12/4 Tuesday Ontón to Castro Urdiales 16km Decent sleep after a lively evening and a full Albergue. The original Camino from here took a fairly direct coastal route to Castro- only about 7km. Those in a hurry go that way but it is now blighted by the main coast highway and factories. The new Camino route wiggles inland for 16km with only a small climb up and out of the valley. This was a good choice as it dropped down to a "Via Verde" following a disused rail...

11/4 Monday Portugalete to Ontón 21km Today the Camino ran inland, fairly flat and often parallel to a main highway picking up the coast at La Arena. I was much more taken with the which climbed up over Serantes hill (451m) and then Punta Lucero-Arguzari (309m) so up I went. No pilgrims in sight today but climbing out of Portugalete I met an old Spanish guy who told me he’d been to Santiago and that it was very special. He also told me to slow down! He knew...

10/4 Sunday Bilbao to Portugalete 19km I’d bought milk so used some of my muesli supply as breakfast. Then I was out and heading towards the river. Just after reaching the river I saw an interesting church spire about 100m down an alley so decided on a detour. The church was ok but what was special was meeting Mira there! An amazing coincidence after yesterday. He had seen the spire and had the same idea. We bought bread at the panadería for lunch later. As...

9/4 Saturday Alto de Morga to Bilbao 23km Last night Albergue Pozueta was full! Lively company including Marc from France and David from South Korea. Marc has several caminos under his belt whilst David is serious mountaineer- he’s climbed the highest peaks on 5 continents but still wants to come to the UK and walk the Coast to Coast. Great breakfast spread at the Albergue Pozueta - muesli, fruit, yogurt, cake, toast, coffee and fruit juice. Much needed for ...

8/4 Friday Olabe to Alto de Morga 15km via Gernika Today was a little grey but also mild. Pedro and Alfonso were also staying at the hostel and set out with us. They are Spanish friends who walk together all the time. Pedro is a proper mountaineer who climbs on snow and ice. Alfonso is 68 like me. I talked mostly to Alfonso in Spanglish! A river and pretty countryside for about 6km to Gernika where we had an early pinchos lunch. We bought lunch for tomorrow ...