5/31/17 – 24.1km/15mi from Villaviciosa, to Deva, with about 1340m/4396 feet of climbing and descent.
After yesterday’s epic 28 mile hike, today was supposed to be mercifully shorter at just around 15 miles. But when you throw in Herculean climbs, it was no easy day! In addition, let’s just say I celebrated my birthday *well* yesterday, and that the first two hours of the day were what one might call a beautiful struggle.
The day was beautiful too, however. Lower areas featured farms and fun conversations with farmers, as well as excitable dogs who wanted to escort us along the path. Higher areas after the 2 huge climbs of the day featured fragrant eucalyptus forests and nice cool breezes. I cannot describe to you how great that smell is, it’s marvelous.
After a fairly tough day, we stopped for the night at Camping Deva-Gijon, a massive complex of tent fields, bungalows, a soccer field, playgrounds, a pool, and a “Main Street” with a game room, “social hall,” and a laundromat… which led to one highlight of the day. It was a sunny day, so after we washed clothes, we hung everything out to dry instead of using a dryer. But since all the drying racks were taken, we used a chain-link fence to hang up 5 people’s sets of clothes. The result was super classy.
