Poo-San Esteban

I left Poo and enjoyed the sea views. I walked quite a bit with Ettore who has a penchant for walking right in the middle of the road while reading his guidebook. I moved on ahead and finally got to the town of Ribadesella. It is a nice little city and a big outdoor market was in full swing. I was delighted as I was, and am, in Asturias, the big cheese region. I sampled a number of local cheeses and then bought a big hunk of a goat´s cheese. I bought a few other items and walked about 3 more miles up a big hill to San Esteban--where there is an albergue, but no town, restaurant, etc. All day, I had been completely befuddled by the sign posting/waymarking. Ina, Christian, Sang Kyoung and Catherine know that on last year´s route, the shell symbol features the fanned out part of the shell pointing the direction towards Santiago. This whole day I was perplexed as there were tons of shell markers but seemed to be plastered up in any old direction. I was often lost and flummoxed. A few minutes before arriving at the albergue, I met up with, Sven, young German policeman. He explained that in Asturias, it was the base of the shell that pointed the way. This proved to be a godsend the following day. At the albergue some of this new and younger crowd also arrived. I had toyed with the idea of taking a bus ahead a day to catch up with my old crowd, but I was rather enjoying the new crowd so I kept walking.