Today was our longest day walking so far, 16 miles and I only took one picture.

Actually it did get better after awhile. We told our selves No More Alternate Routes! The original route today was on the road thru the industrial sections of town. First we had to walk through the outskirts of town

We went through Barakaldo, we stopped here for a bathroom break. Then Sestao, where Al took that picture of the sculpture. And finally Portugalete. We were mostly on greenway. The country has a wonderful greenway system. Bike riders don’t have to share a lane with walkers but have their own 2 lanes. And there are bridges also dedicated to green traffic.

Then we left the industrial area and back into the country side. Flowers everywhere,

We followed a long single lane road to La Arena. A beach town. We passed through there onto a boardwalk to the beach leading to Pobeña. Our trail was actually across the beach to another boardwalk leading to a bridge into town.

https://www.relive.cc/view/v36A38zknZv

We found the small Albergue, the only one in town and got cleaned up.

One of the problems we are running into is the schedule of some of the Bars/restaurants. They serve the “ meal of the day” until 4, then it’s over until 7 or 8 pm when you can order food again.

There’s little things in the bar, olives or other small dishes with pintxos. The issue is we are dirty, hungry and tired in that order. A few times we have eaten lunch, meal of the day, then nothing else. We don’t want to wait to eat until 7 or 8, we want to be in bed by nine. Some of the hikers here shower then sleep, then wake up and eat and back to sleep again. In this particular town, there were only three restaurants, the 1st said no more hot food until tomorrow, the 2nd place said we just missed the time, nothing till 7pm. Another day with just granola bars and a shared banana, we were hungry but our choices are very limited, we do love the meal of the day so we waited.