24/06/22 Friday
We left at 0530. It was dark and cold ish.

The white building in the middle is our Albergue. We had to walk down into the valley and then had a long haul up the other side. It was very quiet and we didn't see anyone for about 2 hours, which was great.

As we were walking out of town, we saw this set of stone steps set into a wall, to allow people to climb up to the small field above the embankment.

When the street lamps stopped, out came the torch, allowing us to spot this little guy - our first amphibian of the trip, although we've heard loads.

I think this was the only sunrise picture I took. It was very much a poncho, poncho off sort of day.
This is very much a real farming area, lots of cows, a few sheep and huge animal feed lots,many abandoned.

Today was a day for walking through large school parties, out walking to Santiago. There were the usual groups of school kids, uncoordinated geek, cool kids together, sets of girls, back markers, all stretched out over about a kilometre. Somewhere there was a couple of child wranglers 'managing' them.

I think we were this guy's first customers. Was he happy to see us? No! So it was 2 coffees, KitKat and tortilla (very small!). The only sign of emotion was a grin because I counted out the right change.
A big contrast to the next place we stopped for coffee. The lady laughed at my attempt to count out change. I was down to coppers. She took the lot with a laugh and said 'no problem'.
Definitely not Basil Fawlty trained. Because of the breaks we were passing into and out of the school kid crocodile. They thought it was funny and we got 'Buen Camino' said in all sorts of ways and sincerity.
We finally saw some wagon wheels attached to a real restored wagon. There was also some interesting wooden sculpture.
Ruth remembered some of this walk today.

We wandered through lots of tiny farming villages. The farms looked well looked after. They had kept their old small tractors, as well as giant new ones. There was well maintained property. and also delapidated stuff, much of it for sale. Sadly there were also bars, Albergues and shops for sale, mostly Covid-19 victims, I'm sure.

We also found the most enormous slice of tortilla de patatas. And It tasted great.
Nice place, good food, fresh orange juice and giant ant sculptures!
We went into this church because it was open. Many are closed. We chatted to the volunteer looking after the place. He was Spanish but had lived in the States and South Africa for a long time. He said it was difficult to keep the churches open on the Camino as there weren't enough priests or volunteers to look after them. Anyway, the church was a simple local church but beautiful in its own way. The man obviously loved the place and thought it important enough to keep open. The third picture is a sculpture I saw in a private garden. Like many houses around here, a lot of the decorations are based on Camino de Santiago images, like scallop shells.

These two guys have been with us since O Cobreiro. They are Italian stereotypes being very loud and expressive. We call them 'Loud and Louder' because they are. The smaller one at the front is Louder. We always let them pass us by. We slow down until they have disappeared or the volume has gone down. Apart from that, they are ok and we always wave at each other when we meet up.

We got to Palas de Reí early and visited the bar next door to our hostal.
We discovered another set of Three Wise Monkeys. But we had to review our criteria. We decided we should not discriminate against women being Wise Monkeys. This was mainly because the woman in the middle was drinking red wine ad and holding her own with the other two monkeys.

This was our room at the hostal. A bit twee but very nice. The reception person was so happy that we paid cash!

Nice Camino emblem in the cobbles.
We went down through the town to a pulpería. That's a restaurant specialising in octopus. As your average octopus is smarter than your average dog, I've decided not to eat them. I had squid instead, which was delicious. Ruth had a plate of charcuterie and cheese but also like the squid. And we've discovered where all the missing pint jugs have ended up.
I have to own up that I've done no research on the relative intelligence of squid versus octopus, so I could be being species-ist.
Ruth wanted to visit a church that she remembered from her previous visit.
The stained glass was really good. Unfortunately the photos don't do them justice.

We tried to get a drink in the bar next to our hostal. No luck, too busy and disorganised. Over the road was a nice quiet bar, where the barman kept us fed with pinchos with every drink.
And we spotted another Three Wise Monkeys. Ruth managed to take a stealth picture of them.

So that's two sets in one evening, in different bars.
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