26/06/22 Sunday
Another early, cold 0530 8°C start. It was another misty morning.

We had to walk all the way through Arzua, which is a ribbon town. Luckily there was little traffic. We managed to find a vending machine to serve Ruth a cafe con leche. That quietened her down. Then it was a schlep across town and into the cold, clammy gloom.

We bumped into this along the way. We had seen bits of wall with bits of string suspended about a metre above ground, some tight, some sloppy. We thought they might be due to potential wall repairs. We know there is EU funding (remember that) for this work. But here is some obvious repair work, concrete base plus some metal cages for forming the wall. It won't be dry stone walling, as in the UK, but it will be robust and consistent.

Here's a picture of Ruth, looking at he photo critically. The mist is still there in the background.
IInteresting bar, using Pelegrina beer bottles as decoration. Looks interesting but I haven't found the beer in the wild yet.

It looks like the weather is getting better

After about 12k walking, we were found an Albergue open. The staff were outside drinking coffee, so we must have been the first customers. We grabbed coffee and pain su chocolat and sat down. A few minutes later, Sam walked in with his pack! They had stayed there overnight. Out came Geoffrey and Joop, one of Sam's friends from the Netherlands. We hadn't seen Sam since León so we caught up about the journey. Maybe we'd see them in Santiago. They were aiming to push through, which was a 30+k day and not for us.


Up the road we walked through different school groups, all strung out, some moving fast, some not so.
We were also watching a car rally of small cars with air-cooled engines, I think, as a few had the backs open, presumably to improve cooling. I haven't looked up the car model yet.

We noticed that the bus stops were in the design of grain stores
By now my left lower leg was hurting. I don't think it was shin splints. It was more like something stabilising my ankle. One day to go and I'm almost limping. We still have a few kilometres to go and walk through O Pedrosa, another ribbon town. You drop off the path to walk into town. It is full of places to stay, restaurants and bars. Our place is the far end of town, past this chicken

We're early, so sit outside the bar. And we spot the Three Wise Monkeys.

The place has a restaurant with Menu del Día, so we try that.

Here we bump into Joseph, a French guy we've seen over the last few weeks. He's been walking for about 3 months from somewhere near Paris. His English was better than our French!
We also bumped into Marianne again. She wasn't sure if she was walking on or would stay in O Pedrosa.

Outside we bump into Inez and also her husband who had walked the Camino El Norte, Another probably tougher route. They were staying over the road from us.
During the afternoon it was ibuprofen for me and I fell asleep. I usually use siesta time to update my blog, so the routine was interrupted.
About 1700 we went out to search for the way back onto the Camino. It was not obvious. As walked across town we spotted Jurgen with a glass of wine and pizza. As usual, he was in two minds as to moving on or staying the night.
We found a place to get fruit smoothies, which were great and probably the only fruit I'd eaten for days.

We went back to the room, having discovered the toute was next to that chicken. Later that evening - late is relative, more like 19.30 we walked back to the smoothie bar, passing Jurgen in another bar with another wine.
We grabbed some drinks and admired the view.

We could see the rain clouds on the hills opposite. You may also see the rainbow. Then it started seriously raining for an hour or so. Luckily the bar staff kept us topped up with tapas and beer and wine, so all the major food groups were covered. When the raí stopped, back to the room and bed.
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