Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.
The bedbugs are abroad. Several of us have the tell-tale bites. Mine are suspicious, but not positively identified.
We left just before dawn, the rising sun catching the jet-streams from early morning flights. It was chilly; the numbness in my fingers was telling me it wasn't too much above freezing.
We ate breakfast in Siero with Earl from Seattle. Fed up with both candidates in the American election, he's not voting for anyone. But, he added, his state is liberal, so there's no danger of its voting Republican.
Then it was an easy rollick into Oviedo, along roads and rural lanes until the outskirts of the city.
I walked for a while with Anna from Venice. She it was at Guemes who had translated from Spanish for the French contingent. Tired of her job working in sales with foreign clients, she is thinking about what to do with the rest of her life, something that will make people happy, she says. Operating a restaurant, perhaps, because she loves cooking, especially pasta. She has promised to send me a video showing how to cook pasta with eggplant (and other veggies).
After a beer at noon on the plaza in front of the cathedral, we decided not to stay in town but take the edge off the next stage and head for an albergue 12 kilometres on. Now began the Primitivo in earnest. This was the first of the Caminos, pilgrims leaving from Oviedo for Santiago even before the Camino Frances emerged.
After a tortuous exit from Oviedo, we headed westward into an open valley, the path following the contours of foothills to the north. Above me to my right was a rocky ridge; in the far distance to my left were the misty mountains. Villages followed in very quick succession, an indication perhaps of medieval prosperity, for certainly, this is fertile country.
And then the path plunged down into a valley, a sign warning cyclists of the perilous descent. It followed a river for a while and then led upwards in another brutal climb to the little town of Venta del Escamplero where we found an albergue. We were eight at supper, three French, two Americans, a Quebequoise, a Preben the Dane, and I. The restaurant was closed, so Jean-Marc cooked us a magnificent pasta.
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