Day 4. Camino Primitivo Tineo Pola de Allande | How the silence taste?
From Tineo to Pola de Allande — Camino Primitivo
There are mornings on the Camino when the landscape seems to have been deliberately hidden from you, as if the mountains, forests and valleys have decided that you have not yet earned the right to see what lies beyond them.
The morning we left Tineo was one of those mornings, with a thick layer of mist covering the hills and swallowing the countryside around us, while the air was surprisingly warm and the familiar sound of our footsteps became almost the only thing that accompanied us as we slowly moved away from the town.
After the previous day's walk, I felt reasonably well rested, and although we knew that another long stage was waiting for us, almost twenty-eight kilometres between Tineo and Pola de Allande, there was something strangely peaceful about setting off into the fog without being able to see very far ahead. Perhaps it was precisely this uncertainty that made the morning feel different, because when you cannot see the distant mountains or the road disappearing into the landscape, you are forced to concentrate on what is immediately in front of you, one turn, one stone, one stretch of path at a time.
The Camino led us gradually upwards through the countryside, between stone walls, fences, meadows and small farms, while the fog moved slowly across the valley as though it were alive. Every now and then the mist became thinner, revealing fragments of the landscape before covering them again, and then, almost unexpectedly, the clouds began to break apart and sunlight appeared in the distance. For a few moments, the entire valley seemed to change character, with the sunlight catching the hills while the remaining mist settled below us, creating the extraordinary impression that we were looking down into another world.
It was one of those moments when the Camino stops being simply a long-distance walking route and becomes something much more difficult to explain, because the landscape suddenly creates an emotion that is stronger than the simple thought that something is beautiful. Standing there, looking across the hills and clouds, I found myself thinking about why beauty can sometimes affect us so deeply, why a particular landscape, a piece of music, a painting or even the expression in another person's eyes can suddenly bring tears to our eyes without any obvious reason.
I have often thought about this in connection with the ideas of Osho, particularly his distinction between knowledge and awareness. Knowledge is built from everything we have already experienced, everything we have learned, everything other people have told us and everything we have decided to believe about the world, and although knowledge is obviously useful, it also means that we constantly interpret the present through the filter of the past. Awareness, on the other hand, is something much closer to simply being present, experiencing what is happening without immediately trying to classify it, judge it, compare it with something else or predict what will happen next.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why beauty can move us so profoundly when we are truly present. When we stop analysing the landscape and simply allow ourselves to experience it, there is no need to explain why it is beautiful or what it reminds us of, because for a brief moment we are not standing outside the experience looking at it. We are completely inside it.
The Camino has a strange ability to create precisely these moments, partly because walking for hours removes so many of the distractions that normally fill our lives. There is no constant stream of notifications demanding attention, no endless succession of emails, meetings and responsibilities competing for space in the mind, and no need to rush from one activity to another. There is simply the road, the landscape, the weather, the people we meet and whatever happens to be moving through our minds while our feet continue carrying us forward.
As the morning progressed, the fog gradually disappeared and the countryside became clearer, revealing the green hills, meadows and scattered farms that characterise this part of Asturias. The route itself was not particularly dramatic in the beginning, but there was a quiet beauty in the combination of forest, pasture and old stone walls, with cattle grazing in the fields and the occasional farm appearing between the hills.
It brought me back to the thought that had already been accompanying me through the morning, namely that perhaps we sometimes make the mistake of looking for something outside ourselves that can only really be experienced within. Whether someone calls that feeling God, consciousness, existence, beauty, love or simply being alive is perhaps less important than the experience itself, because there are moments when something touches us so deeply that words become almost unnecessary, and perhaps that feeling is exactly what people have been trying to describe for thousands of years through religion, philosophy and art.
From there, the Camino continued through forests and open countryside, sometimes gently climbing and sometimes descending again, with long stretches where the only interruption to the rhythm of walking was the sound of birds, cattle or an occasional tractor working somewhere in the distance. We were not always walking quickly, and I increasingly appreciated that there was no real reason to do so, because the Camino is not a competition in which the person who reaches the destination first wins something; it is a journey in which the time spent between two places is just as important as the arrival itself.
Somewhere along the way, we met another pilgrim who was struggling because of a painful knee and was no longer able to walk properly. We tried to help him as best we could, using tape to support the knee and hoping that the temporary solution would allow him to continue, because there is something particularly moving about seeing another pilgrim struggling on the same road that you are walking yourself. Everyone carries their own difficulties, although from the outside we often see only the backpack, the smile and the footsteps moving forward.
Unfortunately, our little attempt at repair was not enough to solve the problem permanently, and the following day he had to give up his Camino. It was a reminder of something that is easy to forget when everything is going well: the Camino can be physically demanding in ways that are impossible to predict, and sometimes the most important part of the journey is recognising when the body is telling you that it has had enough.
Further along the route, we reached the point where pilgrims have to make a choice between continuing towards Pola de Allande or taking the alternative route known as the Camino de los Hospitales. The Hospitales is one of the most remote and historically fascinating sections of the Primitivo, following a high mountain route whose name comes from the medieval pilgrim hospitals that once offered shelter to people crossing this difficult landscape. The remains of several of these hospitals can still be found in the mountains, reminders of a time when travelling this way required considerably more courage than it does today.
The route we followed towards Pola de Allande was demanding enough without adding another remote mountain crossing to the day, particularly because the weather had changed dramatically. What had begun as a cool and misty morning gradually turned into a hot afternoon, and the sun became increasingly strong as we walked through the countryside. Then, just when we had become accustomed to the heat, the sky began to darken, clouds gathered over the mountains and distant flashes of lightning suggested that the weather was about to change again.
There is something almost theatrical about walking towards a storm when you still have several kilometres to go, because every few minutes the landscape seems to change a little more, the wind becomes stronger, the light becomes darker and the sound of thunder begins to roll across the hills. Eventually the rain caught us as we approached Pola de Allande, and by the time we reached the town we were very happy to find a simple bus shelter where we could escape the worst of it.
Of course, after walking nearly twenty-eight kilometres, our first priority was not philosophical reflection but beer, and while we sat there watching the rain, we joked that perhaps if we had skipped our final beer somewhere along the way, we might have arrived before the storm. The joke was particularly appropriate because the surrounding area had been affected by forest fires, which meant that although getting caught in the rain was not exactly what we had hoped for after such a long day, the water was more than welcome in the landscape.
Pola de Allande, or La Puela as it is also known locally, has a history that reaches much further back than its present peaceful appearance might suggest. The town was formally established in the thirteenth century, between 1265 and 1269, when the Bishop of Oviedo granted it a Carta Puebla, and its position in the valley of the River Nisón helped establish it as an important settlement along the route through the mountains.
One of the most impressive reminders of its past is the Palace of the Cienfuegos, whose origins go back to the fourteenth century before the building was substantially rebuilt by the Cienfuegos family in the sixteenth century and later remodelled again in the eighteenth century. With its three towers and unmistakably defensive appearance, the palace seems almost too imposing for such a quiet town, yet it tells the story of a period when power, land and protection were inseparable parts of everyday life.
There is another chapter of Allande's history that I found particularly interesting, however, because it is connected not with medieval lords or castles but with ordinary people who left their homes in search of a different future. Like many parts of Asturias, Allande experienced significant emigration to the Americas, particularly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when people left for places such as Cuba, Argentina, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in search of opportunities that were difficult to find at home.
Some of those emigrants eventually returned with enough money to transform not only their own lives but also the appearance of their hometowns. They became known as Indianos, and their influence can still be seen in the elegant houses and palaces surrounded by gardens that appeared throughout Asturias as returning emigrants invested their fortunes back into the communities they had once left behind.
In Pola de Allande, this history is remembered by a monument dedicated to the emigrants, representing people leaving with remarkably little luggage and carrying with them the uncertainty of an entirely different life. There is something about this monument that feels particularly appropriate when encountered at the end of a long day on the Camino, because walking itself is a strange form of leaving: for a while, you abandon the familiar world, carry everything you need on your back and move towards a destination without completely knowing what the journey will change inside you.
And then, after all the history, philosophy, weather and kilometres, there was the reward that perhaps mattered most at that particular moment: dinner.
Asturias is famous for its food, and in Pola de Allande we decided that we had earned the right to try one of the region's most famous dishes, the cachopo. If you have never encountered one before, it is essentially two thin pieces of meat placed together with a filling, traditionally Serrano ham and Asturian cheese, then breaded and fried until the outside becomes crisp while the cheese inside melts into something wonderfully excessive.
We had been told that cachopo portions were large, but I do not think we fully understood what that meant until the waiter looked at us with the slightly concerned expression of someone who has seen too many hungry pilgrims make the same mistake and warned us not to order two of them. We were also considering soup, which apparently was another decision he felt obliged to prevent, because the size of the cachopo meant that one portion was already more than enough for two people.
He was absolutely right.
When the enormous breaded piece of meat arrived, filled with ham and blue cheese, it looked almost absurdly large after a day of walking, and when we cut into it, the melted cheese immediately began escaping from the middle. It was rich, heavy and completely inappropriate for anyone planning a serious evening walk afterwards, which made it exactly the kind of meal we wanted after twenty-eight kilometres through the mountains.
There was something wonderfully satisfying about sitting there in clean clothes, tired legs stretched beneath the table, rain falling outside and a huge cachopo in front of us, because after hours of walking through mist, heat and finally a storm, the simplicity of eating a good meal in a warm restaurant felt like a small luxury.
The day had started with almost nothing visible beyond the next few metres of trail, and it ended with the same landscape being washed by rain, but somewhere between those two moments the fog had lifted, the mountains had appeared, the sun had come out, the storm had arrived, and we had moved another twenty-eight kilometres closer to Santiago.
Perhaps that is what I like most about the Camino: you begin each morning without really knowing what the day will bring, and although you may have a destination marked on the map, the things you remember afterwards are rarely the kilometres or the elevation profile. Instead, they are the unexpected conversations, the person whose knee you tried to repair, the church that made you stop and think, the moment when the fog opened over the valley, the ridiculous size of a cachopo, the rain arriving just before the finish, and those quiet stretches of walking when an idea suddenly appears in your mind and stays with you long after the landscape has disappeared behind you.
Maybe the fog is therefore not something that needs to be overcome as quickly as possible. Sometimes it is simply there to remind us that we do not need to see the entire road before we take the next step, and that there is a particular kind of beauty in discovering the landscape gradually, just as there is a particular kind of freedom in allowing life to reveal itself without constantly demanding to know what comes next.
See you next time.
Vashek
Stage 4 — Tineo to Pola de Allande
Distance: approximately 27.5–28 km
Route: Tineo → Piedratecha → Obona area → Campiello → Borres → Porciles → Ferroy → Lavadoira → Pola de Allande
Character: demanding first climb, substantial descent, rolling countryside and a final climb before descending into Pola de Allande.
Historical highlights: Santa María la Real de Obona, the medieval pilgrim hospitals, the Hospitales route, Palacio de Cienfuegos and the Indian architecture of Pola de Allande.
Food to try: Cachopo, the enormous Asturian breaded veal dish filled with ham and cheese.
A final practical thought: the stage has relatively few opportunities for food and water compared with a typical tourist route, so it is worth starting with enough water and something to eat. The Hospitales variant should not be chosen casually; it is considerably more remote and demanding than the official route through Pola de Allande.
And if you arrive in Pola de Allande with enough energy left, don't simply check into your accommodation and disappear. Walk through the town, look for the Indian houses, find the monument to the emigrants, look up towards the Palace of Cienfuegos and, above all, sit down somewhere and try the local food.
After twenty-eight kilometres, you have earned the right to discover what an Asturian cachopo is capable of doing to a hungry pilgrim.
PS: At the end of the series I will publish a guide book with all camino information :) Stay tune.
Ps: If you enjoy the reading and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee :)
English video on Youtube: (thank you of you subscribe to get notified) New episode every Sunday at 5:00 PM CET
Comments