Tag Archives: Camino

Camino Day 20: Portomarin to Palas de Rei

Whilst the valley town of Portomarin was nice..its inevitable that to come out of the valley we must ascend…and so we did. ..again and again.

Today’s 25 km hike was full of surprise ascends and descends. …could there be anymore steep hills to climb Lord?? Faiza asked …and the answer was always..YES!

It was as usual a glorious day to be out for a stroll..as the days get shorter we start our days later. ..about 8.30 today and it wasn’t as foggy as previous days despite the forecast.

Although the walk was ok..it wasnt particularly scenic and thus felt like 100 kms not 25, so Steve and I sang and danced our way through the last few kms. At one stage it was just like going through the motions..left foot..right foot..left foot…just to get to where we wanted.

It was disappointing that the 1st two Alburgues we came across were booked out…so another km later we found a few more and we managed to get a private room at Alburgue San Marcos.

A very nice, clean Albergue right next to the church (where we later lit candles).
We worked up a mean thirst so, whilst the clothes were being washed, we went to a local bar for Baby Calamari, Russian salad and beer!

Our feet are quite sore so not too much sight seeing this afternoon. …rest then dinner then sleep…with foot massages where we can fit them ahhhhh!

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Camino Day 19: Sarria to Portomarin

With both of us having a cold and the noises from last night neither of us slept very well. We therefore started our day at 9.15.

I think most people did the same thing as some days you feel like you’re alone on the Camino and other days….like today is like Pitt St.

We walked in very heavy fog most of the morning. The fog didnt really lift till after 1pm. Despite this it was a pleasant 23km walk wich still had some ascents (to 300m ) and steep descents…but we just take that into our stride now.

Our final destination today is Portomarin, a nice town in the valley by the river (which is not very full).
In keeping with the essence ofthe Camino we decided to stay in an Alburgue (O’Mirador) today and of course, working up an appetite from all this walking we had to have more of the local cuisine…pulpo as a snack before dinner.

We are so excited that we are down to double digits to Santiago. only 90 kms to go woohooo!

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Walking with the locals..

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Meeting some of the locals

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Camino Day 18: Tricastela to Sarria via Samos

A day of rest today to safeguard our feet as we must walk the next 100km to gain our Compostela.

We took a taxi at 10am following breakfast to Samos where we were thinking of staying. The largest and oldest monastery in Spain is in Samos and we were hoping to stay and experience a sleepover and perhaps dinner with the monks. The Alburgue in the Monastery did not open till 1pm and we soon learnt that it was just beds…no dinner…no kitchen…no monks..so we decided to share a cab with another 2 Peregrinos Grace and Jenny from USA to Sarria.

We stayed in a pensione Casa Matias which we booked by phone when we were in Samos. This was an interesting activity as the person on the other side of the phone spoke no English and we spoke muy poco (very little) Spanish…but Faiza managed to book the room.

Sarria is not a very pretty place as we discovered on our walk around the city. We met a woman during our walk who spoke to us about the Albergue her and her husband are building, she even took us on a tour of the building they are renovating and spoke of her plans of the Albergue. Marcela and her husband had done the Camino 7 times..fell in love with the Camino so decided to leave everything in Madrid and renovate a very run down old house into an Albergue. This has been a common theme we’ve heard along the Camino. …and has given us a few ideas!!
Marcela expects the new Alburgue to be ready in a month so if any Perigreno is interested in booking in there…it sounds like it would be a great place that caters well for the Perigrenos.
“La Casona de Sarria”
www.lacasonadesarria.es

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