Hiking Without Supervision

April 12, 2023

Today started off with sunshine, cool, and slight breeze. Perfect hiking weather really. We weren’t 100% sure of the path but headed in the general direction. The first couple of miles were uphill, then through muddy trails in the trees, onto some awesome sandunes, and then finally the road. What I thought was pretty cool, is in the distance I could see people sledding down the mountain of the sand. Too far away to get pictures but it looked like fun.

After about eight miles of hiking, we decided to call it a day and stopped for lunch in a lovely spot. From there it kinda went a little sideways. First we took the trail in the wrong direction, which added about an hour being lost. Then I asked directions to the bus station – there wasn’t one. Finally, I stopped a bus and asked how we get to our destination, Portreath (sounds Potreath) – you can’t get there from here. We were on the wrong side of the road. So we kept wandering to the next bus stop and had the great fortune to have a young woman help us old fogies get on the right bus and then changed to another bus to get us to where we were going.

Now, all of that did not take into consideration the fact that I had no sleep the night before thanks to my roommate and his snoring. We were in a 6 bed mixed dorm, so I can’t imaging what everyone else was thinking, but I was ready to murder him and hide the body. I got really creative in how I would do the deed and not get caught, while he snored on. After texting the girls and moaning about the noise, and texting Dennis and Eric to help me find free white noise, I think I finally went to sleep around 3:00 am. Does not make for a happy me in the morning.

I must admit, even with the lack of sleep, I enjoyed the day. It was exciting to find out that we were actually on the Camino Ingles – all roads lead to Santiago! While the hike was all along the coast, the bus took us inland and past many old tin mines and copper mines. I’m planning to visit one of them in the coming days.