O Pedrouza

Sunday 26th June 2022 Day 36

Up at 5am and out the door at 530. I got a coffee from a machine in the way through Arzua so that was a result! Then headlamp on and into the dark! We have seen a lot of dry stone walls in Galicia so it was interesting to find somewhere where they are building a new one and see how they do it.A bit different to the Cotswolds but the theory is the same!

It was Sunday morning so not much open, foggy again and lovely and quiet for the first few hours with no other pilgrims.

Eventually we came to a lovely open cafe! Coffee and Kitkat to keep us going!

It was a shorter day today. Yesterday ended up being over 30km which was too much. We passed by a closed bar that was doing an amazing trade in Estella Peregrino bottles, it seemed if you bought one you could write your name on it snd then stick it in a nail on some wood. There must have been thousands of them!

Then at about 9am we came to a cafe, I could smell the pain au chocolate from outside so we went in to have another coffee snd delicious cake. Suddenly a voice shouted out ‘guys!’ And out of the upstairs Alburgue came Sam. Hugs all round, we were so pleased to see him. Geoffrey joined us and then his Dutch friend Joop. It was wonderful to catch up with them and say a final goodbye, they have a crazy plan to get to Santiago today then hire a car and drive to Portugal.

More walking, by now Robin had picked up an injury, probably a shin splint so we walked a little slower and came into O Pedrouza, which is a small town 20km from Santiago and seems to be one street with lots of Alburgue’s and not much else. We sat outside a cafe and had a beer waiting for somewhere to open for lunch!

The Alburgue didn’t look that appealing it seemed to be a block that had been split into multiple hostels, our was on the top floor. But in fact it was lovely and we had our own roof terrace which looked over greenery. Bit better than our mountain view from the day before!

There are more people around including even more children! We saw Ines who has now been joined by her husband.He did the North route and they met yesterday in Arzua where the French and North routes meet up. We also met Jurgen again, having a glass of wine and blaming his leg for not going further today!

We finished the day sat in a lovely place, overlooking the hills, watching the rain and rainbow and planning our last day tomorrow into Santiago!!