Day 26

Day 26 and we are holed up in a town called Sarria in Galicia. The last 6 days have been continuous walking, between 25 - 35km per day, including passing over the mountains between Villafranca in Castilla y Leon and O Cebrerio in Galicia.

{From here}

This was to be our hardest day but we were both surprised how easy it was {My apologies to David and Nora who had found it to be the most difficult stage, but bear in mind that we took we took a rest day in Astorga!}. The trail climbs from about 500m up to a height of 1,300m at the end of a 30km hike through a river valley, which sounds harder than it actually is. The scenery through the valley was amazing and the final push to the top wasn't too difficult, probably owing to our 3 years of hiking mountains in Korea.

The weather is definitely as lot colder and wetter in Galicia, more in tune with Ireland than Spain. Today is our final planned rest day before we hike the final 5 days to Santiago. We are both in good shape, Anna's blisters are getting better, there hasn't been a bed bug attack in a few days and I've thankfully not had any cramping of late. Both of us do have stomach bugs however, so the rest day is definitely well timed! Neither of us have any appetites which is a bit of a problem when we need to be taking on at least 3000 calories per day while walking! Last night we stayed in a fantastic albergue in a private house called Don Alvaro. Tonight we will probably stay in a private room however, to make sure we get a proper nights rest before tomorrow.

Yesterday's walk from Tricastella to Sarria was spectacular, starting off through a river valley and passing through abandoned hamlets perched on hillsides. Sarria itself is a bit of a one horse town, the only reason it is popular is because it is 117km from Santiago. In order to get your compostella, certificate of completion in Santiago, you have to have walked at least the final 100km. Thus the town is full of scout groups, church groups and other ne'er do wells. Full of first day enthusiasm they all woke up a 5am this morning, fumbling around in the dark, trying to pack their bags, while veterans like Anna and I looked on in dozy amusement!

Fingers crossed our bugs will be gone today, we'll have a big dinner and be on our way tomorrow, arriving in Santiago on the 14th.

Hasta luego

Day 16

We arrived in Leon this morning having spent a rather weird night in Sahagun. The town itself is extremely interesting, an old eclesiastical centre that has fallen on hard times and is now a necropolis of tumbling monastaries and convents. We visited one church in particular, named San Lorenzo, where they had a display showing the procession they hold every Easter week through the town.

(From here)

The local men dress up in black and purple robes and carry enormous wodden statues showing scenes from the life of Christ through the streets. They pride themselves on how life-like the statues are, ensuring that they are made to perfect scale.

(From here)

(From here)

Here are a couple of pictures of past parades.

(From here)

In the above photo note the crazed expressions on the statues in the background. That seemed to be par for the course; part KKK rally, part zombie freak show.

Unfortunately we arrived too late in the weirdo season for this year´s parade but the promo poster for 2009 looks great!

From here

Just to add to the atmosphere we spent the night at the Santa Cruz convent of the Benedictine nuns. The convent itself is in a beautiful 17th century building next to the crumbling San Tirso church.

(From here)

In order to stay at convents and monasteries along the route you must be walking or cycling to Santiago and you must be in possession of a document called a credencial. Thus you usually share accomodation with like minded people; religous zelets, rosy cheeked backpackers etcetera etcetera. So you can imagine our surprise when we returned to the convent from a trip to the store to find the dodgiest, meanest, scariest looking druggie you have ever seen greet us at the door.

Druggie: Welcome pilgrims!

Us: Gulp.

(File photo)

(From here)

As welcoming and hospitable as the nuns are, they aren´t getting any younger. In fact, the median age for the convent was 82 (including Anna and I). Thus one of them had granted admittance to this savory character who could not produce a credential, nor passport, nor ID of any form and as it turned out, couldn´t tell us where he had stayed the previous night or indeed where he was going. The only sense that we could make from his ramblings was that the church is evil and the Knights Templar protected a great secret. At first we thought he may have been a latter day prophet but then we realised he was just recounting the plot of The DaVinci Code.

Needless to say we all had a pleasant nights sleep, holding our valuables under our pillows and keeping one eye on the nutjob.

I´ll keep an eye on the Interpol webiste for the next couple of weeks.

Hasta luego.