Going hungry on the Camino! | Camino del Norte from Bufones de Pria to Ribadesella in Asturias, Spain

On the Day 20 of our Camino de Santiago del Norte we got from the Bufones de Pria to the town Ribadesella in Asturias, Spain.

The place we found for a camp was nice and secluded. Only the dogs were barking all night and disturbing our sleep. But nevertheless we slept well and at least the tractor didn’t come to work at that field in the early morning, we were a bit worried about that. So we set up the alarm at 7.30 am but got up an hour later cause we find it’s so hard to wake up when it’s dark outside. And now when the day was getting shorter it became even harder.

So we wrapped up our tent and all the mats and sleeping bags first and then started to cook breakfast. We were lacking the food very badly and had to cook all the leftovers from previous day and mix mashed potatoes, oats and rice together. But it was tasting fine to our suprise probably because we were so hungry. You may noticed this thing about us that we tend to escape eating in bars and restaurants simply because it’s so much easier for us to cook what we exactly like ourselves than to find the place where they serve it. It is extremely hard plus we are very particular about food trying to avoid the salty fatty dishes and we are vegeterians. Also we had bad experiences when having food poisonings and intoxications after eating out. So we are just fond of home made food. We are conscious about the consecuences like this when we are left almost with no food but we still like it so much better.

Then we got out of the fields to a beautiful natural phenomena “Bufones de Pria” which I couldn’t find an English equivalent to that word. We took several photos there and just gazed at the waves crushing into rocks cause they are always so magnetic.

Powerful ocean waves at the Bufones de Pria in Llames de Pria

After 10 minutes walking on the trail we found a Camino indicator as always appearing out of nowhere. And started to follow the Camino cause this part was going perfectly straight to the town of Ribadesella.

Yesterday we understood why the Camino wasn’t going close to coastline because it was so curvy and long that it would take you much longer time to get to the same place. And overall we got it why in some places Camino sacrifices the much nicer and scenic routes for the car straight roads. It’s our suggestion but we think it’s because the Camino offers you to do the stages with certain amount of kms a day you need to make. And so it implies that you need to get to the certain albergue to spent the night there in order to complete the plan. And normally people don’t carry a tent and count on albergues solely. So now we understand it better.

And so our plan was to get to the town and then decide whether to stretch further or stay there in the nearby camping. This 9 kms part of the route was great and peaceful going through the fields and farmhouses and cattle pastures. We enjoyed it a lot, so much more than we normally do because the weather was cloudy and cool. And usually we are walking in the hot sun burning from the heat with no shadow. So it was very different experience comparing to yesterday.

On the way we tried some wild apples and figs that were really good. And also saw a kiwi tree that was astonishing the fact that it grows here as well. So many fruits can be grown on this ground we can just imagine this paradise garden that has it all. That would be wonderful to see.

And so following this pretty straight and flat route quite fast we were in the town. We needed to buy the food there first things first and also we were again looking for a camping gas that we were running out of. So we went to the gas station where normally they always have it but in that case they didn’t. And we find it a very hard matter to find it for our gas stove at least. No supermarkets are selling it so you have to count only on the gas stations. Hoping to find it tomorrow we looked in the tourist office to put a stamp and then headed to the supermarket.

After we bought the food we saw that the town had a little port with some boats and yachts and the sea front was nice and long because of the bay and the beach stretching in distance. We had yogurts and muffins for the snack and it started to drizzle rain. So evaluating our powers and knowing that our camera is not waterproof we decided to stick with the nearest camping and stay there for the night. Plus we knew that the next camping was closed due to the information on its website. So we didn’t really lose anything.

It was nice to not have to hurry anywhere when we could just enjoy watching the ocean and quietly walk along the sea front. We needed a bit of rest and recover for our next coming days.

At the viewpoint Mirador Punta del Pozu, seafront of Ribadesella

At 17 pm we came to the camping that was situated right on the Camino and it was one of the earliest times we ever came to a place. The price we payed for the pitch was very decent and the receptionist and part-time a barman didn’t even asked our documents which we didn’t mind but it was kind of strange. He let us choose any place that we liked and there were quite a lot of free ones. It was clean and it’s one of the most important things for us in the camping. The car road was kind of close but not too bad. We did all the laundry using the washing machine and a dryer for the first time. Cause even the sleeping bags we felt like needed to be washed a lot. And so slowly having prepared and eaten our dinner we peacefully went to sleep.