Month: April 2023

Up. 6.30 out at 7.00 walking through cool streets. We are ahead of the game by 1km having covered that from the basilica yesterday. We pass the first way marker and find a cafe with coffee and narrranja juice.
Sadly this state of affairs does not continlue. We walk out of the street pavements of Alicante and through the twilight zone of fast small roads with no pavements into the true dry countryside. We hear the first hoopoe but don’t see one.
We walk gradually into an increasingly shattered landscape of quarried hillsides. We pass signs that suggest maybe we should not be here, finally a man in a pickup discussed our route with us in Spanish and Tony replied in English and maps. He kindly directs us through the mess and back onto on to the official path. Betsy is not moving well by this stage and it gradually becomes apparent even to her that all is not functioning correctly in her brain. We slowly regroup , Tony finds a village with a bus stop and we return to Alicante. UK tomorrow although with rest and coolth normal function of the brain has resumed.

Link to where we are on Google Maps

Take off almost on time (only 15mins late) in rain and cold wind.But land in Alicante on time in hot sun. Passport control no problems but alas the buses to Alicante are on strike at last one arrives bearing the legend sevicios minimos. , nothing to do with on board toilets but buses about 1hourly instead of 20minutes. Tony locates the pre-booked b&b and we check in.
After that is like greyhounds out of the traps and hey for tres cevezas
Next it was the Basilica of Santa Barbara for the commencing stamp on our pilgrim passport, cunningly horded by Tony from a previous expedition. And then up to the heights of the Citadel de Santa Barbara. After that there was nothing to do but eat though an exhaustive search along the sea front produced no Sardinas for Tim.

Link to where we are on Google Maps

It is now four years since we walked the pilgrimage routes of Europe and seven since we walked in Spain. We have had our eyes
on another Spanish tributary leading as all such routes do to Santiago. This one known as the Ruta de Lana or wool route is from Alicante to Burgos where it joins the Camino Francais walked as a first Camino from homes in the UK by Tony and Tim in 2008. We catch a easyJet flight tomorrow (as ever) and should start walking on Tuesday .

Link to where we are on Google Maps

La Ruta de la Lana means the Wool Route and is based broadly on drove roads (cañadas) followed by drovers and their often-huge flocks, travelling to milder climates nearer the coasts for winter and to higher mountain pasture in summer. These routes, dating back to before the Middle Ages, were also used by sheep-shearers and wool merchants, and to take livestock to markets. Burgos itself was the capital of the wool trade in the 16th and 17th centuries and the routes from the SE, especially from La Mancha, were well used. This route was undoubtedly well-used by pilgrims to Santiago and there is documentation of a pilgrimage to Santiago made in 1624 by Francisco Patiño, his wife and cousin, from Monteagudo de las Salinas, a village some 45 kilometres before Cuenca.