42 Kilometers!
We made it all the way to Santiago yesterday instead of stopping in O Predrouzo after the designated 22 km stage. We arrived in Pedrouzo around 11:30, had some lunch, and decided we were just so close to the end of the Camino that we didn’t want to spend a day twiddling our thumbs and waiting to go on.
So we walked 42 kilometers (26 miles) and arrived at the Cathedral at 6:19pm.
A Bucolic Setting
We have now walked around 730km with approximately 40 to go. Tonight we are staying in a renovated historic pilgrim hospital in Ribadiso.
The river made for a lovely, cold foot soak that we pilgrims really enjoyed. A cow even joined us on our side of the river. Tonight we are being serenaded by a bagpipe.
We had another fog-shrouded day, becoming a beautiful sunny afternoon. We’ve had some super neat mornings over the last 2 days with a full moon lighting our way through the dark and fog before sunrise.
Below a photo from Castromaior, the remains of a castle dating to the 4th Century B.C. The sun is peeking through the thick fog. Surely there were some wraiths hanging around with us, but otherwise we were alone at this ruin.
Speaking of being alone… there are so many new pilgrims on the road. It’s pretty disturbing. They are just doing 4 or 5 days of the Camino (last 100km). It’s a shame that they don’t know what they have missed out on over the many weeks and there doesn’t seem to be interaction between the original cohort and the new ones. They seem to be all in large groups or tours for the most part.
For us, two more stages of walking and then the final day into Santiago!!! We’ll finally be there Monday.
Spending the night in Portomarin, a pilgrim town that was relocated when a reservoir drowned its original location. Only 4 days of walking left.
We are enjoying our days walking through Galicia. The land is green and hilly and we are spending more time along wooded routes. The villages are pretty tiny, with small herds of cows and sheep. There are lots of smallish gardens of kale and other cruciferous vegetables and some late tomatoes.
Once again this morning we set off in the dark for a climb in dense fog but the view as dawn came was amazing as we looked down from above the clouds.
One downside to our current pastoral region is the ever-present scent of manure. It’s really overwhelming at times and the streets in the smaller villages are just coated with the stuff. Today marked the last day of our 4th week walking and I slipped on some damp leaves during a descent and fell for the first time. Fortunately my fall was cushioned by — yep, manure.
We passed through Sarria today and have stopped in a small town Barbadelo a few kilometers on. Sarria is a very significant town on the Camino because many “fake” pilgrims (as some people call them) start their journey here. In order to earn the Compostela certificate from the pilgrim office in Santiago you only have to prove you’ve walked the final 100km of the Camino. Sarria is located 115km from Santiago so we are expecting anout 30% more pilgrims to join us tomorrow after commencing in Sarria.
About 500 pilgrims are arriving daily in Santiago. Last year 278,000 pilgrims walked to Santiago and earned their certificates. I’ve been checking live statistics on arrivals and about 100 pilgrims an hour are checking in at the pilgrim office. About 1000 pilgrims a day will arrive during October.
As you can tell the end of the Camino is on my mind. It is going to be so exciting and emotional to finish this journey. I have walked every step and carried every pound in my pack the whole way. If I fell and broke a bone tomorrow I’d still walk every step left — somehow!
Some photos from our ascent to O Cebreiro yesterday and then descent down the mountains again today. Yesterday was quite the cardio workout! Somebody described it as being like climbing over the alps from The Sound of Music. The weather has been quite warm too.
The views from the top were amazing and we spent much of this morning above the cloud line looking down over beautiful green landscapes.
A beautiful day hiking through hilly vineyards once again. This region is rather wild and Rich was disappointed to see the grapes have mostly been harvested already. Mountains are all around us.
We are spending the night in Villafranca prior to a really long climb back into the mountains tomorrow.
Rich had “soused trout” for lunch which we thought was a typo, but maybe not!
We began our stage today in Foncebadon, a mountain village with a single unpaved street. We delayed leaving until 7:20 so as not to do too much mountain climbing in the dark, only to discover we were in the midst of very dense fog. It was pretty cool.
2 km in we reached the Iron Cross. I had expected that the dawn would have risen by the time we got there, but probably due to the fog it was still dark.
The Iron Cross is probably the earliest and most famous monument for pilgrims on the Camino. There apparently has been a sacred monument in this place since Roman times or before. The monument consists of a small iron cross mounted on a tall pole atop a mound of rocks and stones. It is a place where pilgrims leave stones which they have brought with them for the origin of their Camino. The stones can be placed as a memorial or prayer, or can represent some symbolic weight that the pilgrim is wishing to let go.
I brought a small pebble of limestone from the creek bed in our backyard. Rich carried a fossil (exogyra).
As you can see from the elevation profile we had a very steep and long descent off the mountain today. No view because of the fog for a number of hours.
Now we are in Ponferrada seen in the distance in this last photo.
Yesterday was a long, hot stage to get to Astorga, a town with Roman roots. We were too tired to write, so today I’ll combine two days.
We started out yesterday with a 28.5 km day ahead of us, but unsure how my toe would hold out. Fortunately Rich has expanded his expertise to podiatry and wrapped that little guy up in layers of gauze and tape, and it has survived.
We made 3 new Australian acquaintances (Heather, Peter and Andrew) yesterday morning and enjoyed walking with them until we had to kick into higher gear to ensure a timely arrival in Astorga.
Once in our destination we registered at the large albergue, shared a washer with 2 other pilgrims (the nice German guy wouldn’t affend my sensibilities by making me touch his briefs – how quaint), hung the laundry and sought a beer.
We ended up lunching with our Spanish friend Jose Luis who we met on day one of our Camino, and afterwards viewed a Palace designed by Gaudi and toured the Cathedral.
Today was designed to be a shorter stage but we tacked on another 5km of steep climbing into the mountains. Unbelievably we are now at a higher elevation than we were when crossing the Pyrenees. Tomorrow we will reach our highest point of the Camino and then have a very steep and long descent. (More mountains in the future though.)
Officially there are 10 more days of walking until we reach Santiago. We are leaving Castillo y León autonomy and entering Galicia, where the climate should change to cooler and wetter Atlantic weather.
We’re out of León and in a little bitty town on the ‘scenic route’. We made excellent time but my toe is in severe distress. 28.5 km to walk tomorrow.
Ouch.
