😓

Today has probably been the hardest day that we’ve spent on the Camino – period.

This was starting out.

A short while later.

What you don’t get to see are the intermittent blizzards of snow, hail and sleet.

At times the snow was mostly a foot deep. The path was treacherous and steep with the snow hiding running rivers of water.

Tom spent most of yesterday bemoaning the lack of a hill. Today wasn’t a hill, today was a bloody mountain, today was actually lots of mountains, steep mountains with boulder strewn paths descending precipitously into rivers of water and mud.

There’s a famous iron cross at the top of the mountain. I had to wait a few minutes for the other peregrinos to get off the mound to take this image. You can’t tell because of the snow, but the cross is sitting on a huge mound of stones that peregrinos have deposited there as a symbol of shedding one of life’s cares. They’ve brought the stone from home and this is their chance to lighten their pack and symbolically their lives. Mum and I are perfectly happy and didn’t bring anything 😉.

We stopped relatively infrequently. We had a long way to go, a little under 34km as it turned out but a late breakfast of muesli followed by avocado on toast was very pleasant.

Shortly afterwards as the snow and hail beat down on us, we were forced to give up on the pilgrim’s track alongside the road and walk in the centre of the road itself. There was no traffic apart from the Koreans’ van hired from Hertz to transport their luggage from albergue to albergue and to provide emergency assistance if required, the local police who travelled slowly looking for peregrinos in distress and a solitary snow plough.

In this way we slowly made our way below the snow line.

We came into a lovely little mountain village but we didn’t stay in this little albergue.

After another couple of hours of technical descent we came into a lovely village for some lunch. We stayed long enough to devour two huge bocadillos followed by a glass of wine, a large piece of chocolate cake and a coffee each.

We left and headed on towards Ponferrada.

Ponferrada should have been a mere 16.2km further but Leslie Gilmour, the author of our electronic guide needs to be shot. His distances are bollocks. We walked and we walked and we walked and finally we arrived.

Just for completeness, we saw the ubiquitous stork’s nest, no church tower this time but just as useful, an electricity pylon.

It’s a shame that Tom didn’t get to experience the full joy of a proper hill but maybe one day he’ll come back and continue his first pilgrimage. In the meantime we’ve had our pilgrim meal, a shower, our clothes are being washed as I write and we’re going to try to get some sleep before tomorrow’s little jaunt.

One little story before I stop. I walked for a short while with a 62 year old Korean chap, one of a group of 30, remember the van? He volunteered why he was walking the Camino. Apparently his boss who was also his friend and someone he admired a great deal had suggested to him a couple of years ago that one day he should walk to Santiago de Compostela. Shortly afterwards his friend, a board level director at Samsung died. He is carrying his friend’s ashes with him on this final journey – the two are walking together. He will leave his friend in Santiago as a final act of friendship.

Buen Camino