Day Eight- A Brea to Villamaior, 16.5 km took 6 hours, a slower day with lots of steep descents and ascents, up to 200 metres up and down, on a nice hot day they kind of play you out! And we stopped twice for 30 minute breaks.
There were not a lot of people on the path today, most were either in front of us or behind us. We kept leap frogging the same six all day, and had a nice visit with a retired RCMP officer from Halifax. Small world as he had been stationed in Squamish for a while and was acquainted with an old RCMP friend of ours from Dawson Creek.
It was a different kind of a day with not many farms or villages, but a lot of time through the forests.
It was a long day and there were not a lot of “cutesy pictures”, but some that were of great interest to me cause of some of my past work. So today let’s talk about the life of a eucalyptus plantation.
Eucalyptus is one of the main economic drivers in Galacia. First introduced in the late 1800’s it really took off in the 1990s. Although eucalyptus is used in both medicines and perfumes, it is primarily used in the pulp and paper industry here. Eucalyptus covers about 400,000 hectares and makes up 28% of the forest in Galacia. It was kind of an educational walk for me as I was able to look at all aspects of the plantation, start to finish.
New plantation
Mature stand
Machine faller working
Strip logged after being felled
Processing to take the branches off and cut to optimum length
All processed waiting for the trucks.
Now isn’t that just a scintillating bit of information! Pretty much the same process at home unless it is really steep ground.
Onward again tomorrow, it will be our last day - just 9 to 10kms.
Day Nine- Villamaior to Santiago de Compostela took 2 hours as we were hustling along! It was mostly downhill into the city, and our first day of misty light rain on our walk in, plus a nice breeze. Oh well, as this is supposed to be rainy season, we lucked out pretty well. Couple of cutesy things along the walk.
A Nativity just hanging out on a tree!
Roadside worship place
Whew, we made it! Still a couple of kilometres to the Cathedral and our hotel, but feels so good to have made it here. I wondered a lot about whether my wonky old knees would see this through, so I had a little conversation with them every morning. “You are really doing good, you should both be really proud”! Perked them right up for a couple of hours.
Loreen and Keenan don’t seem to complain much, well Keenan keeps says she is getting tired of having to shout at us cause she thinks we are both deaf! I don’t know what she is talking about!
The Cathedral entrance were we went to mass
From a different side, what a building.
We all received our certificate of accomplishment for meeting the requirements of hiking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela:
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