By the time Ness and I reached Santiago we were already hankering for some more walking. We kinda felt lost not doing so. We did however spend a few days in Santiago first. I still remember quite clearly when we got there. It was a grueling uphill walk to the centre of the town, just to make sure you had really earned it. The first thing we did was to head straight for the cathedral only to find out when we got there that the pilgrim centre was no longer there but rather down the road. So that was a little anti-climactic. After going there and getting our very last stamp and a certificate it was time for a celebratory drink. Ness wanted gin and tonic, and as luck would have it, just as we found an English pub when we wanted this time we stumbled into a rather fancy looking joint that had an actual gin menu consisting of like 30 different types. We sat in here for a few hours despite it being ridiculously overpriced (they did have awesome beer snacks though). The rest of our time in Santiago wasn't that interesting. Unfortunately the weather was still against us and we didn't have a single nice day while we were there. We did get to hang out with some of the other pilgrims we had met along the way though.

But anyway, on to the next leg of the journey. We had a 5 hour bus trip to a town called Oviedo. From this place was the start of the GR-105. The GRs being walking routes all over Europe. The 105 was one of the shorter ones at about 105 km from Oviedo to Covadonga. If only we knew what we were getting ourselves into.

Right from the very start things didn't really go right. We couldn't even find the start of the GR and nobody seemed to have much clue at all what we were talking about including two separate tourist info centres in Oviedo. No maps or anything. We did eventually manage to get some vague directions out of town and then found someone (a builder or something working on a house) who actually did know where the start was and pointed us in the right direction. We were so happy when we found the sign signalling the start. That didn't even last until the end of the first day.

Ness had found some vague information about the walk which suggested some places you should stop each night. It made it sound like the walk would go through these towns but they didn't. It was after about 6 hours of walking on the first day which we had estimated to be something like a 20-25 km walk. We lost sight of the red and white stripes which indicated the trail and when we found some people and asked them about the town we were looking for (can't remember the name) they told us we had passed it by about 6 km. The next town on our list was about 10km the other way. So we had managed to find ourselves in between two places. These ladies were super kind though and walked us like 2km out of their way to a little town with accommodation. We didn't end up staying there though as it was far too expensive, but they told us there was a train station about 2km away. Funny thing happened though along the walk to the train station. We just happened to run back into the GR-105. No idea where it came from or where it was going (we chose it ignore it in favour of going straight to the train station). So eventually have like 10 hours and 30+km of walking we caught a train to a town further along called Nava.

Nava was suppose to be where we stayed on our second night, but we felt like we had earned skipping straight to it. Nava advertised itself as Villa de Sidra which means the town of cider. Now while Sidra technically translates to cider, it is nothing like what most people would think cider is. It's a special northern Spain drink only made in that region and it is delicious. I think I already talked a bit about this in my Madrid entry. It's the drink they pour from above their heads. We went to a Sidreria and got some dinner and I asked from some Sidra expecting to get a glass, but they gave us a whole bottle and kept pouring it as it emptied the glass. I started getting worried about the price, but the whole bottle ended up being cheaper than a beer. So we come to the end of a tough first day. But that day was nothing compared to what was to come.