Skipping a step

Ideally, the Camino should be walked as a single unbroken journey. There are many reasons for this including cameraderie and a fuller immersion into the experience. For me, this was not possible and I needed to skip ahead from Bilbao to Santander.

 I stayed in a Pension in Bilbao which despite its relative luxury was a disconnecting experience. Although I am not yet walking again, I am tonight in an Albergue which feels much better.

One of the remarkable assets of Northern Spain is a narrow guage train line that runs from the French border all the way to Ferrol in the North west corner of Spain. It runs through just about every single village on the way allow people from the countryside to shop or work in the larger towns and cities. For about $13, I travelled for 3 hours from Bilbao to Santander stopping at about 30 places on the way. It was not really quick but it was clean and modern and the scenery was breathtaking. Unlike with roads, the line seemed to merge with the landscape creating a lovely sense of immersion like one gets walking through the countryside.