Today was 16 miles, for a total of 399 miles walked. No, we couldn’t walk around the plaza for 1 mile to hit 400. Sorry. Here’s the data, and you can see it was a lot of climbing today.

16 miles with almost three thousand feet of climbing requires sufficient fuel. That is, fuel in the form of food. Our host last night and this morning was Gloria of Casa Gloria, where we stayed. Casa Gloria is also a bakery. To make sure that her guests were properly fueled, she provided trays pastries for each room to enjoy. Here’s a photo of Gloria next to the goodies she provides . each room is entitled to scarf all of the food on the Shelf with their room number labeled next to it. I did think about waking up early and “borrowing” other rooms food, but figured that wouldn’t make me a very good peregrino.

Today’s route followed a valley as it rose from near sea level to almost 1,500 feet over the course of about 10 miles, with multiple ups and downs.

Once at the end of this quiet valley, the trail climbs abruptly for almost seven hundred feet to bring you to the top of the ridge. Just before the top, Diane and I stopped for lunch in a wonderful pasture which was very, very quiet, almost serene.

At the end of our lunch we packed up our things and continued. Within 200 yards, we were at the top of the ridge and we learned that there was a freeway across the top. So much for this serene part.

One of the nice features about the trail in Galicia are the trail markers. Not only do they show you which direction travel, in the direction of the lines in Galacia (exactly opposite in the earlier regions!), but it also tells you how far until Santiago. This sign post tells us to go left, and lets us know that there are 147 kilometers left. That would almost be good news except that, when we get to 39 kilometers, we will go backwards on a different trail to meet Willow. That Camino will restart at 110 kilometres to go in Sarria.

Okay, now for a bit of foreign language trivia. Did you know that the French word and the Spanish word to tell the driver to stop their car is the same word? It is. And here is proof (or at least proof of the Spanish part of this proposition): 

As a quick additional note, you will see a small yellow arrow below the stop sign. That indicates to us peregrinos that we should continue straight, no stopping required to obey the law. Enough for now. Buen Camino.