We left at 6:50am.

It was damp and dark this morning, so walking in dense forest was tricky, as the battery to our head torch is flat. It died some days ago and we don’t have the charging cable for it.

We had to keep our wits about us, as it was easy to miss the yellow waymarker arrows in the darkness. There were some lovely and surprising turns, left and right, and many an utterance of oohs, ohs, and ahs.

After around 12k, there was a lovely little taverna at Portadavello, where we had hot tortilla and torta Santiago, (delicious local cake) with coffee and OJ amongst all our pilgrim friends sitting in the sun.

It turned out that there was a nice story of the couple who ran this place. They had already divorced. But after one of them had walked the Camino Primitivo, and fallen in love with it, they found this place, and proposed to the other to buy the place and run it together purely as a business venture.

They have managed to do this successfully, by simply cooking only two things: tortilla and Santiago torta, along with coffee and cold drinks.

It was a perfectly appointed spot and beautifully presented. And very much appreciated.

We also made a new friend there, called Xavi from near Barcelona. We walked with him for the next hour or so and enjoyed his company. It was his first ever Camino despite living close by.

He had studied construction management at Heriot Watt University for a year, so knew many places in Edinburgh.

Lovely route today, up and down through forests and on hillsides with beautiful expansive views. There was also much use of the Hamish mule train today.

We passed a church that didn’t look in particularly good shape, so we were surprised to see that there were lights on and that there was a Sunday service happening. Most of the small churches we have passed have been closed.

This got us talking about community and gathering regularly. It is so important to meet people and stay connected for updates and discussions on local news issues, weather, sports etc especially in smaller communities.

We also reminisced on our overnight stay in a Buddhist temple retreat in Korea during our honeymoon and how fun it might be to do a week’s dedicated temple retreat sometime. It would be so good to delve deeper into the Sunmodo martial arts training too.

Our arrival in to Càdavo was wet and this hostel was very basic.

We stayed in the back room of 12 bunks, surrounded by our Italian friends. Poor Sara needed to borrow some warmer clothes from me because she only had a sleeping bag liner, since she had lost her actual sleeping bag back in Campiello.

Only two restaurants were serving food and both were absolutely mobbed. Clearly the locals in town all came out to eat their Sunday lunch menu del dia! The food in the first place looked amazing and they were still bringing delicious looking plates of food out, but the kitchen was closing.

So we went to the other one which was also buzzing and full. Their kitchen was also closing, but they said we could eat bar food in the bar area. There was nowhere to sit but luckily a man vacated his table and we gratefully sat.

When an elderly couple came in, we offered them to join us at our table. Before long we realised they had 5 more friends joining them, so we decided it would be better if they all had our table and we moved to take two bar stools up at the bar. They were most grateful.

Our food took a long time to order and even longer to arrive, so we ordered another glass of red and another beer. Imagine our surprise when the bar lady said that these drinks were an invitation from the elderly people sitting at the table.

I was so touched that they wanted to buy us a drink for merely shifting our seats, and it was very moving to see these seven friends all smiling at us as they sat around the tiny table all sharing platters of meat and cheese and having a lovely time. I actually shed a few tears at this point.

Total distance 27.75k

Total ascent 895m

Total descent 1130m