On the Camino

Today we walked the 20ish km to Santiago. I never seem to be able to get around to writing my diary for the day that I arrive in Santiago; it’s always a day filled with excitement at arriving and sadness at the journey being over. This day was drier but there was still a light mist of rain. We had been warned that the way was not well marked but we didn’t find this until we were actually in Santiago, in fact the way markers actually had distances on for the first time.

Today we walked about 19km and there was a lot less rain which we were grateful for. The walk started off on the roads but then we spent most of the day on quiet back roads and some time in woods which smelt beautifully of Eucalyptus.

It was still raining the next day when we woke up and we could hear the wind from inside so we waited until about eight to set off so at least it was a little lighter and we had more of a chance to see where the arrows were. It rained on and off all day but the path was a little bit easier to navigate as there weren’t as many puddles to go around.  

Officially the books say that we walked 20km today but the route was so wet and soggy from all of the heavy rain overnight with wide areas of mud and places where the path was just wide running streams so that we had to detour several times into the fields around the path so we probably walked over the 20km. Added to this it rained for most of the day and some of the puddles were so big that the inside of our shoes were wet as well. The day did start off well though as we went back to the bar we had eaten at last night – the owner had been so nice that we all decided to return for breakfast. We all had a drink and then toast (the Cee bread again) with honey, cheese and tomato (we ordered one of these each and she brought enough over for us all to have each and then kept asking if we wanted more toast). Before we left she insisted that we take the number of a taxi and her number as well in case we ran into any problems – she told us that the way would definitely be wet but it was qu...

With the clocks changing last night waking up at half six felt very much like waking up at the half five it was yesterday. We had yogurts left from yesterday’s tea so we finished those and then set off in the dark and headed to the Cathedral and from there found the way markers that we had found last night to continue on the Camino.   We found the Roman bridge over the river Mino and went up the street only realising that we had taken the wrong route 100 metres or so after the turning and so we headed back – the route we were taking was slightly longer but meant to be the prettier and avoided a road tunnel which the guidebook said we had to get our torches out and shine them as we went along in case vehicles didn’t obey the stop sign because there were pedestrians in there ….. that did not sound very good.