Another full day of walking, beginning at 8:30am and arriving 2:30pm, for Eliah, Ezrie and me. Carmel began an hour earlier and we met her just after lunch. She walks slowly, doesn’t complain, and enjoys meeting people along the way. The distance was another 20 km or so, and some ups / downs though not as many as the previous two days. The sun was out in full force but we walked in partial shade and were blessed by a cool breeze throughout the day and into the afternoon. Clearly, the number of pilgrims has increased substantially the closer we get to Santiago.

We were surprised to arrive sooner than expected due to various conversations and misdirections from fellow pilgrims. Being that we aren’t traveling with an official book, actually no book on the Camino whatsoever, there are many willing and wanting to help as they reference their handy guides. The problem, in part as it would seem, is that many of the books don’t agree as the route has changed from time to time, I’m told. So while we thought we were walking another 5km, in reality we were surprised and blessed to learn that our daily walk had ended abruptly. Our joy was offset by the fact that our girls had been walking ahead of us and hadn’t realized the mistake and so had to be retrieved. Thankfully, the host understood our dilemma and happily took Carmel in the car in search of them. Turns out they were 1 km down the road and had decided to stop and wait for us.

A wonderful place with art and very well designed. I later learned from a lengthy conversation in Spanish with our host, that the place had been the former parsonage for the priest up to a decade ago but then had been abandoned for many years falling into great disarray. In 2012 it was renovated to its current state and quite nicely, Carmel would attest. The front of the house faced the local village road while the back terrace faced a rather large yard where we later threw the frisbee for added stretching and exercise. (what were we thinking?)