April 4th

Very few photos today because it was a travel day and keeping with the theme, it mostly rained…

I left my London hotel at 4:30 a.m to catch a flight to Madrid. There I serendipitously met up with two folks from my group – Michelle, the founder of the Wayfinding Academy who will be completing her 5th Camino, and TJ, a student at Wayfinding who is setting out for her first Camino.

We flew from Madrid to land in Asturias, culminating over a beautiful snow capped mountain range out one window of the airplane and a gorgeous coastline out the other. We then boarded a bus with Jacob, another student and Camino first timer, who had been waiting there for hours, for a 45 minute ride through green countryside to Oviedo, which is our meeting place and from where we will begin walking the day after tomorrow.

Three other Wayfinding students in our group were already in town, psyched to be about to embarke upon their first Caminos, Peter, Avery and Alden. While we walked from the bus and waited for our Airbnb host, the sky cleared and I got overheated with my backpack on! So as soon as I could, I changed into shorts. Within minutes the sky opened up into quite a downpour!! Fortunately groceries had been purchased and we enjoyed bread, cheese, wine/cider/beer and a wonderful paella prepared by Michelle as well as steamed broccoli!!

This area is apparently well known for their “Sidra”and there are many siderias in town. About 80% of the ciders found in Spain are produced in the Asturias region and they are dry instead of sweet, mostly made from fermented crabapples. Cider production in Spain dates all the way back to the first century, and it was recorded here by early Roman settlers. Before pouring, The bottle of natural cider is traditionally moved slightly shaking its content, which helps to activate the natural carbonic acid and to dilute it’s own sediments of a preparation exempt of filtering. I’ll stick to vino tinto and vino blanco, thank you very much!!

Tomorrow we will visit the Cathedral which we can see from our Airbnb kitchen window! We have heard that it’s amazingly beautiful!