15 miles today,  bringing the total to 508 miles. All are doing well. We have about 25 miles to go to Santiago.

More when we have better internet.

First, the numbers. Today was approximately 16 miles, bringing the total to 493 miles walked.   Tomorrow we cross over the 500-mile mark, which I suspect has some significance but it doesn’t change how many more miles we have to walk. Put simply, it is what it is, so put a Band-Aid on that blister and get back out there walking!.

The Camino Frances is a beautiful trail, through many shallow valleys and rolling hills. Interestingly, though only 40 or 50 miles away from the Camino Del Norte, it is a much drier trail. It is amazing how the climate changes so much in so short a distance.

With hundreds of beautiful shots available I instead chose to focus on this. Frankly, it was really cool! This mushroom was about 8 inches in diameter and an entirely flat top surface. And for those of you who remember all of our flower pictures from 2 years ago, I promise I will not have any more mushroom pictures after this.

So, we are not alone. During a typical day on the Del Norte, we might encounter 5 – 20 fellow peregrinos. Because the final section of the Camino Frances from Sarria on is the shortest distance that you can walk and still get a credential, many many peregrinos join the trail at this point. In fact we estimate that in about 2 minutes we see more peregrinos on this Trail then we seen the course of a full day on the Del Norte. It is still a beautiful Trail, and the people are still wonderful and doing their own Camino, it’s just more popular. We have been informed by many others, including Willow, that before Sarria the trail was wide open with far fewer peregrinos.

Enough for now, the standard chores await.

14 miles today, bringing the total to 477 miles walked. The internet is very poor today and we are unable to upload photos.

Today was the first day ofor our journey with Willow, and we started out with a bang. 14 miles and 1450′ of climbing is a tough way to start our reacquaintance. She was a trooper and walked well through the whole journey!

All was well until the final half-mile when she looked right and the trail decided to take a dip … and so did Willow.  While scratched up,  she quickly dusted off and was back in the road in no time.  No permanent harm, no foul!

If internet permits tomorrow, I will try to post the photos from today. Take care.

Today was 14 miles bringing the total to 463 miles walked over all. With the opportunity to join up with Willow today, Diane and I walked quickly from our stopping place yesterday, Sobrado to Arzua, in order to catch the first bus back to Sarria. We pushed it! We have never walked that distance with packs on at a pace of under 20 minutes like this. We will make it a point not to do this too often.

The walk starting today just outside of the monastery at Sobrado dos Monxes.  We quickly passed through forest, pasture land, and farms. Cute alert! Diane couldn’t let me pass up a photo of these two guys. Clearly one is shy and doesn’t want to face the camera.

We reached Arzua, and the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare. Two bus rides later, we were in the streets of Sarria, looking for our hotel. Without much difficulty, we found it but noticed that my sister hadn’t yet arrived.

Bill mustered a search party and in short order found her on the trail working her way up towards the hotel. A great reunion was had!

Willow came bearing gifts, of which we were most appreciative. One of the gifts was replacement tips for hiking poles. We used the tips when we are on road surfaces, but use the pole spikes when we are on dirt surfaces. About 75% of our 450 plus miles of hiking was on road surfaces. The picture below gives an idea of what the roads will do to these tips. Thank you Willow, so much for bringing these and many other wonderful gifts to us.

Enough for now, we are going to enjoy Sarria as a family.

Today was 17 miles walked, bringing the total to 449 miles overall.

So let’s start this discussion with fuel. A peregrino needs fuel to walk 15, 18, or 20 miles a day. This place we’re staying at does a wonderful job of cooking. Here is a photo of Diane’s first course, a salad.

What followed thereafter was just one great course after another. Properly satiated, we went to bed to gather a few hours of sleep before starting today’s walk.

Now, after about 30 days of walking, Bill no longer feels fresh as a daisy. As a matter of fact, he feels a little sluggish. Here is a selfie Bill took of himself trying to keep up with Diane. Off in the distance, you can see Diane.

We can tell that we are getting closer to the Camino Frances. We passed a sign which indicated that we were only about 10 miles away from one of the towns on the Camino Frances, Melide.  For those non metric speaking people, 16 kilometers in 10 miles. It is remarkable to be that close. Although, of course, tomorrow we will be walking 13 miles and we’ll finally intersect the Camino Frances in Arzua.

The countryside around here continues to be beautiful, with views of 40 and 50 miles possible in some directions. We also are starting to see some different geology, is this photo shows quite a bit of granite in the Hills. Well, maybe not. There really was quite a bit of granite but the photo may not show that.

Well, we must do our chores as tomorrow night will be meeting Willow and it may be more challenging to get our chores done in a timely fashion. A small cost to reunite with Willow!

Enough for now, Bill and Diane.

Today was 20 miles, bringing the total to 432 miles walked. It was a long walk but the weather was cooler making it much easier to do the distance. In fact, it is clear that Fall has fallen. The cold weather gear we’ve been carrying for 4 plus weeks is now coming in handy. The temperature this morning what’s under 50 degrees. When it starts getting to the low 40’s, then all of cold-weather gear comes out!

As a follow-up to our comment about French speaking people, here is a photo of Jean-Pierre and Danielle, along with Diane. They are from the north east of France and  great people to get to know. We are glad we have met them.

An interesting thing we’ve noted about Galicia is their use of slate in construction. The photo, below, shows the use of slate as roofing tiles. This seems to be the most common type of roofing material here in Galicia. Apparently it is less expensive than wire or wood, as we have seen many, many fences made of slate.  And it wouldn’t be a proper post without once again showing off the beauty that is Galicia. 

 Today is one of the more unusual stays for our journey. We are staying at a hotel which is not on the Camino. It is actually several miles off the Camino, but they have the virtue of being willing to pick you up wherever you decide to finish your days walk. As there are no other hotels for the next 40 or 50 miles, that makes this hotel the hands-down winner!

Tomorrow, they will take us to exactly where we stopped this afternoon and we will walk again for another 18 plus miles. When we stop, we will call this hotel and they will pick her up once again. Then, on Wednesday morning, they will drop it off at that same location and we will walk into Arzua. That is as far as we will go on this Camino. We will then go backwards on the Camino Frances to Sarria to meet Willow and finish the journey to Santiago with her. We are looking forward to that.

As we arrived here after 5 p.m., we are behind on our chores. I will need to get those going and then go search out a dinner.

13 miles completed day for a total of 412 miles walked.

Last night it rained and it got cold. We woke up this morning to fog, cold, and wet streets. None the less, it was beautiful. It reminded us that we are in Galicia.

When you have all of that rain, it is natural that you will have many streams and rivers. We crossed several streams today.

And: 

So back to the comment about speaking French. We are now about 400 miles from the French border on a Camino that is not well traveled by foreigners. Interesting, however, the majority of peregrinos we meet are French. By a wide margin. The next most populous group are Spaniards. Then a few of the other European countries, and it has been several days since we’ve heard a native English-speaking person. That’s okay as this is just an observation. Everyone we meet seems to have a very welcoming attitude and energetic spirit. We are enjoying the conversations we have with each and every one of them.

We hope all is well with each of you. God bless.

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.

Today was 17 miles walked, bringing the total to 383 miles. The most significant feature about today was not the distance but the climb. We have entered the mountains of Galicia and had about 2400 feet of climbing.

Because of the difficulties with Diane foot, we started to walk early. We were outside of the city of Ribadeo looking backwards towards the water and towards the province of astorga and saw this:  It made for a magical morning.

Almost immediately, we started climbing. And it’s surprising how little the climbing bothers us when the views are as follows. 

The mix of forested hills and rolling pasture land set the theme for the day.

We learned a few valuable things about managing Diane’s foot. We have modified how we tie Diane’s shoe and have put padding in various places to accommodate her problem. We have also learned that uphill is not a problem for the foot, only downhill. Therefore we only let Diane walk uphill. Seriously, we just walked very slowly downhill and regular pace uphill.

Tomorrow will be much the same, what significant climbing and about 15 or 16 miles. We are doing our chores now in preparation of tomorrow. We hope all is well with you tube you back home.

14 miles completed, bringing the total of 366 miles walked. Today was the very last day that we will walk along the coast. It was also the last day that we wouldn’t be in Astoria as we have now entered in the state of Galicia. This picture is the last of the coastal waters and the last of Astoria.

While I’ve done this once before, here’s a map of Spain with the red dot indicating where we started in Irun, Spain and the blue dot indicating where we are now. It is pretty dramatic!

Diane has been having some significant problems with her foot. The issue is her bunion, and the pictures we have of it don’t look good. I will spare the readers from seeing it.

As a result of this injury, we have been working very hard to minimize our walking. There were three choices possible today: the coastal route, the central route, and they rarely chosen route which drops below the river estuary. The  third route was used by pilgrims who feared crossing the river at its widest near the town of Ribadeo. We managed to catch the split between the coastal route and the central route. That saved us about 3 or 4 miles.

About 4 miles after that split Bill noticed that the way they were walking was heading quite a bit south and not consistent with the town which should be West and North. Turning on his phone’s GPS, he confirmed that things were not good.

Fortunately, using Google Maps and the phone GPS, and about 20 minutes of cross country walking, we were able to re-find the correct Camino. We only added about one additional mile to our walk. What might have been eight to 10 additional miles was avoided!

Finally, we made Ribadeo  and Galicia.

From here, we walk south and a little bit west for the next 80 to 100 miles, where we should encounter Willow somewhere along the Way.