Saturday, 19 May Cudillero to Oviedo

DISTANCE: 66.7 k/41.4 mi; TIME: 4h 46m; AV: 14.0 kph/8.7 mph: ODO: 2533.9 k

I got up about 7 am and packed my panniers. I had bread and cheese with water for breakfast. The hotel restaurant would use up too many of my precious Pesetas and breakfast was not until 9:30. I checked with reception for telephone calls and FAXes - none received. I paid the bill, which was nearly 10,000 pts, including 2260 pts for the phone calls!

I phoned Jenny from the village square using my Spanish phone card and gave her the bad news. I asked her to arrange to wire £200 to a bank in Santander and gave her the phone numbers. If I had done this last night, I could have saved quite a bit!

The ride to Pravia was fairly easy, except for the haul out of Cudillero. I had a long but manageable climb from my turning near Pravia. There were a lot of weekend cyclists on the road. Many of them greeted me as they passed. At Grado I bought bananas, bread, cheese and a tin of bonito. The road from Grado was within my gear range but there were some very long up hill sections. I had to push the bike up one or two bits into Oviedo.

I spotted a cafe-bar-restaurant “La Bodega” doing a 1200 pts menú de día, so stopped for lunch. The Russian salad was very filling, so I hoped it would last until morning, if extended with bread and cheese. After lunch I carried on into the centre. Using my Michelin Guide plan of Oviedo, I found the cathedral and the Turismo, which, of course, was shut for the weekend! There was a more detailed map in the window, which I used to find the location of the refuge. I asked at a church near the refuge and was thus able to identify the building. However, a notice on the door said it did not open until 8.00 pm! Two Dutch pilgrims spoke to me about it and said that they thought it was very late. I said that we would just have to put up with it.

I used the time to visit the cathedral and find the FEVE railway station. The latter took quite a time to suss out, as I had to go down in a lift with my bike to the platform, then up in another lift to the ticket office. I mooched around until 20:00 then presented myself at the refuge, checked in, got my stamp, had a shower, and some bread and cheese. Unfortunately the kitchen did not have any means of brewing up.

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