I’m not sure whether readers have gathered that the Spanish eat late: it’s a struggle to get breakfast before 8am, lunch before 1pm and dinner before 8pm, and in general the Spanish prefer to eat at least a couple of hours later than that. All the time we’ve been in Spain, though, we’ve been thinking at least some people must be up early – well, last night we found them: they drive through the main intersection in Negreira between 4am and 6am, right below our hotel room for the night!
Anyway, we set the alarm for 7am today and, after some initial confusion about whether we were setting off early to beat the sun or having a rest day, we hit the road just after 8am. On the way out of town we were rewarded with a great view over the town and valley just as the sun was rising (even the sun is up late in Spain!) A beautiful morning with a light fog and a great section through forest past Zas and A Peña, where we stopped for a coffee. After another hour, but more roads and less shade we arrived at Vilaserio, where we had a water before setting off again. The sun was really starting to get some bite into it as we shifted from mostly forest to mostly road and by the time we hit Santa Mariña just before 2pm it was 35c in the shade. This had been our target for the day – our accommodation for the night is off the Camino so we had to call them for a pick up anyway, so we had a couple of waters and a sandwich (ok – I had one beer as well!) and called it a day. Bit of a stuff up when we did arrive at our hotel, Casa Jurjo, where they had no reservation for us (glad they didn’t check before picking us up!) but they had rooms so no problem on the end. It is a bit disconcerting though to have that seed of doubt about whether you have a room for the night while walking during the day…
21kms today before the heat beat us and 865kms now in total. We will skip about 12kms tomorrow – the weather is supposed to cool down but apparently it’s all highway so no great loss! Back to the sea tomorrow if everything goes to plan!
steelewalking 