Day 1 - Cadiz to Puerta Real (16.5 miles)

As I reflect on today's walk from the comfort of my room in Puerto Real it seems to have been a day of satisfaction tempered with vexation. Satisfaction for having completed the first day, and quicker than I had expected. Vexation because, as I was heading into Puerta Real along the edge of the bay around which I had walked some fourteen miles I could see Cadiz across the water no more than four miles away with the suspension bridge, constructed less than ten years ago, that spans that gap between there and here.

My day started just before 7.15am as I headed out into the quiet, shadowed streets of the old town and towards the cathedral. I passed the market, where traders were preparing for the day, but other than that it was me and the birds and the cool of the morning. At the start of the Camino, in the cathedral square, some passing electricity workers took my picture, lending me one of their cable grapples so that, in their words, I 'looked like a proper pilgrim' and then I was off.

Initially I followed the route as it wound through the narrow back streets but the signage was poor (I had read as much in my research) and, with no detailed route map for the town, it didn’t take long to lose the official path although I soon picked it up again at the sea front. For two miles I followed the promenade, the breaking sea and beach on my right, the new town on my left, with its low rise, pastel coloured boxes - flats and hotels designed more to maximise profit rather than to minimise impact. It was then into the main part of the walk.

Historically Cadiz was joined to the mainland by a long, thin, sandy isthmus that creates a large bay, an isthmus that now carries the main rail line and road from the mainland to the city. And alongside these runs the Camino, its white gravel track sitting between the railway and the salt marshes of the Bay of Cadiz. For over three hours I would skirt the edge of this bay open to the sun, the track receding into the distance in long straight tracts that gave no real sense of making progress, made worse by the occasional cyclist that shot past and soon became a tiny dot in the distance ahead. The marsh provided some distraction; it is a nature reserve noted for its bird life and along with swallows and a few sea birds of various sorts I saw some flamingos wading far out in the shallow waters, a reminder that, here, I am nearer to the African mainland than I am to Seville.

Forty five minutes from my destination I sheltered in the shade of a concrete flyover - the only cover from the heat of the sun I had found to that point - and when I fell into a bar in Puerto Real for coffee and a refreshing orange juice not long after I was reminded of Noel Coward's song 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' which seemed quite fitting for how I felt.

I am now settled in the cool comfort of my pension room where my priority is now to prepare for tomorrow's leg before heading out later for dinner and a bit of exploring, hopefully by which time the sun's heat will have diminished.