a bike and cross the country. Renfe is a mess, even when I go to their offices in the big city they have no idea how their trains work in different parts and shrug. Compared to France and Germany both it’s strange really,.

It was a good day, really. After a great week. But tonight was a mess. Sleep, reset the day, go… I have a long 65km day to Llanes tomorrow. And I love this part of the way.

After all this blah blah, I go to bed but meet my roomate. Great guy from Hungary, great conversation. I got to hear about the changes after the election. And teach another person how to care for and prevent blisters, the poor guy massacred his feet. But he’ll make it, you can tell, and he wanted places and albergues for the way ahead.

The passivity of the Spanish in the face of things, like when things don’t work it confirms their reality. And they slide so well into a lovely seque into anything but solving the problem. Perhaps the residue of Francoist times, perhaps a social order built on ‘enchufe,’ at times admirable and other times frustrating, always it is a mirror for me to examine my own expectations.