Perfect and Easy Coastal Trail on Camino del Norte – Las Barqueras, Barayo, Puerto de Vega- Day 27

On the Day 27 of our Camino de Santiago del Norte we got from las Barqueras to the outskirts of Navia in Asturias.

The morning was fresh and chilly so we got up quite late and didn’t hurry to start hiking. We felt like the autumn will gain its power very soon.

Camping Playa de Otur gave us the opportunity to discover a very beautiful beach and it was already enough to say that we liked it. But the place itself wasn’t bad at all – there were lots of space, lots of big trees around, it is very green with many robins living there. Just the dogs from nearby houses were quite annoying because they were barking at night.

We started our day by walking first 2 kms on the busy car road and turned away to the nature reserve El Barayo. We planned to hike in direction to Navia as long as we could and follow the path along the coast that we saw on the map. To be honest we didn’t expect it to be perfectly signed or even that it will last long we thought we would have a hard time searching for it and just hoped that at least some part of it does exist. That was all after having several bad experiences before.

El Barayo turned out to be a site where they preserve the dune nature and fauna which is typical to these places but nowadays because of the human intervention gets extinct. The beach was beautiful where hundreds of seagulls were chilling out at the ocean side close to the river.

We had a hard time looking for a way to cross that river because there was just no bridge or rocks to hop over so we decided to go barefoot. My husband wanted to take a knight gesture and carry me over on his hands.

Thus we got to the stairs leading up to the top of the cliff. There we saw the first indicator sign of the local white and yellow trail of the coastal path that we were to follow all that day.

To our surprise this trail was perfectly signed and was stretching all along the coast all the way to Navia. It was absolutely breathtaking, we had to stop every other minute or so to take picture or record a video. It is a great place for any photographer or videographer you just have to stop and to look in every possible direction and the shots will be found. We wished that the day lasted longer and had more hours -that’s how magnificent this place was. If you go there you will find all the coastal beauty of the area during thus stretch and we feel like after doing so many kms on the asphalt roads every pilgrim deserves it. You just have to make this time to do it, and it is approximately 25 kms from Bareyo to Navia. And the route is not hard at all it is just longer. So we highly recommend everyone to do it, it will be a very appropriate trail to take before saying goodbye to the ocean and turning away from it in Ribadeo.

So we enjoyed it a ton and wished that it would never end. We met lots of stunning rocks and rocky islands in the water, saw the waves crushing into the cliffs and the incomparable cliff structure. It was absolutely mesmerizing experience. If the route was like this all the way we wouldn’t skip not a bit of it and would continue it for as long as we could until the weather got completely winter like and too cold to continue.

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The cold wind was chasing us all day long changing the direction and intensity, it was the only disturbing thing that day. We bought our groceries in the village Puerto de Vega that was a nice cosy fishing village. We felt like the people were especially friendly and kind that day always smiling and greeting us. Everywhere the people are friendly but here they were exceptionally nice maybe because they are living in such beautiful places.

We got to the beach Playa de Frexulfe and started to think about the place to camp. So we probably did around 17 kms that day and were in 8 kms from Navia. We found a spot in the field near the little pine forest close to the trail. In the forest it would be absolutely impossible to camp because of fern and other bushes there. So it was the only option in this place. And it wasn’t seen from the road. So having found the place we quietly had our dinner, set up a tent at the dusk and went to sleep hoping that the night won’t be too cold and we’ll sleep well.

Here is the link to Google map to follow the hike: