Day 2 - Wednesday 23rd March

Today we had set off by eight after eating the breakfast bars we had brought with us.

The day started off with a climb up and we managed to go a whole 50 meters before the cyclist sped past us!

As with yesterday’s walk we saw no-one at all during the day’s walk and so the two of us could sing quite loudly once or twice as we walked.

A lot of today’s path was very high up as we skirted around the sides of very high hills which afforded us wonderful views.

After two hours’ walk we sat on the side of a fallen tree and ate some crisps we had bought back in a Guidina.

There were no bars again today but in one of the villages we came across a Pilgrim rest stop that was run by the local association with a  bench out and a table with food and drink on it (bottles of peach juice, flasks of coffee and hot water with tea bags and hot chocolate powder, biscuits and cakes) all for a donation. A local dog really wanted to be friends with us while we ate, coming close and then looking at us with mournful eyes as he begged us for a fuss.

Our destination for the day was Laza and as soon as we arrived we felt more welcome than we had last night in Campobecerros with a woman who was cleaning the town hall smiling to us as we went past and greeting us.

A local policeman directed us to the albergue reception as soon as he saw us and this was in the local police office and here we paid, were registered. We were given a map of the village and for the next day’s walk and then were given a key and were told that one key was to the front door of the albergue and the other was for the blue bedroom to unlock that and we were told that the window in the side of the office would be open in the morning so we were to drop it through there.

The albergue was at the edge of the village, a nice distance away but not too far to walk (and we passed a donkey on the way).

The showers were somewhat temperamental as they would not stay warm unless you had just run the sink tap until it was warm .. it was a little annoying! The room we had had eight bunk beds in and when another couple arrived they were put in another room and two cyclists were put in a third room meaning that me and Becky had a room to ourselves and were able to lock the door at night.

We had a kitchen at the albergue so we went out in search of food and also found a pharmacist to look at Becky’s foot – she spoke no English and us not enough Spanish (by a long way) but she found Becky some dressings and then spent ages getting out the different tapes and showing them to her (letting us open the box and peel back a small bit to see what they were like) and when Becky chose a type she brought out different widths for Becky to choose from. We also bought some Batadine (antiseptic) in little 5ml bottles and it came to under ten euros.

The day was sunny so we hung our clothes out to dry whilst we ate – we had some trout empanada left from a tapas from our drinks at the bar yesterday, some bread we had left and then a tin of fabada soup we had bought.

We wrote our diaries and relaxed a bit until tea when we had spaghetti, eggs and ham and then got to bed early and locked ourselves in our room for the night.