Soto de Luiña to Cadavedo – 14.1 Miles/33,488 Steps
(Total 203.9/473,352)
Today started off with a decision about which way to go – the mountain route or the more coastal route. The mountain route was supposed to be the more beautiful, but is now the less used route for various reasons. We took the route less traveled by – and it made all the difference.
The Camino is marked with scallop shells One legend is that the converging lines of the shell represent the converging paths leading to Compestela. The picture shows the shells pointing in the two directions that the route could take today. This is unusual.
My second favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” I always think about it when the Gospel passage talks about entering through the narrow gate. Sometimes the path we are called to choose is less worn. It does not mean that it will be easy, but it may well be the right path.
So on this feast day of St. Luke we climbed out of town in suspect weather not knowing what we would see. We spent most of the day on a ridge line about two miles from the coast with stunning view of mountains to the south and the ocean to the north. As the day wore on the light rain moved through and the sun started to peak through the clouds. We stopped for lunch a a big marble stone on the hillside with views that seemed to expand forever.
It was a day of gratitude from the start. When I opened morning Prayer (after the initial ascent) I realized it was St. Luke’s feast day. I was filled with love and offered prayers for everyone I could think of at St Luke’s who has been important to me on my journey and allowed me to take this one.
At dinner we ran into Monica, a fellow pilgrim who we have encountered since day one. She took the coastal route and affirmed for us that we made the right decision. We would come around an end in the hillside, or break through the trees, and the ocean would expand. The horizon line felt elevated to where we were.
The biggest challenge of the day was a cow that blocked our path and refused the move. At one point the Camino took is through an active hillside pasture. Up ahead we saw a cow amble on to our path. He stared us down on our long slow approach refusing to move. Because of the rain we were still wearing our ponchos and wondering if we were about to encounter a color blind bull who might mistake our ponchos for a matador’s cape. We ended up leaving the path and scrambling through the thorny underbrush as our bovine friend looked on.
55°F Mostly Cloudy
N-634a, Cudillero, Asturias, Spain
