Picture
June 25th

Monastery to Aviles

 
We needed to get back on track after getting lost yesterday. Luckily there was a map on the wall of the Albergue that showed the three towns we needed to go north on to get to Gijon.

Unfortunately there was lots of climbing today, Carmen did well in many areas but she told me her legs were very tired. Which is how I felt yesterday.  We climbed a lot….all in all about 10k.  After reaching Gijon the mountains gave us a break. 

We rode down the mountains when my front breaks started screeching and I mainly used the back but later at the albergue a guy looked at my bike and said the breaks did not have much pad and were wearing out uneven. 

Before reaching Gijon we stopped and ate our sandwiches which we made the night before at the monastery with our left over dinner.  Riding thru Gijon we saw a place that sold churros con chocolate and we stopped for about an hour and had a couple of beers and orange juice with churros.  The total bill was under 20€, thanks to their pintxos, Spain has great prices when you want a light snack or small meal.
We rode on to Aviles on mainly trails and as we were coming into Aviles we could see the Albergue. We stopped and two guys also doing the camino on their bikes tried helping me fix the brake on my bike but found it was ready for a replacement.  They had never seen how to take off the type of tire on my bike and another guy stepped in and showed us how.  Luckily I had not had a flat tire. 
In this albergue, still raining on and off that night we made noodles and had them with squid and some left over pastries, we offered some to my bike mechanics but they were headed into town to eat.  We are burning lots of calories but eating too many pastries. 

After dinner and getting organized we had a conversation with a pilgrim from Norway, I found out about Norway’s hiking and cycling trails using a system of small shacks around the country.  Must check into this if I ever do NSF
Picture
Carmen -