Islares to Liendo

We started the day early by bringing coffee and chocolate pastries up from the hotel bar to eat in bed, and then started off in darkness along the road from the hotel for a few hundred meters until we reached the official path. This was the only occasion that Angus used his headband with its flashing red lights! Even though we were walking next to the main road, the official way had a prepared path behind the guard rails to keep us safe, and as it gradually got light we walked up the river estuary to the bridge. The way marking stopped at the roundabout at the bridge, but on heading on we reached the ( closed) albergue where the camino was signposted again. At a small village we turned off on an old road past an old washing area and across open countryside where we met a horse and cart at an old church. From there we continued to another village, with still no cafe for coffee and tortilla within sight for second breakfast, and set up through eucalyptus plantations to a church by an ancient oak tree. (We could probably have taken a short cut on a country road to here.) From there we continued a little further up through eucalyptus plantations, and then down through better maintained fields to a pilgrims' picnic area for lunch. We reached civilization again at a motorway underpass and continued past affluent suburbs to a very pleasant looking albergue in Liendo. There we met our first Bernese some Polish ladies, a Romanian, some French-Swiss and an American with an umbrella called Scott, as well as other friendly pilgrims. (The umbella wasn't called Scott, the pilgrim was.) Sue got to go to mass at the nearby church, and we finally had a pilgrim's menu in the village square.