Walking across Europe - 2013: Camino Norte - October 5, 2025 Day 1 Aviles to Muros de Nalon

Daily Information

Distance: 24.5 Kms

Elevation G/L meters: 470:(398)

Overall a very good start to our Camino Walk. Other than a brief shower where the Altus Poncho was tested 🥵 it was a relatively easy day of walking on various surfaces in perfect weather. I walked in shorts and was most comfortable…Paulo coming from Brazil cringed 😬 when he saw this…too cold!

Very quiet all round…other than a specific very funny incident! Oh and an issue with my prized Suunto watch 😥.

It’s tough to describe a day on the Camino…so will try something new. I found an interesting site www.caminoon.com and they had a short 2 minute video of this stage. So here it is…may/may not include future such short videos.

Caminoon.com Short Video of stage

Back to yesterday a very long travel day 😅. I never sleep well on flights…yesterday was no exception. Arrived in Porto 1 hour late so around 12:45 pretty tired 🥱… but happy! Then some fun at Passport Control… where it looked like maybe 3 people were working. Mucho grumbling from anxious tired travellers was heard!

I asked “ where should I line up?” in my best non existent hand gestured Portuguese and was directed to the electronic passport document queue. It was WAY shorter however when I arrived at the front it clearly said EU citizens only. I thought…well not appropriate to write it down…looked pathetic and the nice fellow said “no problem” so I made it through.

Looking pathetic comes very naturally and has its advantages. 😊. On to baggage control where there were a few tense moments as my bag was one of the last to come through! I still have NOT accepted the hypothesis that “first in for checked bags…last on carousel”. Why…not logical 😉

On through gate and Paulo was waiting at Starbucks…oh to back up eSIM is the way to go. So MUCH easier than the SIM card swaps! Highly recommend.

Typical very awkward male welcome hug…sort of arm around the back…weird handshake…and goodness knows what else…very shortly…we were met by our driver.

By this time is was 1:30pm so one of my contingency plans for keeping Plan 4 to take a 1.00pm bus to A Coruna would have been toast.

Had a long but pleasant 6 hr drive to Aviles with a few pit stops. Swapped stories about family etc with Paulo…his law office was 30 strong in 2014…now 70 or so. He is not boastful however I believe he has built quite a successful law office.

Easily located with Google Maps Hotel Don Pedro (very pleasant reception and nice small hotel) in plaza and quickly went for a bite to eat!

The Don Pedro!!!

Ham, cheese, beef massive cutlet!

All of the above were shared…typical Camino start…will have to walk hard to maintain weight!

Suunto Watch

Here is what my watch captured for the day…15.5 kms!!! Note the dotted red line where it’s clear the GPS signal was lost 😠

The watch indicated that it needed “calibration” so I did that by waiving my arm around in a figure 8 motion for many seconds…not a cool 😎 look in a busy restaurant setting! As a result I eliminated one metric Kms/per hr as it was messed up…so very sorry for everyone dying to see this 😉. Hopefully this will be resolved tomorrow!

Paulo has a new Garmin Instinct 3 Amoled watch and if you click on one link only please click below. It shows the exact path we took today!!!

Day 1 - Strava link to route walked

Altus Poncho

Of course no testing was performed prior

to today 😳. It started to lightly “mist”…Paulo panicked and I then followed. Out comes the Altus out of its micro pouch…you know the kind that a machine somehow managed to ram that poncho in!

I slip one arm in…swing the poncho over the backpack…sort of and then 😱 no way hoosay can I reach back to slip the other arm in. Not possible…Paulo had to reach over to provide the other sleeve.

45 seconds later when the “mist” had cleared the process in reverse…I needed help to REMOVE the poncho!

Great…next time I walk alone I will ask random people to help me out!

Ok I need to think about this and possible Google “Altus Poncho slip on/off for Dummies”! Perhaps I have to slip both arms in and then somehow flip the poncho over my head and on the backpack…and reverse this to take it off.

I am cringing writing this as someone who may be reading this may well be thinking…”well Guy you are aware and even own a better option!”

Altus poncho future TBD!

Funny incident

We started meeting some fellow walkers today which is always a highlight. Noreya from Spain, Augustine from Italy and Andrew from Toronto Canada 🇨🇦 where I hail from!

As always we walk a ways with people we meet…talk about this and that…and today I asked “where did you start from?”. That was a really dumb question as the answer was always Irun some 585 kms away!

In return I was asked the same question in return and what I have got to say “Oh…ummm…Aviles…first day”.

Paulo and I were starting to chuckle and then we arrived at a cafe in Soto which was clearly a Pilgrim meeting place. We waltz in there…maybe a dozen or so walkers congregating outside in a group. Couple of walkers join and there are high fives all round!

Paulo and I would normally join a table with others BUT clearly we are very different…our clothes are clean…we have walked 18 kms not ~600…our credentials cards have ONE Measly Sello (stamp)…everyone else has pages and pages! Thankfully it was a self stamping sello so we hurriedly provided each other cover for a quick stamp. How embarrassing 😳!

Between us we may well have walked the most kms on Camino paths but today we are rookies…and both of us just started to laugh 😂.

And all because of my question “where did you start?”. I could have fibbed!

Ok I expect this may be one of those situations where you had to be there…it was a real funny highlight.

So on to tomorrow…slightly longer at 25 kms. Hope no major aches and pains from day 1…Suunto watch behaves…and please no rain as I need to Google stuff first!

Some pictures from the day…