Don't panic the power will return and now its Santillana del Mar to St Vicente de Barquera

The power did return and now we head to santillana del mar. What made me chuckle was I say Saint Jacques will provide and of course life will go on.

That is the essence of believing in fate. In my case it's trusting in fate. It's believing in what fate produces is my most majestic belief.

I honestly believe that fate around the corner is like, how would we say, good for me. I don't feel uncertain or uncomfortable. I honestly feel strongly that it will be new experience. I find that good things happen when you encounter things you weren't expecting.

I also get shit scared that I'm bluffing. I was so delighted when we stuck to the high road on our way to St Vincente de Barquera. It meant that when we did finally join the road it was short lived and we were able to get back away from the traffic and onto the beach. The stretch of coastline is quite simply magnificent, so its well worth doing again. We had got the bus to Santillana del MAr and whilst you think you'll see the sea what you get is a wee medieval town centre with everything a bit overpriced for the likes of me. The hotel we stayed in by the green was the better part of town as I found the city centre like the centre of most of the camino towns in Northern Spain, old and attractive. I found Santillana had cobbles like Pamplona, Ponferrade or Puente La Reina. Does the wee castle of Ponferrade triump over them all, for me visually yes. I maybe shouldve read some marketing literature to see why it was so good but instead we wandered found a couple of places and chilled. Next day we took off early from our lovely wee hotel. It was very reasonable, so that appealed to my modest means, and we had breakfast thrown in. Their electrics werent fully restored, a common theme as I dug out cash instead of card. I'd brought 600 with me so it proved handy. Its no suprise to see everyone has a way of getting around booking.com fees and later on in Burgos I paid 402 euro in cash and saw that the owner had rejected my booking owing to a card issue. There was no problem with getting the keys and it was a great price for 5 days in the city centre so I've no problem with it. It could unnerve you if you were travelling on a hot day and it looked like your booking had been cancelled while you had a siesta but I'd not been walking, had a receipt and so just accepted it was a normal way to operate. Taxes, fees and commissions are dodged the world over by the rich, the poor and everyone in between. When we left Santillana the route takes you up and down. Its a brilliant meander through quiet country roads as you walk 8km to get to the town that was 5km away when you started. We're on camino now, I mused, properly walking round in circles away from the noise. Our first stop was at the top of the hill with a church. I thought I'd get to light candles, I was wrong. I did get to put sun cream on, drink the juice and eat my food. We enjoyed a good 20 minute break and stretch. I like to support the cafes by going in at the every opportunity. The truth is its ok to bring your own food and stop on a bench where the views are magnificent. After doing this for 18 years I think that is by far my greatest lesson, just chill. Once we'd climbed the hill we were always going to go down and so we did until we got to the town at half way. We were given a choice to go down the hill and bypass the main road in or stick to where it looked like there would be a cafe. We took the high road, keeping the altitude and stopped for coffee. It was great to go to the toilet too. Also the energy levels are so variable I got myself an extra juice. If there's one lesson I need to keep repeating its the dioralyte message. Keeping hydrated, post cancer treatment aside, is the most forgotten thing for me. I remember once I'm done in. Later on as we descended all the way down to the magnificent wee beach, I thought the same. Hydration and hills go hand in hand. As we left sea level and climbed I noticed instead of lagging behind Simon, I was striding passed him. Considering I was out on my feet upon hitting the first hill out of Castro Urdiales I was well chuffed. It was a 15 minute hill. I took a lot of pictures back to the town. I also stood for ages admiring the view down to the hotel by the beach. It got better the higher we climbed although Simon wasnt getting much chance to admire it. I was really confused about how I had suddenly found my legs. It was exceedingly unusual. When we got to the top there was a little garden with fountains. The gardeners were in and it was a bit noisy but totally worthy of a stop. We took the water, got our breath back and soldiered on. Our next stop was as a result of keeping to the high ground. I saw a really nice cafe but Simon figured it was a wedding. We didn't see any other pilgrims but having said that, you rarely do on this stretch as there are a few ways to go and the Norte is quiet. When we did finally stop it was a great piece of cake. The local restaurant is a destination place. Most people arriving did so in cars and the tables were all being dressed for lunch when we arrived. I had a similar cake later in St Vicente de Barquera and it wasn't in the same league. We paid half the 5 euro we'd paid up the hill but quality is quality. I like treating myself on a 2 euro item not a 200 euro item. When we were walking the beach it was simply magnificent. There were the surfers, the families, beach games. Its just a big party. We got to a bar, ordered a beer and took another 20 minutes to savour it. Just to feel the ambience is everything.

Excitement building and more migration thoughts

Friday April 25th we are off to walk the camino norte stages from Bilbao to Santander. Well lets be fair its Bilbao for lunch if I have my way and then bus to castro urdiales for our overnight stay. We will walk saturday to Laredo. Sunday 27th to Noja Monday 28th walk, bus and boat to Santander. Tuesday - Friday will be Burgos or further along the Norte. An alternative plan might be to do the Irun to San Sebastien to Zarautz which Simon missed. So much fun but we can cross that bridge in due course. I'm hoing to put some pictures in which I taken from www.davewhitson.com of the routes. I liked the look of the wee crossing on google maps. not sure its real but I do hope we can go to Galiziano via the coast. Recovery from Chemo and Radiotherapy requires patience. I'm not very good at this but I had a reassuring update from Speech therapy and nutrition when they looked at me last week. Chemo brain is a thing which means my dementia is not as fast approaching as it feels. An example of how it manifests with me is I set my alarm to go off, like most people in the morning, after the masters 1am finish it was at 8.15am today. As I write it 14:55 and I'm still on 10 minute snooze alert. Until I'm doing the job I was supposed to do I snooze it for 10 minutes. It snaps me out of my slumber and I do something. I was to get milk bread and rolls after chatting to my dad. I potted a few things up and sowed a few seeds. I made him two coffees and offered him a bacon roll. We had a long conversation about economics and my theory from the 90's which has turned into 30 years war of words. My theory started in the 80's with Thatcher's adminstration getting it all wrong in my opinion on how to address the issues faced between 1979-83. I've gone on at length about these things but the problem I believe many politicians and economists have is that they look back selectively for answers. So my theories have always been about looking forward and for example modern migration. My area of expertise is closer to the wealth migration than the war zone and economic aspirant migration. I therefore base my thesis on glbal taxation for a global age on Wealth migration not poor, desperate and in many cases highly skilled people trying to earn a living. I dont have any expertise in that area but I do believe strongly that people 9especially skilled working people) are the lifeblood of an aspirant domestic local economy. My cure for providing a society therefore is to defend our borders from the wealthy trying to flee to our economy where they can get all the infrastructure free of charge as their wealth isnt taxed. Everybody in Manchester has heard of how the Glazers wandered in and acquired one of our community assets for free. The level of taxation is probably close to zero as it was all debt reversed in at an exhorbitant level. This debt was serviced by the community and the wider football community who funded sky sports and underwrote the business model. I dont blame the Glazers for being opportunistic and doing this, Hanson Trust and all the other investment trusts had for years been taking advantage of old school economics never catching up with new accounting practices. They werent the Only Ones. It was "Another Girl Another Planet", "There's no peace for the wicked", tax regimes have always been exploited by "the beast", I tell you "Its the Truth". That was a wee musical interlude, from one of my favourite bands and I'm so easily distracted by these things. We joke all the time about old dogs new tricks. It is the truth that people who make money deciphering tax regimes for avoidance love what they do as its a clever puzzle to solve and putting barriers in their way just creates more fun. As i mentioned during my privatisation dissertations, it was not wider share ownership during the privatisation or asset stripping in the mid 80's. There was not 2 million or even 6 million new shareholders. There was a patriachal/matriarchal ownership structure where one person bought shares in 20-40 people's names. Names were the thing back then, just as they are nowadays with people opening multiple betting accounts etc to get free bets or home deliery of food etc. Skilled practioners would ask their friends if the were going for them or not and then supply the cash. Some very brazen ones would write cheques on their own account to be presented to buy shares for their friends and family. I know this quite simply because I was part of the processing unit that received these cheques and applications for shares. History tells us this wasnt really documented but my point is simply this. THey enjoyed the game so much their greed became an arms race with colleagues in the pub. An arm wrestle using family and friend networks where people would apply for 50-100 different people. Imagine nowadays with technology how many mutiple applications you could make. Back then, there was little scrutiny of multiples. Eventually towards the end scrutiny was introduced on the last few privatisations but the game had moved on to the land grab of how these former state companies could now be dissected for most gain. Shame the dissection wasn't done at the beginning to maximise value for the state. City advisors, I laugh, were obviously very good at advising the decision making politicians. Some civil servants stood tall though and hats off to the Scottish office for retaining Scottish Water. I'm sure someone will eventually get their hands on it and drive a sale through but hopefully we've benefitted from having it these last 40 years. So how do we introduce a fairer taxation based on the global aspirations of all our people. Some want to work away and return with their riches, 30-40 years later. Some want to play the game of working away but pretending to still live here and topping up their NI contributions. You might think having a whole lot of wealthy people returning to where they were born would be a good thing for the local community. As Gary Stevenson's garyseconomics you tube channel will tell you its not all plain sailing. Someone returns home with £2m they buy 7 flats and rent them out. There's no CGT when they sell. They live hear off the income which they'll put through a property company, wash it gently flat, generate £150,000 in revenue but somehow only make about £12,000 which just so happens to be because they've spent it on the flats. They will pay £200,000 to £400,000 for the flats and by having some needing more work than others its very simple to improve them. This reverses your income into capital. The capital of course is free of CGT so no tax will ever be paid. What looks on paper as a rich person coming to your country to help the local economy has don nothing more than force the prices up of property. As they sell these properties one every 3 - 5 years the anticapted revenue for them means they probably sit with £300,000 in their account at any one time and can retire very comfortably living off what Gary loves calling their passive income. The more money you come to this country with the more outrageous it becomes. Billionaires launder their cash through sophisticated models so Football teams are good ways to create a notional loss while performing the age old bottle/glass, glass/ bottle tommy cooper trick. Ok, its time for the allotment, its 15:45 and I'm feeling a dyslexic urge.