Day 32 - Portomarin to Palas de Rei - 26km

I was part of a busy Pilgrim March out of town when I set off as there were now more and more people on the Camino as we drew near to Santiago. The path started by crossing the river and then there was a long steep climb up through some woods. The day was overcast and misty, and very close as if there were a storm coming. It was two hours to the first cafe where I stopped for a much-needed break. In the cafe I saw loads of familiar faces including the German chap Marcel whom I´d left behind long ago nursing his poorly feet in the albergue on doctor´s orders. It was great to see he had actually recovered enough to continue his Camino. He said his feet were fine now after buying new footwear, and he must have been going fairly well to have caught me up.

Amongst the familiar faces was Wilma, a Canadian, and her daughter. Wilma had suffered a nasty accident some time previously and cut a tendon in her hand, which had involved a hospital stay, but she was still soldiering on, cast and all. With them was another Canadian, a nurse who worked with the Inuit. The fascinating thing about the Camino is that you meet people from all over the world, all ages and from the most varied backgrounds and occupations. My German friend was also there and we had a coffee together before I set off again.

The route followed the road for most of the day and there were rather a lot of ascents and descents. By now I could cope with these fairly well as my legs felt pretty strong and I marched up and down the hills with scarcely a pause. Maybe I should have paused more, although I didn´t know it I was about to start having problems. I passed the Danish lady with the knee supports from the previous day and also saw Sandi when I stopped for a bikkie break, but Kari was behind somewhere and never caught me up. The day continued muggy as well as misty until early afternoon and by the time I reached Palas de Rei I was pretty tired.

After the crowded albergue and stale air from the previous night I decided I deserved a break. For the first and only time I treated myself to a room with private bath in a hostal. This was unimagined luxury, a room with no-one else in it, my own bathroom, sheets, towels and endless hot water! After a quick snack for lunch I had a wonderful long shower then washed virtually all the clothes I had with me except those I was wearing. When I finished my lovely bathroom looked like a Chinese laundry.

I had a nice long snooze, reorganized my rucksack as I finally had enough space to spread everything out, then went out to dinner. I had originally planned to have a hamburger for a change but saw a place which had a nice-sounding pilgrim menu so I went there instead. The meal was the worst I had the entire trip. The famous Galician soup which I finally decided to try was like a watery and tasteless cabbage soup (I´m sure it´s really good elsewhere) while the casseroled lamb was very dry and accompanied by cold greasy chips. I left most of it but couldn´t face the hassle of complaining, what little I did eat sat uneasily for the rest of the night.

I went back to my room and had a pleasant quiet time doing sudoku in bed before a peaceful night - no snoring, no wind breakers, no creaking bunk beds. In fact it was so quiet I kept waking up. I probably missed all the noise and the cosy confinement of my sleeping bag.