Stage 20 - Mostly bus, some footwork - Oviedo to San Juan de Villapanada

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Day 28

Saturday 25th April




Today was a semi-rest day for us with no walking until the late afternoon. The morning was spent doing some chores, with my main goal for the day to buy a pair of new shoes. My 20 pound joggers are just not cutting it and so we have decided to do what we should have done earlier and buy some proper decent walking shoes. I was very successful, finding a great pair of Salomon shoes in one of the first stores I tried. On further discussion, we also decided to get a new pair for Dav, as while his shoes were better than my joggers, they still weren´t great, and we hoped that new proper shoes might help to end his continual blister problem. So he too ended up getting a pair of Salomon shoes, making us offically ´Team Salomon´and Ben and Lauren, both with their Merrel brand of shoes, becoming ´Team Merrell´for the remainder of the Camino.



Given our new shoes, and the current blister epidemic on Dav´s feet, we decided to take it easy for the next couple of days, allowing time for our shoes to wear in and Dav´s blisters to heal a little. So we planned to catch a bus from Oviedo to Grada in the afternoon, and then walk the 3km to the albergue for the evening. While Ben and Lauren were tempted to do the same thing, especially with rain looming, Ben´s need to see the football that night was far too great, and the albergue we were staying in didn´t have TV and wasn´t close to a bar that did. So the plan was for them to walk 10km out of Oviedo, stay in a football-friendly albergue, and then we would all catch up the next night.



So at about 4pm, after a day of gorgeous blue skies and sunny warmth, Ben and Lauren set out... and the rain clouds set in. Dav and I caught the bus as planned, and walked the 3km to the albergue in San Juan Villapanada. By this time the rain was steadily falling and so the short walk we had planned suddenly seemed so much longer! Although, poor Lauren (no sympathy for Ben) had to walk 12km in that weather... she is a patient woman!



We eventually found the albergue and stripped of our wet clothes, had a shower and hit the sack.

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Photos

Oviedo Cathedral
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Water fountains in Oviedo
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Dav dumps his blister-inducing shoes
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LIttle Red Riding Hood
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