Our Walk Along the Camino San Salvador

For us Oviedo marked both an ending and a new beginning. We took a rest day here after finishing the Camino San Salvador and before beginning the Camino Primitivo.  Oviedo is the capital of the Principality of Asturias, and it is the administrative and economic center of the region.  Despite its importance to modern Spain, it retains an older, medieval feel which we very much enjoyed.  There are a great many things to do and see in Oviedo, including a large number of historic churches to visit.  However, the point of a rest day is to give the body a bit of a break, and in our case to catch up on blogs, so we mostly limited our exploring to the Cathedral of San Salvador and its immediate surroundings.  The Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of the Holy Saviour, or Cathedral of San Salvador, is a Roman Catholic Church located in the heart of Oviedo.  There is a frequently repeated Spanish saying on the Camino San Salvador that "He who goes to Santiago and not to San Salvador visits the

We headed down to breakfast at the bar associated with our hotel just after 6 am to begin our final day on the Camino San Salvador.  After reading several accounts of other people's experiences of the last 30 km of this hike, we were heading into it with very mixed feelings.  Although the San Salvador route is short, it is a physically demanding Camino, which I think leaves many pilgrims exhausted, injured, and or at the very least feeling less than at their best by the last day.  The guidebooks suggest the last 30 km are an easy, downhill walk that is mostly on pavement. Writing this at the end of a long, strenuous day I can say this is in no way an accurate description of today's walk, and I can fully appreciate the despair felt by others who were struggling to finish and whose expectations of an easy walk were dashed.  We joined Mick, Jacques, and Fernando for a huge and delicious breakfast of cafè con leche and toastada, and then set off a few minutes behind them into a fog