Category: Camino 2019

Walked today: 6.6 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 396.6 miles

At 7:30, both Accuweather and Weatherbug apps said no rain for 120 minutes, so we left our hotel and stopped for breakfast briefly, before leaving town without our rain gear, but had it easily accessible if we needed it.

Just as we left town and began our first steps on the dirt path, the heavens opened up and delivered some serious rain in our direction (Good work, weather apps!). We quickly got into our rain gear and waited in a relatively dry spot under a tree until the shower let up a bit before proceeding. It continued to rain for a half hour or so, then evolved into a light drizzle, then stopped for the rest of our walk.

Like yesterday, we walked on some narrow paved farm roads

but mostly through forests.

Pilgrims were very much in abundance the entire way. Resting places were nicely spaced and frequent enough to prevent excessively long waits for services.

We had a short chat at one stop with Paul and his wife from Holland that continued later when they passed us. They started their Camino from home and expected to get to Santiago sometime tomorrow after walking over 2600 kms (1600 miles) since late June!

Jim had another interesting conversation with Eddie, another guy from Holland. Jim mentioned that his father had visited Holland in 1942 when his bomber crashed landed on a beach near Vlissingen, Holland and was quickly taken captive by the nazis. Eddie said that his father was a member of the resistance forces in Holland during the same period, trying to disrupt nazi efforts in his country. Eddie said he never knew about his dad’s activities because they were classified and only discovered them after his father died. Jim shared that he had a very similar experience with his dad and related Jim Sr’s roll in the Great Escape. At that point in the conversation Jim realized he was walking faster with Eddie and bid farewell to his new Dutch friend and walked backwards to let Linda catch up.

We also walked briefly with a lady from Sidney, Australia who had started in SJPDP, like us, and had been walking alone. She was curious as to why we had walked the Camino more than once.

When we got to Salceda, our room was not ready. We waited in the Albergue Tourista Salceda dining area until our room was ready and chatted with a young lady from Hanover, Germany, who had walked from SJPDP and we enjoyed sharing our experiences and impressions of the Camino Frances, until our respective rooms were ready just before 1:00.

Both lunch and dinner

were had in the albergue’s modern dining room.

We renewed our acquaintance with the owner and his wife who remembered us from our visits in 2015 and 2017.

We’re both nursing mosquito bites which we received at our hotel in Arzúa last night. We didn’t sleep well last night as a result. We brought a high powered steroid salve from our doc in Greenville that helps the itching. We’ve used it with some success earlier in Camino 2019 and hope it will help us sleep better tonight.

Walked today: 4.0 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 390 miles

When we awoke this morning there was no rain, but all the weather forecasts and weather maps showed it was raining, or would be in 18 minutes. So we put on our rain gear and departed for Arzúa, a mere 4 miles away.

When we realized we were going to arrive in Santiago a week early, we tried to change our airline tickets accordingly. But we only had two openings, one on the Sept 27, which was too early and the other was Oct 2, sooner than our original ticket by 5 days, so we rebooked it.

We preferred to have two days in Santiago after finishing Camino 2019, a day for the train trip from Santiago to Madrid and two days in Madrid before boarding our flight back home. The two day buffers were in case there were unforeseen delays in getting to Santiago and/or Madrid. With our new schedule, we still had four extra days to burn, so we decided to burn two of them on the Camino and two in Santiago, since Madrid hotels were running about twice the cost of Santiago.

Our method of burning two days on the Camino was to have several very short days leading up to Santiago. Today was one of them at 4 miles and the other two will be 3 and 3.2 miles respectively. In addition to making our final few days physically easier, this will also let us experience three new properties and two new villages on our way to completing Camino 2019.

Getting back to today’s walk, it was threatening rain the entire way with slight drizzles but nothing to justify serious rain gear. Linda was first to take off her poncho, but Jim hung on for a little longer feeling that if we both took off our gear we would lose it’s deterrent effect.

The path took us through alternating corn fields, holstein pastures, open unplanted fields and eucalyptus forests, not necessarily in that order.

We did pass through the 16th century village, Ribadiso da Baixo, where we stopped for breakfast and a credential stamp.

In order to validate our pilgrim credential to qualify for a compostela, we must have at least two stamps per day during the final 100 km into Santiago. Our second stamp today will be at our Arzúa hotel.

The final mile was along the road or on city sidewalks into Arzúa.

We arrived at Pencion Domus Gallery in Arzúa at 10:15 and were able to check-in shortly thereafter. As soon as we sat down in the pencion lobby, waiting for our room, it began to rain seriously… boy, did we dodge a bullet this morning.

Arzúa (pop. 6,238) was previously known as Villanova, as it is called in the Codex Calixtinus. Ample evidence exists of both pre-Roman and Roman settlement nearby. When the area was reconquered, Arzúa was repopulated with Basque people. It was the principle stopping point for medieval pilgrims before Santiago.

Arzúa today is known for its cheese, made from cow’s milk from the municipalities of the Ulloa, raw or pasteurized. It is also known as Ulloa cheese, Ulla, “Paleta cheese” or other more generic names as “Galician cheese” or “cheese of the country “.

The cheese is creamy, rich and smooth. Its crust is thin waxy of yellow and elastic texture, while the paste is white or yellow, very soft and buttery. The flavor is mild, somewhat acidic, varying from a slightly bitter to a slightly sour taste, depending on whether its development has been in winter or summer.

We’ve eaten Arzúa cheeses several times during our walk through Galícia and like its smooth creamy texture and taste.  

For lunch/dinner we walked to a small hotel/restaurant on a plaza a block from our hotel. It was a delicious combination of pizza, roasted padrón peppers and ensalad Rusa.

Afterwards we retired to our room for the day for naps, reading and blogging.

Walked today: 5.8 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 386.0 miles

Since Melide is a major stop on the Camino, lots of pilgrims stayed there last night. We purposely got a later start (7:30) and stopped for breakfast in town, to help the crowd get ahead of us. Surely, our delay helped some, but not enough.

Walking out of town, we passed Iglesia de Santa María de Melide, a 13th century church and considered a national monument. It was locked but it was still impressive from the outside.

Later in the walk we passed a house with a very small hórreo, that we assumed was ornamental, but upon closer inspection had a small door for each of two separate compartments, carta (mail) and pan (fresh bread delivery).

Most of today’s walk was through forests of predominantly eucalyptus trees that are harvested for wood products, a major contributor to the area economy.

We encountered a group of 16 pilgrim men of different ages all dressed in similar outfits. Jim chatted with three different guys as they passed us along the way and discovered they were from Germany, near Kaiserslautern. They all worked for Zimmermann, a roofing company. Herr Zimmermann was also apparently walking with the group. Their outfits were sharp looking and we got a closer look as a number of them stopped at the same bar for a break. Each of the guys had a special pocket on their pants leg that was holding their carpenter “wooden, folding rule”.

After climbing a couple of steep hills, and one gradual hill at the end, we arrived at Cafe/Bar/Albergue Tourista “Santiago”, in Castañeda.

It’s an interesting little place. We stayed here in 2015 and had lunch here in 2017 and decided to give it one more go in 2019.

On the upper level, it has one

habitacion con baño privado, one room with either 3 or 4 sets of bunk beds with a shared bathroom. The shared bathroom also has a washer and dryer for use by all guests.

Below us is the cafe/bar/restaurant which in right on the Camino so that every pilgrim on the Camino Frances had to walk by us in easy view from our bathroom window or the outside sitting area.

We had dinner in the restaurant below. We had a first course of cold cuts and cheese and main course of grilled chicken breast and fries. Yum.

Tummies full, we headed back to our room, read and blogged until falling asleep… a little after 8!!

Walked today: 4.4 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 380.2 miles

When the taxi took us back to O Coto, our finish point from yesterday, it was still dark, so out came the headlamps.

The first village we walked through was Leboreiro, a busy pilgrim stopover during the 11-13th centuries. It was still dark and we almost ran into a small version of a hórreo, typical of Galícia. If we haven’t already mentioned, hórroes are for storing grain and corn safely from unwanted critters and weather.

Next to the unlighted hórreo was the somewhat lighted Iglesia de Santa María de Leboreiro.

Legend has it that a statue of the virgin was found at a nearby fountain and the locals moved it to this church. But the virgin kept going back to the fountain until the locals added a more fitting artwork (tympanum) above the church door and officially dedicated the church to the virgin. Then she decided to stay put in the church.

Still in the dark we crossed over a medieval bridge in the hamlet of Disicabo.

The path came away from the medieval hamlets and we walked along the back of a large shopping center, then back into some forests as it got lighter between dawn and sunrise.

We had planned to stop for breakfast at the medieval village of Furelos (pop.135)

but we kept on walking because at 8:35 in the morning all their bars/restaurants were closed with no signs of life, inspite of the hoards of pilgrims surely coming up behind us.

We walked on past A Lúa do Camiño a few hundred yards and had breakfast at the take-out pizza place. We then walked back to our room, gathered Linda’s backpack and checked out at 9:25, beating the 10:00 checkout time, then walked another half mile to Carlos 96, our hotel for today and tonight.

So why would our next hotel be so close to our last hotel? If you remember, we had a logistics problem in that yesterday would have been a 12 mile day which for us is a no-no and there were no places for us to stay to ‘naturally’ break it up. Also, both locations that were available either today or yesterday in Melide did not have both nights available. So we took a 12 plus mile day and made it an 8 and a 4, and used two hotels in the same town and 2 taxi rides to make it all happen.

Fortunately, we’re now booked all the way to Santiago with each day less than 6.5 miles.

Melide (pop.7,824) and the surrounding area was well settled in prehistoric times. The town became a transportation and commerce hub in the Middle Ages.  Iglesia de San Roque features 14th-century tombs with local coats of arms, and the stone cross outside depicts the crucifixion.

Today Melide is well known for its Pulpo á la Gallega, boiled octopus served with olive oil, paprika, a hunk of bread and a ceramic bowl of cold, refreshing Ribeiro wine.

The Camino provided our first exposure to octopus in 2017. Since then, we have sampled it in a variety of places both on the Camino and elsewhere, and we think Melide’s version is the best, and more specifically, Pulperia el Garancha. This was the source of our takeout dinner last night. Garancha also has the best roasted Padrón Pimentos we have ever tasted.

Today, for simplicity, we had a mid- afternoon lunch/dinner in the Hotel Carlos96 dining room.

Linda had homemade chicken noodle soup and Jim has a Galícian version of macaroni and cheese. Second course was curry chicken and rice for Linda and roasted turkey with Padrón peppers for Jim. Dessert was rice pudding for Linda and ice cream for Jim. A local (no label) wine was included.

We coasted the rest of the day, mainly in our room, relaxing and realizing that seven more days and Camino 2019 will be history.

Walked today: 8.5 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 375.8 miles

It was dark enough for a headlamp when we left Lestedo this morning. A few minutes later we looked behind us and saw a pretty sunrise in the making.

As it got a little lighter, we saw this fellow who wanted to go with us to Santiago to get a Compostela, too.

But we told him that they don’t give Compostelas to dogs, which he seemed to accept, reluctantly.

We walked on through forests and along small roads until we reached Palas de Rei, (pop 3743), an apparent nest for pilgrims.

We stopped for breakfast after being refused at one restaurant who decided they were no longer offering breakfast at 8:25. We were served at the second restaurant and chatted with a guy in a kilt from Cambridge, England. We later saw him as he passed us and the pilgrim glut on the way out of Palas de Rei, one of our least favorite Camino towns.

We ignored the herd through several small villages and gradually through attrition or rate of walking, we regained some breathing room until we stopped at the bar/restaurant of Campanilla for lunch. It was packed mostly with resting pilgrims, occupying the outdoor tables and chatting with one another, but not buying anything and the others were lined up for the restroom. The restroom line was about 15 pilgrims long and increased and decreased as we watched. We entered the empty restaurant and were happily greeted by the owner when we ordered salads for lunch. We then found a seat and enjoyed a nice lunch as the crowd gradually diminished as the pilgrims disappeared, as we later discovered, into a huge tour bus waiting a few hundred yards up the path.

While we were eating lunch, we chatted briefly with two young ladies from Spain who had started the Camino in Sarria a few days ago with their three dogs. We jokingly asked them if their dogs were pilgrims and they laughed and said, “si”. We also asked if the dogs were going for Compostelas and they jokingly, we thought, said “si”.

We finished lunch, and walked another half mile to a small grocery store in O Coto and called a taxi to take us to our hotel in Melide.

During the 4 mile ride to Melide, we mentioned the compostelas for dogs and the driver, laughing, but seriously said that dogs can receive a compostela for walking the Camino! Sorry, pup, we didn’t mean to mislead you.

Our hotel “pencion” is incredible. It doesn’t have food, but mostly everything else, including a pool, which Jim sampled this afternoon. Our room is huge and the bathroom shower was so complicated we had to get the receptionist to give us a short course on how to operate it.

We did our chores and Jim walked into town to replenish our euro stash. Linda stayed behind to nurse a blister she aggravated during today’s walk. Jim returned with “takeout” pizza, pimentos, pulpo and a (3.60€) bottle of wine for dinner.

We ate our dinner in the dining room and chatted briefly with s couple from Melbourne, Australia. They also sampled our pulpo and pimentos.

We retired to our room for the evening after the longer than normal walk.

Walked today: 7.7 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 367.3 miles

On our ride this morning from Casa Nova to Castromaior, we observed another mass of pilgrim humanity pouring out of Portamarin onto the Camino. Most were coming from the town and not the Camino leading into town, meaning that our starting point will give us a six mile lead and a less crowded Camino today… we’ll see.

We continued walking from our finishing point from yesterday and Jim’s initial preoccupation was the fog. As we walked up the steep hill approaching the “castro”, miraculously the moon appeared through the clowds, the fog quickly lifted and to our left was the castro, finally. It was a sight to see. Jim dropped his backpack climbed up and down three mounds that encircled the settlement that lie in the center of the remains of this 2300 year old Celtic and later, Roman, fortification. From the top of the highest and most interior mound he was able to see the view he had missed in 2015 and 2017 (the tiny white dot slightly above center at the start and end of the video is Linda):

A closer look at the settlement layout, building sizes and placement suggested this was primarily a place for safety above anything else.

Jim triumphantly, but carefully eased down from the castro mounds, retrieved his backpack and we were once again on our way.

The rest of our walk was rather uneventful. We walked on paths along small farm roads and secondary roads through several small villages with one or two albergues, but nothing significant.

We made two stops, one for breakfast and one for OJ.

We had chats with pilgrims from England, Vancouver, BC, Venice, Italy

Our final stop was for for the afternoon and night, Hosteria Calixtiño in the hamlet of Lestedo.

We had a full lunch which featured another Mencía wine and Arzúa cheese/quince jam then snacked for supper. We read, relaxed in the afternoon and blogged and read in the evening before calling it a day.