We had a really relaxed, fun walk today. No rain, with cool cloudy conditions (my favourite).
We stayed at the BEST albergue last night; as Chez said, it felt like we’d been invited into the owner’s home. The building was old and full of character and there were lovely little touches - olives and crisps brought out to us with our sundowners, complimentary Galician liqueurs after supper… all round a very positive experience. Grant had a chat to the owner today (well as much as 2 people who have no common language can “chat” Thanks Google Translate!) and it turns out he bought the place, as a 150 year old ruin, 7 years ago and fixed it up himself. Well if that’s not a sign that Grant should buy me a little “fixer-upper” on the Camino!
This morning we started off on a gorgeous woodland section (after I had initially headed off in the totally wrong direction) and about a km out we realised we hadn’t got sellos at the albergue! (When walking the Camino you have a little passport that you stamp whenever you stop along the way, at churches, cafes and albergues etc the stamps are called “sellos”). We didn’t HAVE to have a sello from the albergue, but we really wanted one as it was such a special place - so Grant, Glynt and Cal headed back with our Camino passports to get our sellos, while the rest of us wandered slowly on.
We found a little cafe up the hill and stopped for some coffee and “breakfast”… ok, ok, I admit it was cake. Once the men had found us and had a well-deserved cafe con leche we continued on. The next stop was a cafe with fantastic gardens which we took a wander around (really special!) before having a shandy. I stand by the fact that it is perfectly acceptable to drink beer shandy at 10:30am when walking the Camino.
We moseyed on through fascinating little villages and varied scenery before finally crossing the Furelos River via the medieval bridge and walking into Melide.
We saw the most gorgeous little church on the walk into town, so made a quick stop there to soak up the atmosphere and get our passports stamped. There is something about the little churches on the Camino, you leave them feeling so blessed and at peace.
We were ready for lunch by this point, so were happy to come across a little taverna where we ended up having a delightful lunch - sitting IN the road, eating paella, drinking shandy and listening to Elvis will be a lasting memory of this Camino!
After that it was a short 1,5kms to our albergue.
We took a walk into town this evening and found a restaurant to have some supper... a fun evening.
Feet are still doing well! Heidi is one tough cookie, she is full of cold but soldiered on regardless today… I honestly don’t know how she did it!
Our accommodation for tonight is at Pension San Anton. This is a good pension, modern and with all the amenities. There is a little restaurant on site, where we had breakfast. There is also a pool which we didn't use as it was cold and rainy, but I imagine it would be great to have a swim on a hot day. My only criticism is that our room was upstairs and had sloping ceilings, and we kept on bumping our heads.
No comments:
Post a Comment