Camino Primitivo, part 5: Berducedo to Grandas de Salime

Julio had been trying to convince us to take it easy on the third day and get to Grandas a bit later. This would have meant missing the only bus back and having to wait until 3pm the following day for a bus. So we were reluctant. As it was, the weather had eased a little, and we decided to get going earlyish to take advantage of the lack of rain. This meant we left Berducedo before the bar had opened. Never mind, we thought, there’s going to be somewhere to get a coffee between here and there.

There wasn’t.


We passed La Mesa, a hamlet with 13 people, all asleep, stopping in the albergue there to see if there was a jar of nescafe or something similar.

No.

Then we climbed steeply up, into real north of England territory, smoother hills, heather and a fierce cold wind. The houses here have slate roofs and are a dark grey that wouldn’t look out of place in Kendal. At the top we could see our destination, Grandas de Salime. Doesn’t look too far, we thought, maybe 5km in a straight line. Then we saw a sign that said 14km. There was a long descent punctuated by plaintive cries for coffee…

It was stunning scenery, the hills are big, 1200m and steep sided, plunging to a man made lake before rising on the other side the same way. The path wandered through pine forest then oak and chestnut, so we had all of the colours of autumn. We descended as far as the dam that forms the lake, it’s a big piece of engineering and when you get up close you’re knackered from the descent, and it seems even more impressive.

We’d spotted a building as we were descending and Julio had said it was a bar (well he actually said to Enrique that we’d be there in 15 minutes, an hour and a half out… not too bad). So we were hoping to finally have our first coffee of the day at about 1pm. It wasn’t just closed, it was abandoned.


Enrique and Encarna decided to stop there for some butties and we said our farewells. We were hoping to make it to the town in time to have lunch before the bus back. Which we did after a strength-sapping 6km up the hill.

Grandas de Salime has 500 inhabitants, it’s the capital of the middle of the back of beyond nowhere. Still, it has a couple of rather nice restaurants, we blagged a table and in contrast to the majority of diners, who were in their Sunday best (although it was Monday), we piled rucksacks and sticks at the side of the table and set to eating. A chickpea stew followed by (merluza for Liz) slices of hand (I think that’s the name for the cut in English butchers, in Spanish codillo, which is little-elbow, basically the forearm). We ate heartily, there is no other word for it, and even had time for coffee before getting on the bus for a 3.5 hour drive back.

On which we were able to actually see some of the hills we’d walked over, unlike the day before.