Life's a Stitch

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Camino lessons learned today:

 

1. You can pack a lot of incline into a shorter distance.
2. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake over and over to learn your lesson: don’t trust Accuweather.

It was a tough day, initially in the rain, followed by high humidity. It felt like we swam to Redondela, an uphill swim for most of it, followed by a quick steep bit downstream.

 

When we hit the first village there was a heavy police presence. A woman officer was blocking the stairs to the restrooms. They were giving no details. 

 

Nearing the top, I knew I didn’t have enough energy to complete it well. We stopped for our remaining backpack food: cheese, cured ham, an airline packet of pretzels and some trail mix. It was a perfect lunch that fuelled the last push, which ended up being way shorter than expected. 

 

I suppose it would be helpful to have a detailed guidebook. As we planned a different route, our book for this one is at home on the nightstand. We tried to buy one, but crazy enough, it’s not available here. And there’s no Kindle version, so we’re relying on websites, not always accurate.

 

On the way we met a Camino busker. The region of Galicia has strong Celtic influence. She stamped our credencial with a homemade bagpipe stamp.

 

There was one more uphill that we didn’t plan – the fourth floor walk up apartment we booked. It’s nothing to write home about since it’s one of the higher priced rooms we’ve had, although still quite reasonable. Bonus – a washer! When you only have one change of clothes (plus extra socks and undies lest you think we’re really grotty pilgrims) a washer is sooo much better than hand laundry.

 

We are noticing differences from our first Caminos. Is it that we’re a few years older or a hillier route? Unrelated is C’s rotator cuff problem, which after a week felt better than ever. Today it took a downturn, so he’s in the bedroom icing after a dose of Spanish ibuprofono, much stronger than at home.

 

On the Camino, restaurants open at 8:00 p.m. Sometimes there are a couple that cater to pilgrims and offer three course meals throughout the day. At 3:30 we were famished and went to a place that advertised pilgrim’s meals. We’re pretty good with our Spanish, but we’re in Galician territory. We ordered a bottle of wine and were brought so many tapas we couldn’t think about eating any more. We headed to the grocery store with dinner, brekkie and lunch in mind. We found a few interesting items. No longer for me, lol, but this was on the tea shelf:

 

M, I found this. Looking forward to trying it compared to the Chinese and Canadian variations.

 

An interesting Coke combination:

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, as my mother would say, tomorrow looks like a tough day. At least we’ll approach it with clean clothes.