Day 41 – A Rúa to Santiago de Compostela

Wow – what a day of walking! I won’t say the best but definitely one of the most memorable. The walk itself is not one of great scenery or of fascinating little villages – it’s one of the great days on the Camino for one reason only, you arrive in Santiago and your Camino is finished!

The forecast yesterday was for terrible weather today and this morning it was worse. Nevertheless, our host, Manuel, drive as back to A Rúa just before 9am and we set straight off in remarkably light rain. 1km and our shoes were still dry, then 2km, then 3km – maybe it’s not going to be as bad as we thought!

3.5km – that’s the precise distance my shoes were sodden and from there it didn’t really matter what the weather did! Our ponchos (we bought new ones in Melide) are good and I had both an anorak and a backpack cover underneath, so the only thing that was going to get wet were my shoes and they were soaked.

From there the heavens really opened up and the Camino turned into a river at times and a pond at others. Alison and I usually pick our way through the wet paths, using firmer ground on the sides a lot to try to keep our shoes and socks dry but today there was no point – in fact often the ground below the faster moving water was firmer because the mud had been washed away! At one point we were both walking with shoes completely submerged!

We stopped for a break at the incorrectly named 12km bar and, miraculously, the sky cleared and we were able to walk the rest of the day in cool but clear conditions. We had a second break just past Villamaior, where Alison changed shirts and socks, and a further one for lunch when the skies threatened 2km from the cathedral – and delivered a massive downpour!

Amazingly, the sun was shining for our arrival – we really dodged a bullet with the weather today. During the night I started thinking we were a bit unlucky that the weather turned really bad on our last day but really we were lucky it happened on our last day and not up in the mountains or on one of the muddy sections through Rioja or the meseta.

21kms today for a nice even 755km in total. Our certificate of distance says 1515km from Le-Puy which I think is fair – I think that might be the end of the extreme distance walks!

There are two videos today because my watch turned itself off while we were having lunch and you can see them here and here.