Let’s start with dinner last night which was great. Great company, two Spanish cyclists (on electric bikes!!!), but I’ve racked up even more brownie points, two Italians, one young, just graduated in sustainable management (?), the other probably our age from Bari, but frail and a little lonely and a gentle french chap who’d walked from Le Puy Vezalay, some 1,260km already. He started out with his wife but after a few hundred km she had leg problems and quit – she’s meeting him in Sarria in 10 days or so. Great food, home cooking. Great rooms BUT a bed bug (tada – 🥁). It suddenly appeared after I’d changed for bed. Cute little guy, wandering around on the sheet.

It was impossible to tell from whence it had come. It might have already been present in the room, and was simply waiting for company before appearing with a ‘hi – I’m your friendly bed bug’ welcome message. Alternatively, it’s possible that we’d brought it with us, either from the really dodgy, smelly hostal that we taxied away from or from the hotel room we had in León. In any case I gently ushered it out of the window and we set to looking for companions. We found none, but interestingly that didn’t seem to dampen our expectations of being eaten alive before breakfast. Neither of us slept well.

Breakfast was good and we said nothing. The cyclists showed me their bikes, 23kg without bags! They had covered 92km the previous day and were intending to cover 90km today with a view to reaching Santiago by Thursday. They were really nice guys, a paediatric dentist and an economics journalist, both recently retired so I kept my comments very restrained. Yet more brownie points – I’m now comfortably in brown owl territory.

Shortly after the French chap left, Dorothy and I scarpered, not sure if we’d left behind a small cohort of bed bugs or whether they’d hoisted sail in our backpacks.

Shortly after we started out, we followed a small water filled ditch which was alive with the sounds of small frogs, one of which we were lucky enough to catch sight of yesterday. It proved impossible to photograph any of them so this internet image is the best I can do.

Today’s route took us finally and unequivocally away from the meseta and into the (very) early foothills of the Galician mountains.

There’s genuine joy to be heading into the mountains and away from the flat, interminable, monocultured fields of grains. On our previous crossing I’d enjoyed the meseta, but this time with all the environmental problems we’re facing, the meseta is too convenient a metaphor and it’s time to leave it behind.

We passed a pretty little donativo …

And later stopped at a much larger donativo provided by the guy in the hammock. We stopped for a small piece of cake plus a huge nectarine while all around us people chatted and took fruit and drinks.

There were storks in the villages we passed through.

There was still the occasional field of rye

But the fields were very much smaller and took advantage of much smaller available plots of land.

There were stands of red pine trees, but I’ve no idea why these may have been chosen, perhaps quick growing, perhaps suitable for the terrain. They appear to be a tree indigenous to the Americas but then eucalyptus is ubiquitous in Galicia.

It seemed that we’d been walking for very little time before we arrived at the cross overlooking Astorga. Apparently it’s a popular landmark to the local residents who stroll up the hill to sit and face back down on Astorga.

On the way down one meets this friendly chap

before finally descending onto the Astorga plain which provides an imposing view of the cathedral, next to which is the episcopal palace designed by Antoni Gaudí.

Prior to arriving at our chosen hotel, the Hotel via de la plata, we headed first to a laundrette to enact our bed bug elimination ritual. We emptied our rucksacks completely before subjecting both to a minute inspection. We removed all non clothed objects to a separate container which were then subjected to the same close inspection while our clothes were boiled before being tumble dried as hot as possible. We assumed that the lady who watched our antics without comment had seen such behaviour many times before as bed bugs are all too common on Caminos. With everything except the clothes we stood in cleansed we headed to the hotel where we stripped, showered and subjected our clothes to the same minute inspection. No bugs. Hopefully that’s it.

The last marker we came across as we entered Astorga suggested that we only have a mere 272.4 km left to go.

Like this chap,

we shall shoulder our packs and continue our long trek to Santiago.

Buen camino