Monday 29 August 2016

Camino walking day 5

After finishing the blog for day 4 I managed to take some additional photos.

View from our hotel window as the dropping sun hit on a row of buildings across the valley
As the weather promised to be warm, high 20s, we decided to get an early start and were up at 6am, dressed, feet taped and otherwise attended to and booted up for the day by 7 o'clock and dashed down only to find that the dining room was not yet open for breaskfast. Bother! We had a short wait before we were able to get in and tackled breakfast in short order.

We were on our way by 7:50am along with quite a few other pilgrims:





Most of the day's walking was through woodlands, small quiet villages and along streams although stream hardly described the small waterways we encountered.

As we were trundling out of Arzua we came to a stamping point that was operated by three nuns. We had not encountered many members of religious orders during our first four days of walking so this was quite novel.

Conditions early in the day were ideal for walking. It was still cool and much of the route protected us from the sun. We made good time.

The outline for the day had promised fairly level terrain. Well, it was sort of level except for the ups and downs. Supposedly there was only 50m elevation gain and 130m elevation loss for the day. Hah!!! Let's try 521m up and 627m down. This makes a huge difference to the walking ease.

We crisscrossed the N-547 a number of times. Crossing at road level was a bit of a game of picking the breaks in the traffic as cars and trucks flew along at breakneck speed. I much prefered cross underneath the road through an underpass. Unfortuntely they were not always available.

From time to time we came across water troughs. Sometimes the water looked fresh while in others it looked decidedly green. Yesterday we did come across a couple of young men making use of one such facility to wash their clothes.

The type of surface over which we walked continued to vary. Today we had

Cement

Rocfks set in cement


Dirt littered with fallen leaves with the odd protruding tree root
There were some lovely vistas when we were clear of the trees:







Small cafes continued to pepper the trail although a number had obviously closed as the main prilgramage season was over. At one of today's stop paella was an option and this was available from a huge pan. while the place was doing a good trade in paella it really was a little early in the day for lunch.





If you are looking for a place to buy and renovate Spain has many options. Here is todays selection of renovators delight:

This property had a for sale sign. Ivy and other greenary spilled out of the windows and doorways and completely coverered the roof 9which may or may not have still been attached)
One of the cafes we passed had taken advantage of a passing stream to offer patrons the opportunity to soak their feet while having a beer:

The chairs stradle a stream while the umbrella, complete with hanging beer bottles, provided shade
In 1985, when we were in argentina, we saw freeways that had been started and then terminated in mid air. Today we came across a variation on this theme. As we crossed the bridge (pictured below) we noticed that it was one of a series. In all we could see five other similar bridges. Below the bridges was a cutting that appeared to have been prepared for a freeway or other major road. Work on the super road had obviously stopped as weeds were now invading the road bed. A definite statement about the stte of the Spanish economy, I suspect.



Eucalyptus trees are very common in this part of Spain. Today we walked through a forest that could have been Aussie bush.


Tall gum trees and bracken ferns!

Jen and I made good time today and arrived at our destination shortly after lunchtime (our lunchtime ... not the locals!). we were able to get in to our room which was good. This allowed us to attend to our feet, do some washing, do this blog and have a rest.

Tomorrow is our last walking day.

Today we walked 19.13km with an alevation gain of 521m and loss of 627m.













2 comments:

  1. It definitely seems like the elevation numbers were off! What were you getting fed for breakfasts and dinners?

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  2. Breakfasts varied. Mostly there was bread of some sort with cheese and ham. Yogurt most places. Sometimes cereal, although only cornflakes or cocoa pops. Fruit. Most offered orange juice and then there was coffee. Some places also had pastries.

    Dinner was generally the Menu del Dia. First course generally had a soup, salad and another choice. Second course was something (fish, chicken, beef or pork) that generally came with chips. Then there was desert and/or coffee. Bread and a drink was included.

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