Made it to Pola de Lena

When I woke up this morning, I checked the forecast on the computer before setting out.  I put in Campomanes, the town about 2/3 of the way to my day´s destination.  Wow, it said bright sun and temperatures in the high 20s centigrade.  Then I realized that was the forecast for the Campomanes located in the province of Badajoz -- the Campomanes in Asturias showed rain and clouds. 

My first 7 or 8 kms were beautiful, no rain, but I was soaked anyway from walking in green tunnels with narrow overgrown paths and wet growth everywhere. 

Next came a 4 km stretch on a little used country road, very narrow.  A car came barrelling up towards me, lights flashing, and I wasn´t sure what was happening, but the car stopped and out jumped a guy who has done a lot to make the Camino del Salvador accessible to people like me (who can´t read contour maps and get lost in the mountains).  I had communicated with him via email and gotten lots of good advice from him.  But he decided to come to meet me since it was his day off.  We chatted a while and agreed to meet up in Campomanes (Asturias, not Badajoz) for a café. 

I had no rain till about ten minutes outside Campomanes, and then it rained while I was in the café with Ender.  The café was filled with journalists and truck drivers who had left their trucks parked and blocking every highway in the vicinity.  It´s the miners, they have risen in protest.  The Rajoy government has announced slashing the subsidies for mining, and the result will be tens of thousands in immediate unemployment.  No stranger to protests (think Asturian miners revolt in pre-Civil War Spain), they´ve gotten organized and are making themselves heard.  That may be about all they accomplish, though.  People in this part of Spain are pretty tolerant of the disruption, since it´s a region with so much mining tradition.  Not sure how they would react in other parts of the country, though. 

My last stretch of camino for today took me past a 9th century church, Santa Cristina de Lena.  The last time I walked by the church had been closed, but I was able to sit in the meadow and enjoy the architecture and the setting.  Today the outside was in scaffolding but I was able to go in, so now I´ve enjoyed both the inside and the outside.  This Asturian pre-romanesque stuff is quite amazing, but I´ve already told you more than you probably want to know about it. 

Tomorrow I could walk to Oviedo, but it´s 33kms and it is a lot of asphalt and a deceiving number of ups and downs.  I could break it into two days, 14 tomorrow and 19 the next, but we´ll just have to see how I´m feeling.  My little toe did not enjoy being all wet all day, and is a bit worse for wear, so maybe a short day is in order.