I write this in Arre on Sept 2nd, so we are getting ahead of ourselves. Those of you on the Telegram group will have a decent idea of what we’re up to. Those following the blog, not so much…
Apologies for not being productive! I need decent WiFi and peace and quiet to do this. Both are often available, but not so far on this trip. Today we got completely soaked and I’ve spent the last 5 hours trying to dry everything. I mean literally everything that I own on this trip, including this computer and my camera. My camera got so wet that I’m afraid to turn it on until it’s had a chance to dry out properly. Thus, sadly, the only pics I have are from my iPhone…
An, ahem, difficult Camino day.
If you want to join the Telegram group sent an email to camino@bigsmoke.com and include your full telephone number, including any international dialing codes.
It’s our first night in an albergue – and it’s a rather nice one in SJPP. After an excellent dinner in a cafe the night before and a moderately effective sleep we are up, 6:30-ish, to head on out.
Llew and I are trying to remember the rules and Diana and Jonathan are getting to grips with them for the first time.
Rule #1: SHUT UP AND KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN!
Rule #2: Don’t get up too early. If you do, see Rule #1.
We head on out, in the dark, and hope to find an open cafe. Sadly we find none, but we do come across a nice bakery. We begin the trip with cake and a coffee.
As would be expected in August the pass is open…
…and off we go, on to the Route Napoleon. The sun comes up and the beautiful Pyrennes reveal themselves.
Let’s be blunt. Day #1 is hard. It’s probably the hardest of the entire trip. I think there are higher passes in Galicia, but by the time you get there, you are an entirely different beast from the one that exited SJPP on Day #1.
Today we climb to 1500m or so, on surpisingly nice roads, and walk into Spain.
We try to get used to our packs, with much adjustment and re-adjustment and over-analysis…
We climb, slowly.
I take a photo of my shadow. I think of the old joke – “What’s the best way to lose 10 pounds of ugly fat? Cut your head off…” – as I make a note of my belly and hope that I can reduce it in the next month.
I am very surprised and rather concerned at the hundreds of peregrinos who are on the trail. The camino infrastructure is creaking to cope with the huge post-Covid increase in numbers.
The trail is very busy. I’m worried already about the upcoming ‘bed racing’, where the peregrinos get up earlier and earlier to race each other to the next town, and the next albergue. Either that, or they pore over the guide book and try to book ahead.
This isn’t the way to do it! The ideal is to get up, walk, and find a hostel when you’re tired. Then repeat for 33 days.
Too many pilgrims means we can’t really do this. Sadly, we’ve had to book Roncesvalles for tonight. And later we try and book Zubiri and two further albergues. I don’t like this!
Anyway… time to enjoy the view…
After about 8km of huffing and puffing (Jonathan lives in Cambridge and doesn’t know what a hill is) we arrive at the tiny albergue and cafe at Orisson – one of my favorite places on earth.
They do excellent food and the view is sublime…
Tortilla, orange juice and coffee. I don’t think it ever gets better than this.
I post to the Telegram group:
I phone Jen and say “I’m in heaven, kill me now…” and I can hear her eyes roll.
But, we can’t sit here all day (WHY NOT!?) so we head off, up the hill, and take in more dramatic views and sounds.
The rather odd and somewhat spooky Virgin Mary statue with Spain in the backgroundRounding up the horsesDiana’s combined laundry, bread basket and backpacka 180 panoramaSheep music
An enterprising gent has brought his van up to near the top of the pass and is selling sensible camino food – eggs, cheese (that he has made himself), bananas and the like.
Time to try some….
The Cheese ShopI think that’s wrong! It’s at least 799km from here….…but we’ll take it!
We descend on a rather muddy path through some old forests…
…and, rather worryingly, we start ascending again. I don’t remember this bit…
Llew aerates his armpits
And, finally, way on the middle distance we can nearly see Roncesvalles.
We take the easier route down, the ‘normal’ route is very wet and muddy, and we’re all old people who don’t want to fall down. Plus, we get to meet some excellent cows.
A few more corners and Roncesvalles appears…
… and we make journey’s end.
We check in – and are very glad we had booked. There are 180+ beds in here and it is full to bursting. The hospitaleros try and deal with the unfortunate peregrinos who cannot be accomodated (some pilgrims are unreasonably cross about this. I’m not entirely sure what they expect to happen…).
We eventually check-in and then I have a stupid fight with Vodafone trying to figure out how to call a local Spanish number from my UK phone in Spain. You’d think this information should be easy enough to find, but you’d be wrong. TOBI, the Vodafone virtual, ahem, “assistant” is quite concretely useless. Grrr! An hour later Llew has managed to get his phone working and we’ve got two more nights booked.
There’s an 8pm mass, and, as good Protestants (or Protestant-adjacents), we all troop off to see the Catholics do what they do best.
A well attended service in a beautiful place
We have reservations for the 8:30pm pilgrim meal. As we’re all more-or-less veggies you get what you’re given and that’s that. So a rather good veg soup was followed by a slop of pasta in something red with cheese on top.
But we didn’t care. We’d made it over the big hill and we were all quite OK.
Day 1: Stats
SJPP to Roncesvalles
Steps: 31,167
Distance covered: 23.85km
Apple Watch stats
256 Flights climbed (whatever that means – I’d like some real numbers please….)
We checked out of Sacre Couer and I got my first stamp of the trip. It seems that most Catholic churches will have a ‘pilgrim’ stamp, so out it came (eventually – they struggled to find it) and I am now the proud bearer of an almost incomprehensible addition to my pilgrim passport.
Note that I’m still using the pilgrim passport from the 2019 trip. I have unfinished business and it seemed good to just carry on using the old one. More on this later…
Off to Montmattre to sort out the train. I had a message yesterday from SNCF telling me that the Bayonne to St Jean Pied de Port (hereafter referred to as SJPP) had been cancelled. It looked like the best idea was to change our Paris-Bayonne tickets from 14:06 to 12:11. Off we go to the ticket office. After a bit of explaining we got the new tickets.
Now, one of the things I felt I had to do to, ahem, justify taking 30+ days off work was to be kinda-sorta available should Very Bad Things happen at work. Thus my red backpack contains a Microsoft Surface Go which I could use to access the corporate VPN and fiddle with stuff should it be required (and write this blog, come to think of it…). Trouble is I’m struggling to charge the wretched thing. I bought a 65W USB-C charge yesterday on the assumption that this would work. Sadly not. The Surface would charge for 20 mins maybe and then just stop. So, my task this morning was to find a ‘proper’ MS branded charger. I went to the Darty store in Montparnasse station. They didn’t have one, so they sent me to a FNAC store a 20 min walk away. They didn’t have one either, but they assured me that the FNAC in Gare St Lazare did, so off I went tp that on the Metro. Turns out they were lying and no charger could be found. By this time it was 11:30 and I was in a panic. I returned to Montparnasse and discovered that a very large Darty store was about 3 mins walk from where I started. They did have one. I bought it in a great hurry and slightly panicked as the sales assistant took her time extracting the charger from the protective security case. 35EUR lighter I ran, pack and all, and made the train with minutes to spare.
What with staying up all night being religious and philosophical, and then running around town for 90 mins I was completely knackered.
I got out all my electronics and charged everything I could think off and eventually had a small sleep whilst the magnificent TGV whisked me through the countryside at a fantastic pace.
We arrived in Bayonne and sought out a cash machine and some coffee and cake, like you do. The train to SJPP turned out to be completely full so an additional bus was laid on. We were about to board the bus when Jonathan, the 4th member of our group, came into view. He’d flown out that afternoon to Biarritz and was on the same train/bus as us.
Off to SJPP – the start of the trip!
It’s a lovely little town,more or less completely given over to the Camino.
The queue outside the Pilgrim Office
Hordes of peregrinos (aka pilgrims) exited the bus, and the train, which arrived at the same time, and we all raced into town to find the Pilgrim Office to pick up the pilgrim passports. Without these very important pieces of paper it isn’t possible to stay in the albergues. The albergue system of very cheap accomodation and carbohydrate-heavy meals seems to me to be a bit of a labour of love for those involved. Imposters, who try and stay at the albergues without putting in the effort are usually turned away. Note that ‘effort’ could be pretty much anything. Most folks walk, a fair number cycle. There are blokes on donkeys and people who take the bus. It all counts.
Sorting us out at the Pilgrim Office
And now the all-important first step pictures.
This is us. Step #1. Roughly 1,250,000 to go… I am simultaneously sick with worry that I won’t make it and as excited as a 10 year old at the Lego store. Bring it on…
Up from my tiny non-descript hotel room where I have to sleep at an angle in order to fit in the bed (and I’m not that tall) and off to St Pancras. I meet Llew and Diana – Llew is a very old friend of mine, and Diana is a very old friend of his whom I have not met. We exchange greetings and eat properly at Carluccios.
We’re on the 10:26 Eurostar to Paris. I like fast trains! By French standards the Eurostar is a bit half hearted but it is a step above most other trains on the British networks.
We are seated awkwardly and, with the permission of the sole occupant of a nearby 4-seat table, we move and join Edi, a medical student from Manchester who is off to visit her grandmother somewhere south of Paris. She had big and noble plans – joining MSF for example – and was good company for us old folks.
Paris arrived in a flash.
We left the bags in Gare de Nord and messed around for an afternoon. We walked down to the Tuillerie Gardens and strolled on, doing our best to flaneur to Notre Dame to see how the reconstruction was going. I understand that it’s not going to be open in time for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, which I don’t think was a surprise to anyone familiar with the engineering challenges. It is a most impressive project.
Notre Dame is under here somewhere
Then back to Gare de Nord (note we walked the whole day – need to get in the practice…) to pick up our bags and heat up to Montmatre, to Sacre Coeur church.
I wanted to revisit a restaurant in Montmatre that I have visited several times. A small Italian place that has a parrot sitting by the counter.
We arrive to find that it’s under new ownership – an Egyptian chap has been in charge for a week. Llew, who use to live in Cairo, starts talking to him in Arabic and the manager is quite impressed.
One night whilst googling things to do in Paris I came upon the ‘Night Adoration’ at Sacre Coeur. The deal is this: you commit to taking part in prayer or meditation for at least an hour at some point in the night, and you can stay in the Sacre Coeur pilgrim’s hostel for 40 euros. Well… that sounded interesting. Apparently there has been continous prayer in the Cathedral since 1885. All day, every day, apart from Good Friday. So no pressure then….
Long time readers of this blog will recall that my reasons for going on my 2017 Camino was that it sounded like a nice walk across Spain. Which is, indeed, was. But it was much more than that, as I completely failed to articulate in any understandable sense. As Jen’s, my daughter, Masters thesis would put it “I had walked myself into pilgrim”. A destination and not just a noun.
And now we were going back, to retrace the Camino Frances, with me having a much better understanding of the – dare I use the word – spiritual aspects of this escapade. Why not start it with some kind of all night prayer/meditation bash at what must be one of the most spectacular churches in the world.
We arrive at 8:15pm and are checked in by a nun, who is straight out of that Audrey Hepburn film. I’m not a Catholic so don’t understand the ins and outs of the structures but it was exactly what I’d hoped for. A very simple white room with white sheets and blankets, no TV, no wifi, no anything. No distractions.
In an attempt to stay awake we went to the 10:30 mass. Sadly, there was none of the magnificent chanting and what-not. Just a sermon in French from a jolly priest. Which didn’t do too much for keeping us awake.
We’d committed to the midnight to 1 am slot. At midnight we wander into the Cathedral through a rather impressive side entrance. It is a truly beautiful place. There are, maybe, a dozen people in the cathedral and we take a seat and have a think.
As I keep saying, I am not a Catholic. Not only am I not a Catholic, but I come from the Rangers end of Glasgow, which can best be described as vigorously anti -Catholic. My father was one of five brothers. Three were pastors, and my father would have been a pastor had he not had a serious stammer. So, I am steeped in a fundamental mistrust of people from the Celtic side of the city. And then there’s all the scandals, the child abuse, the cover-ups, the weird attitude to women. I have a number of ex-Catholic friends for whom the mention of the church induces anger and nausea.
But, but, but…
I have none of that history. I don’t have that visceral response. My knowledge of Catholicism is minimal. I do not have that angry nauseus response even if I quite understand those who do.
And yet…
The Catholic church is really good at the mystery of God. Sacre Couer is a magical place. When you’ve more-or-less got it to yourself at midnight it’s even more magical.
I think of the Pink Floyd lyric from ‘Time’ – ‘and far away, across the fields, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees to hear the softly spoken magic spells’. I used to read that as critical, now I’m not so sure.
I shall waffle on more on this later, I feel. Suffice to say I sat there until 1:45am and loved it. An ideal start to the trip.
I’m off. Seat J-10 on the Caledonian train from Inverness to London Kings Cross. I joined the train at 10:15 in Gleneagles.
Some strange Mexican stand-off at Gleneagles station. Muriel, Jen and Steve
The train rolls into London, more or less on time. I’m staying at a non-descript hotel just off Holborn so I don my walking shoes and amble on down, taking in St Pancras Station on the way. I rather like the big statue under the clock.
‘The Meeting Place’ statue in St Pancras
The detail around the base of this statue is astonishing.
…and the grand old station itself is pretty splendid.
Off to find some dinner, then bed. Paris awaits tomorrow. Sacre bleu…
It’s time to break out the rucksack that hasn’t seen serious duty since we were snowed in a few years back for a week, and I used it to get groceries from the supermarket. Happy days…
Snow isn’t going to be a thing in northern Spain in September. I’ve been watching the BBC Weather app and checking up on the temperatures in Pamplona, Leon and Santiago. Pamplona hit 40°C earlier this week. Yikes. The prediction for when we get there – possibly next weekend – is 25°C and raining. Speaking as a good Scotsman I think I’ll take the rain over the heat.
I’ve been too busy lately with work and life. Today is the first serious thought I’ve put into packing. It not yet noon and I’m quite knackered from all the ‘do I take this, do I really need that, what if??’.
On the other hand, I have done this before and I know the important things.
Because my feet hurt and my knees hurt and my teeth hurt, I became obsessed with those things and ended up packing the evening before I left. No problem! It’s encouraging just how quickly you recall your previous adventures and you delight in keeping it simple and throwing things out.
Monday morning, I repack my pack (just in case) and it weighs 8kg. Result! That’ll do.
Here’s a pic of me and my stuff. Nothing much different from previous trips (see here and here). Other than the small white tub of Spanish Vaseline that I bought back in 2017. Slather that on your feet as a pre-emptive strike against blisters and all will be well.
The main hiking shoes are by Salewa and the secondary slobbing-about-the-hostel shoes are Merrell Strike (750g -superlight!).
So, all good. I remind myself of the scene from The Jerk that I referenced last time… ‘All I need is this remote control…’.
Steve : Today we do not walk. Our primary purpose has altered. I’m not entirely clear on the details of the alteration as yet but we’ll see how we do.
We rise late and are the last three out of the albergue. We walk all of 10m to a cafe across the street for a breakfast of toast, orange juice and coffee. Fortified and somewhat zombified we head off to the bus station to get the 12 noon bus to Finisterre, the ‘end of the world’.
We do walk to the bus station. It isn’t far but it actually feels quite nice to have the pack on and the shoes on and be walking.
The bus driver is a nutcase and should not be driving buses. He throws the bus around and is either on the brake or the accelerator hard the whole time. His primary goal seems to be to make up enough time so he can stop and have cigarette breaks. Two hours of his crazy stupid driving and we all feel sick. If I knew what I was doing I would lodge a formal complaint.
The vomit bus disgorges its contents
But Finisterre is a beautiful little town, full of hippies, and – as luck would have it – a weekend long blues festival. Good fun.
We find our accomodation, the ‘Albergue do Sol e da Lua’, which is pleasingly hippy. We do the last clothes wash of the trip and settle down for an afternoon of reading and posting these blogs.
Albergue do Sol e da Lua
Jen disappears for an hour and comes back to tell us that she’s been for a swim in the Atlantic. A dare ensues and we all troop off to the beach on the Atlantic side of the peninsula. There are a handful of people on a gorgeous sandy beach. It’s around 6:30 and still warm so we strip off to our undies and in go Hamish and myself.
Bracing! H is complaining about the cold but, hey, I’m (a) from Scotland, and (b) possessed of a layer of lard that’s missing from the youngsters. Rarely are these attributes an advantage. I’ve been swimming in the Atlantic off Argyll. Spain is lovely and warm.
It’s a tradition to burn your clothing when you arrive in Finisterre…
We return to the albergue and get ourselves sorted out for the 3km walk to the lighthouse that officially notes the 0km mark of the Finisterre Camino. We want to get there for sunset at 10:19pm. We stroll through the streets and have veggie sandwiches at a hipster cafe that would work fine in Edinburgh. We sit outside with our backs to the square in which black clad roadies are setting up the stage for the blues festivals events of the evening. Just as the band is getting started we have to leave and head to the lighthouse.
It’s fun to be walking again and it’s more or less all uphill to the lighthouse – all the better!
Steve at 0km
Hamish at 0km
Jen at 0km
We arrive around 10pm and watch the mighty sun slip behind some clouds on the far horizon. The same sun that has both entranced us with jaw droppingly beautiful sunrises over the meseta and tried to kill us on the plains of Leon Y Castillo.
We watch it go down in silence.
We amble back to the albergue. Jen walks alone and has a major CALS moment. She says, next morning, that she just wants to keep walking. Not go back to work but just pick a city, put on your boots,
and
go…
As for me, I agree. I shall go home and have a think.
Steve : We’re here! Sometime after 11am this morning the three of us ran – yes, ran – the last half km into the square outside the Cathedral in Santiago.
Much rejoicing…
But first…
The day started very early. Our plan was to make it to Santiago in time for the noon pilgrim’s mass. We reckoned we had around 20km to go from Pedrouzo so, given our current storming form, we reckoned 5 hours max. But to be on the safe side we were up just after 5am.
It was wet and very dark. We headed back into town and picked up the Camino trail again and headed into the woods. Within minutes we hit a new problem. It was simply too dark to see the trail. The sky was black with rain clouds and we were still an hour before dawn. On previous early starts this hadn’t been a problem as we could see plenty under a starry moonlit sky.
Somewhat disappointed we had an emergency committee meeting during which some jovial Spanish peregrinos who were wearing head torches passed us. So we dissolved our meeting and simply followed them. They were a little slow but they got us to Breakfast #1…
…after which time the sun had come up enough to be useful. Off we went. It rained on and off and within a few hours we passed the airport and came upon the ‘Santiago’ marker.
Santiago and Jen
Santiago and Hamish
Santiago and Steve
It always surprises me just how long it takes to walk through a large town’s suburbs. Santiago is no exception. We cross big roads and pass carpet showrooms and the typical big shed retailers of the modern world. Eventually we reach a pilgrim monument on top of a hill…
…and there it is, Santiago Cathedral. Blimey.
You can see the towers of the cathedral over Hamish’s left shoulder
I am nervous! 31 days of constant walking plus another few months of planning and there’s the target. Visible with our naked eyes through the mist.
We walk on, down the hill.
We nip into a cafe to use the loo and have Breakfast #1.5 and I meet a man who went to school in my village back home in Scotland. He’s come out to Santiago to join his wife, who has walked from Leon, and I can tell he’s simultaneously impressed and baffled.
We walk on into the old town.
Dog and peregrinos share a fashion moment
Jen vaguely recognises where she is from her Camino trip last year and she dares us to run the last half km. I demur but she wins and off we go.
So we race into the square, to find the last 10m blocked by a group of tourists who can’t seem to move out of the way.
We arrive in front of the scaffolding covering the front of the cathedral. There’s a man with an angle grinder making one heck of a noise half way up that scaffolding. Most of the square is closed off for some military event taking place later. We try and take it all in and collapse..
Jen just sits down. I wander on a few metres and Hamish a few metres more. I don’t know what either of them are thinking and, to be honest, I don’t know what I’m thinking either. My thoughts return to the two people who should be here, Muriel and Ali, and my sadness returns.
But then I think of my legs! And I get Jen to take a picture…
I ask you, dear reader, are those not particularly fine specimens? Muscles. And muscles on top of those muscles! Excellent legs in excellent socks in excellent shoes. Excellent.
We round up another peregrino and ask her to take a picture. Thankfully it’s a good one and here it is again. Happy memories already.
Overcome with something or other we retire to a cafe to eat churros dipped in chocolate. Diabetes on a plate. Very tasty.
We queue up for the noon pilgrim mass and find ourselves having to sit on the floor. The place is packed. The mass is long, in Spanish, and a bit baffling but we are glad to be there.
You may have heard about the swinging incense holder – you can see it in the centre of the above picture. Sadly that wasn’t going to happen at our mass. Apparently, if you pay enough (rumour says 3 or 4 hundred euros) and organise it in advance the church will do the swinging incense thing. I’m hazy as to what it’s all about but I can imagine that it’s very effective in removing the aroma of filthy pilgrim from the building.
This is a major Catholic cathedral and the quantity of gold around the supposed tomb of James the Apostle (Sant Iago) is considerable.
The mass finishes and we limp out back into the square. The rain has stopped and the sun threatens a return.
Square panorama #1
Square panorama #2
Square panorama #3
We find our albergue, ‘The Last Stamp’ (a reference to the stamps we collect in our ‘Pilgrim Passport’ or ‘Credentials’ at every albergue since St Jean) and go for a wander.
Central Santiago is a lovely old city full of tourist tat and interesting shops.
Hopeful
We stock up on souvenirs (we don’t have to carry it much further now!) and Jen buys two new dresses.
A scuzzy peregrino goes clothes shopping….
…and meets a very very large dog
The albergue is quite pleasant, though the ‘easy’ ways of the rural albergues have gone. This one is very much ‘business’. We make our beds and set out our stuff, then head out to collect our certificate and find some dinner.
The Pilgrim Office below the Cathedral is the final port of call for the peregrino. Here you show your ‘Pilgrim Passport’ and answer a few questions about your trip. Hand over 5 euros and you are given two documents, a ‘Certificate of Distance’ stating how far you have walked, and the all important ‘Compostella’ with your name scribed in Latin (sort-of). We queue up for around an hour and a half to get ours.
One of the hospitaleros tells us that yesterday they did 1400 ‘Compostellas’ and today they were expecting to do 1600. And the Camino ‘season’ hasn’t really started yet.
We walk out into the square and feel much contentment.
Dinner is at an excellent veggie-friendly restaurant where we blow the budget and eat like kings.
We are back in bed at around 10:30.
Sadly Santiago is a party town and the drinking starts early. Along side the peregrinos who are walking the trail with purpose are the tourigrinos, who are basically here for a party. Some didn’t even bother walking at all – we saw quite a few folks with boots and backpacks get out of taxis and only walk the last 100m into the square. Not cool.
The noise outside the albergue is incredible. I sleep fitfully until the last drunken idiot staggers into bed in the room above ours around 4:30am. In the morning I take great delight in not being quiet and revel in the ‘shhhh’s from the hangover brigade. Sorry, mate, you should have thought of that earlier…
Tomorrow we are no longer peregrinos. We will not walk. We’ll be on a bus to Finisterre, ‘The End of the World’, and we’ll watch the sun set over the Atlantic.
Steve : A reasonable night’s sleep, in spite of the snoring. We get up and ready ourselves for departure. Everything we own got a good soaking yesterday. All our gear has more or less dried out, apart from, sadly, our shoes. We stuffed them with newspaper last night, which does a good job of sucking out the moisture, but my left shoe still squelches when I walk. It’ll be fine in a few kms.
Roughly 30km to do today, so we look for a cafe for breakfast #1 and find a nice one in Arzua…
The cafe is attached to an upmarket albergue. Well dressed and sleek middle aged peregrinos in starched and pressed hiking gear are getting ready.
We consume toast, orange juice and coffee and we’re off…
I haven’t taken too many photos over the last few days, mainly due to the lashing rain, but above is a panorama of Galicia.
We walk through forested paths and stumble upon another cafe near A Calle, perfect for breakfast #2. Here we see the huge increase in peregrinos since Sarria. They are on Day 4 of their short 100km walk and they are, probably, wet and miserable.
We try and book ourselves an albergue for the night but everywhere in Pedrouzo seems to be full. Hamish gets on booking.com and we find ourselves a Pension, a small cheap hotel and book a triple room for 60 euros. A little expensive but better than tramping the streets looking for three empty beds.
The cafe is very busy…
Peregrinos everywhere…
Later, we determine that it’s round about now that we reach our one millionth step. But we don’t know that just yet…
We power on up the trail, passing through some ancient trees…
Tall trees #1
Tall trees #2
J and H are having a surreal conversation about how they would survive a zombie apocalypse, and H wonders if vampires would be able to survive on other planets with a different sun.
I follow along, as we race through the crowds, and I marvel at my legs ability to carry me at this pace, and I have a major CALS* moment.
We arrive in Pedrouzo and find our pension. Our host is a star – super enthusiastic and helpful. He tells us that this small town has a population of some 400, almost all of whom are involved in the peregrino business. He reckons there are 2000 beds in Pedrouzo and they are all full tonight. Looking at the hordes on the trail, I can believe it.
We go to our room, unpack, and arrange for some laundry to be done. The room is splendid…
TOWELS!!! SHEETS!!! DUVETS!!!
Jen falls asleep whilst H and I do techie things. We emerge around 3pm to try and find some lunch and we find a terrific cafe called ‘Taste The Way’…
‘Taste The Way’
…that does a Peregrino Menu with veggie options. We eat ravenously.
We are in seafood country here, specifically octopus. You see them in big tanks in the windows of restaurants awaiting execution. Yuck.
Back to the hotel. Our TV has a USB port so we plug in my stick and watch ‘The Lady In The Van’. Ideal pilgrim entertainment. Then a trip to the vending machine for some junk food and we set up ‘Margin Call’ as movie #2. The antithesis of a peregrino movie!
We were going to attend the pilgrim mass at the local church but the movie is too interesting. Oh well. Like I said, we walk through the country and experience almost none of it….
Dinner time arrives and we go out to try ‘Taste the Way’ again to discover that it’s closed for a private event. We find a horrible cafe, eat horrible salads and go to bed early.
Sleep is hard to come by, in spite of the comfy beds and duvets. Tomorrow we will be there. We will have reached the end of our trail.
I check my watch and it reads 03:16. I wonder if it’s a message…
