Still trucking along

Day Six - Melide to Aruza, 14.3kms,  took almost 5 hours, it was an up-a-hill, down-a-hill kind of day. We descended from 457 metres to 387 metres, but had lots of 100 metre or more ascent and descents in between.

We decided to miss the rush today, and placed our luggage in the lobby for pick up at 8 am. The daily routine is that the luggage has to be in the lobby by 8, even though some mornings it is still sitting there at 10! We had a nice leisurely breakfast and hit the trail at the crack of 10. This worked out well; all the big groups were already gone. 

I guess we walk at an average to slightly faster-than-average speed, so we don’t really get passed by a lot of other folks. But then we will hear a ruckus behind us and here come the teens! There are lots of school groups on the Camino and they are loud and fun and mostly very respectful of us. They are also predictable, stopping at the first coffee/pop stand to have a break, while their teachers are pointing at the watches!

Today we saw some other large groups of folks that hopped off a bus, walked one leg, then got picked back up by the bus. That group wa even older than me so I could catch and pass them. I always can blame the girls for making me go fast, as I am usually bringing up the rear.

Trailing behind again!

The hotels and overnight places have been great so far, so that is a bonus. We have mostly decided to slow down, I mean the Camino isn’t going to disappear on us, so why rush and do 12kms in 3 or 4  hours when we probably can’t check in anyway. So we catch up with the friends we’ve met at least once a day. We stop for coffee or beverages - something at least once and just enjoy the day.

Maybe this guy had been on the road for awhile!

Something a person really doesn’t think about too often are the various smells that one runs into during a day on the Camino. These are just some random smells from the last few days:

The smell of the forest on a misty morning, fresh cut hay, a dairy barn, dust from the gravel trail, a silage pit, eucalyptus leaves, a lemon tree, chicken pens, ladies making lunch, a magnolia tree, a manure spreader, a laurel tree. Even more, but you get the idea. Look I have a lot on my mind!

This lemon tree was fenced, I guess to stop us pilgrims from helping ourselves to the lemons.

Day Seven - Aruza to A Brea 13.3kms, 5 hours, mostly flat with a few little ups and downs, descended from 387 metres to 376 metres, so not overly strenuous. Stopped to smell the flowers quite a lot!

Almost there, 25kms and 2 days to go, my feet are pretty good, only three blisters, had to perform a little surgery on one this morning. An open and drain job, otherwise I might not have got my boot on, well maybe not quite that bad! 

Still lots of cutesy scenery and villages, but let’s talk food today.

Some interesting things about food in this part of Spain: they do not like anything spicy, or much seasoning of any kind. There is usually olive oil, vinegar and salt set out on the table, but no pepper. Lots of times when you ask for pepper they only have paprika. 

Most of the restaurants have a “Pilgrims Meal” which is a set menu for €15 and consists of a first course, (one of salad, soup, or other appetizer) the second course (usually a meat or fish with potato fries), and a desert of choice (local cake or an ice cream bar). Oh, and water or a glass of wine. The wine here is very good, we just get the house wine and it’s always great. Sometimes they just bring the bottle and one glass might turn into a couple!

There is a really good soup with the pilgrim meal called caldo. A very simple soup made with white beans, potatoes and chopped kale or some other green, doesn’t sound great but it is tasty. 

We have been alternating between just ordering the pilgrims meal or ordering dishes to share. 

We could order off this menu, or this one

Here are a couple of share meals we have had:

Prawns, Galician pie, seared Padron peppers, anchovies on cheese

Or this one!

Bread, Padron peppers, mixed salad, Spanish omelette, and octopus (a regional specialty)

We think that it is pretty much farm-to-table here as the country is full of gardens, beef and dairy cattle, sheep and chickens, although we have not seen many menus with lamb or mutton, which we think are mainly raised for cheese. Here are a couple of pictures of food availability:

Farmers Market 

     

Cheese and meat shop

Cheese Sampler

 Steak with the grill master!

And paella

So all in all pretty varied and certainly fills us up!

On the Path Again

Day Three- Portomarin to Ventas de Naron, 12.6kms,  more of a laid back day, took almost 5 hours, steady climb from 388 metres  to 705 metres.

We took a little longer today, stopped more for breaks at little restaurants along the trail and stopped a couple of times to visit other folks that we meet at least once per day. A nice couple from Belgium. 

Beer time!

We are staying at the smallest village we ever stayed at! It has a population of 20, two or three little hotels or hostels and two restaurants/bars. Sounds like two, maybe three families own all of the village including the farms. So we thought, if we get up and hustle, we will be there by noon and then spend the rest of the day looking out the window at the dairy cows! 

I am so glad that I joined the girls on this trip. So far it has been a pleasant and wonderful hike. The girls do get out in front of me at times, but I always manage to catch up.

Come on Dad, you can do it!

The day started climbing up through forest and when it finally flattened out we were back into farmland. Mostly forage land, seems like it is all grass with very little sign of any legumes. They are already laying down the first cut, so probably even ahead of the Fraser Valley.

Nice looking hay.

Walking through a village.

We took one side trip, to an archaeological site of an ancient settlement of five hectares (one of the most important archeological sites in northwestern Spain). The site consists of enclosures that includes pits, walls, moats and parapets. The site was occupied by at least three different groups, the last being the start of the Roman occupation of Galacia, so it is very old.

That’s me, standing in wonderment at the smallness of these different enclosures.

Well that’s it for today. Onward again in the morning, we even get to sleep in an extra thirty minutes.

Day Four- Ventas de Naron to Palas de Rei, 12kms, 4 hours, drop today from 704 metres to 550 metres.

The place we stayed was wonderful, hotel, hostel and restaurant ran by a mother and her two daughters. There were also husband’s around, but I am pretty sure the ladies ran the place.

Our goal is doing one kilometre every 15 minutes, but Keenan felt energized this morning  and had us on a ten minute kilometre for a bit. We manage to meet some of the same people on the trail every day and have a bit of a visit and Keenan does make new friends so we turned our 12kms into a four hour walk to day. 

The day consisted of trees, farms and a few small villages. Nothing was open for the total of the 12kms, but we did manage to see some new sites. 

This area has a lot of eucalyptus plantations.

And of course more farms

and one more

I have seen hydro trucks blocking main access roads while fixing a power outage problem, but this is the first time to see a self loading logging truck taking up most of the road while loading logs roadside. Not sure how the school bus would get past! 

Made it to Palas de Rei, here at 1PM, but can’t check in until 3PM so just kind of wandered around. Finally the hotel manager got in touch and opened the door for us. This all done remotely, no one was at the hotel. Lovely big hotel, lots of rooms, but not another person there, neither staff or other guests. See what happens tomorrow for breakfast.

Day Five- Palas de Rei to Melide 15kms, 5.25 hours, drop today from 550metres to maybe 457metres. 

It started out as a pick’em up and set’em down day. We hit the road at 9:15 and when we got to the main trail there was a group of about 30 students hiking down the other side of the street, very noisy as teenagers are. Well there was no way the girls where going to stay behind them so off we go to get in front, success but then there is another group on the sidewalk in front of us. Down on the street and away we go again, Loreen had us in overdrive. Beat our 15 minute per kilometre by 12 minutes for the first 4kms. 

Country side is still beautiful, lots of farms, churches, villages and animals. I could continue to fill up the blog with more pictures of cute animals and villages etc, but I think I will do a switch and talk a little bit about the Camino de Santiago. We did lots of up a hill and the down a hill only to go right up the next one.

The Camino de Santiago is an ancient pilgrim path also known as The Way of Saint James. There is a network of pilgrim paths from France, Spain and Portugal that pilgrims, hikers and others take to get to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where St.James is buried. St. James brought his ministry to this part of Spain to preach to the patrons. It seems he was not that successful and when he returned to Jerusalem he was beheaded by Herod. His disciples brought his body back to this area and buried him at Santiago.

There are many different pilgrim paths from different origins to get to Santiago, the one we are on is called the French Way, as it starts in France and is 800kms long. We are doing the last 115kms over 9 days. Lots of people are walking 25 to 30kms per day, but there are lots like us that are taking it slower.

Pilgrims have been coming to Santiago de Compostela for centuries as a spiritual purpose. This pilgrim journey was declared as one of the three great pilgrimages of the Christian world in 1492 by Pope Alexander VI. 

It was declared a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe in 1987 and parts of the different path made UNESCO Heritage sites in 1993, 1998 and 2015. 

Today there are around 200,000 pilgrims/hikers that make the journey to Santiago de Compostela by the different paths annually. The paths, at least the one we are on are well marked with concrete markers that have a replica of a shell, an arrow pointing the way and the mileage left to get to Santiago on it.

One can register to receive an official Compostela certificate at the end of your pilgrimage/journey. You are expected to have a spiritual or self filling purpose to embark on one of the paths. This pilgrim journey has been on Loreen’s bucket list for a long time and Keenan joined to support her. I came along because I didn’t want to be home alone! 

You have to walk at least 100kms or bike 200kms. You are issued a Pilgrims Passport at your starting point and you must obtain a minimum of two passport stamps per day of your walk. Stamps are available at churches, places you stay overnight, most restaurants and coffee shops along the route. Churches like a donation but there is not always a donation box nor an attendant. So far I think we are averaging 3 stamps per day.

Well that’s enough on the Way of St James. 

Walking the Camino

We arrived in Spain after an overnight flight to Madrid through London. We over nighted in Madrid and caught the fast train to Sarria. We went through a lot of farm land, both agriculture and tree farms. You see the country side really fast, as the train got up to 294km/hr for a lot of the trip. Trying to determine whether the tree farms were olives or eucalyptus was tricky, trees looked like driving past someone’s picket fence.

For some reason, I am always a little surprised by the large fields we see in Europe. You kind of just think of large farms in North America and countries like the Ukraine, but there are some pretty large looking farms elsewhere too. I guess, I am still a farm boy at heart, because I love looking at the farm land and the country side when I travel, cities are nice, and the architecture can be amazing, but for me the country side and the little villages are the best.

We went through one mountain range, and although the grass was green and the trees were all budding out, there was still snow up high. We passed a lot of solar farms and a couple of wind farms, with many more off in the distance. 

We started the 115km walk on the Camino Frances from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela (in the northwest region of Spain called “emerald green” Galicia) on Tuesday morning.

Day One on the Camino- Sarria to Morgade. 12.5kms, 3 hours, 654m of ascent.

Just like walking to school, uphill both ways in the snow! Oh right, we only went one way and it was 20 degrees Celsius. 

Starting out, leaving Sarria.

It was a pleasant day, nice weather, and we met some nice people to visit with. Although we passed through a couple of small villages, there was only one place where we could have stopped for bevvies and a bite, but it was full already. This early in the season, there are a variety of pilgrims, including solo walkers, couples, a family with a baby, and the obligatory groups of high school field trippers, and a Chinese tour group. I think it is probably half sightseers like us, and half dedicated pilgrims, which is maybe why we only found one wine and beer shop until we got to the little village we were to stop for the day. Alas, it was still closed for the season, so we had to turn around and trek back up the trail for half a kilometre to get a vino! 

We walked through a lot of farm land, seeing dairy and beef cattle, hogs and chicken, and a couple of sheep. Mostly walking on dirt or gravel pathways, but sometimes along the side of the paved road. 

My kind of scenery!

This is a refurbished storage bin. 

These were used long ago to store foods such as grain, corn and potatoes. The air helped dry and preserve while the height helped keep it safe from animals.

The villages were all small, some only a couple of homes, and others anywhere from a population of 116 to 187.

Going through an old village.

Day two- Morgade to Portomarin. 10.2kms, 3 hours, from the highest point of 660 metres descended down to 388 metres.

Today was much the same as yesterday, strolling through more farm land and small villages. Most of the villages are actually just a few stone buildings around a dairy or beef farm on the edge of the trail. The cows are much better trained than any I have ever worked around, in some places the fence is simply some plastic string along the field edge, or no fence, just a long step down!

No fence here.

The scenery is beautiful and walking is very peaceful, with little shops and cafes along the way where you can always take a break.