When we left our lovely albergue this morning in the dark, we picked up some more nuts and a pastry at the wee shop across road… mainly because it was just opening when we left. Then we found a cafe a few metres down the road. Here we met Rob from the Netherlands and Irene from Alicante. They warned us of an accommodation squeeze in the upcoming villages.

We decided to try and book our accommodation for tonight as there is definitely a noticeable influx of newcomers and general panic was beginning to set in because everyone was saying that all the albergues were full.

Lugo is the Primitivo equivalent of Sarria for the Francès, in that it marks the last hundred kilometres before Santiago. Many people do just this final 100k, as you are eligible for a Compostela.

Having said that, there are also just more people appearing who, like us, have also come from Oviedo.

We left at 8am after coffee, breakfast and attempted hostel booking for Ferreira. We tried every hostel on the list before finding an available bed for tonight in the last one. This one was a “donativo” (donation) rustic setting in someone’s home, therefore came with a high element of risk.

Intriguingly, the host mentioned instruments and a recording studio, but his profile pic on his WhatsApp (his only method of booking) looked like Radagast the Brown, the wizard from Lord of the Rings.

Today I had sore knees from the outset…and general low energy, which made it slow going for the whole day.

Thankfully Hamish gave me lots of tows on his mule train, for which I was most grateful.

On the outskirts of Lugo we bumped into the Americans Don, Chris and Jen before stopping at a church where we met a lovely couple from Edinburgh.

Hamish noticed that they both had short gaiters, designed to prevent stones entering the heel of the boot, an affliction that has been increasingly bothering him.

So shortly afterwards, Hamish fashioned two mini gaiters of his own with our neck gaiters tied up around his ankle with cable ties.

Ingenious, successful, and quite the fashion statement! Everyone stopped and had a good old laugh.

Today is the worst day for rain so far. We had to wear our waterproofs all day, as it basically drizzled the whole time.

Stopped at a truck stop garden (basically a burger van and gazebo) for beer and chorizo, fried egg and fried potatoes for our daily dose of fried comfort food.

Don, Chris, Jen, Nele, Bron and Adam were all enjoying the moment.

Met lots of Irish folk along the way…turns out they were travelling together in a group of around 20, starting at Lugo. They were not carrrying rucksacks and were being picked up and taken to hotels each night, so they were much fresher and faster than us, but we did manage a few nice chats before each couple eventually propelled ahead. They were a really fun group of folk.

Our apprehension about our strange wizard host at the end of the day, was quite unfounded.

Pitar turned out to be a very sweet man. He was of slender build, with shaggy long beard and long greying hair… wearing loose fitting linen clothing akin to temple clothes. It was hard to put an age on him… he was somewhere between 35 and 60yrs old…very introspective and gently spoken, with many pauses. He was slow and deliberate with both actions and words.

He delighted in playing erhu for us… he taught himself all the instruments in his studio. There was a lot of his leather crafting work around, but he didn’t tout it to us.

He told us that he was from Benidorm and had left some 12 years ago, but has never been back home. He became a busker in Santiago for 9 years and was semi homeless… he lived in the back of a van for those years… then fell in love with the village of Ferreira when he was on a pilgrimage and has never left.

His kitchen table was covered in boxes of beautiful vegetables and fruits…large courgettes and the most beautiful looking blackish tomatoes. On the table were also a lot of leather making tools, including a slab of granite that could have come straight from Scotland… he used this for providing a hard backing for his leather press printing.

Eventually we made it upstairs to the dorm room…which was essentially just the landing at the top of the stairs before his own bedroom.

There we found Nele, the German girl, attending to her legs and feet (taping them with kinesiology tape).

There were 4 camp beds, one a double, configured in a way that you could only describe as a simple jigsaw puzzle. Very basic, only one plug socket in the room with an extension lead that ran the length of the room to a simple phone/wifi placed precariously against the window with a note not to move it.

The landing/bedroom had a low ceiling, with a single dull light, and beautiful thick bare stone walls.

I noticed that when Pitar wanted to switch a light on or off, he would either unplug it at the wall plug or unscrew the bulb itself.

While we were getting settled, he offered us all a cup of tea, which we gratefully accepted. They arrived in beautiful little cups and the tea was a lovely flower infusion.

With Nele we headed for an early dinner just 50m away, to the next pensiòn which had a restaurant. By now the rain had evaporated and it was gloriously sunny, so we sat outside in the garden and ordered the menu del dia.

Nele is a physiotherapist from near Hamburg. We had a lovely hour of chatting, to be joined later by her Camino pals Felix and Mark from Hamburg and Munich, quite the characters!

When we returned from dinner, Pitar played us his own recorded music in his bedroom/studio. It was nicely recorded and he had a local female singer on board. Hamish was impressed by the care and attention in his mixing.

As we prepared for bed, we were treated to hearing an ongoing process of mixing and editing through his open bedroom/studio door.

We decided not to set an alarm for the morning.

Total distance 30.33k

Total ascent 712m

Total descent 627m

The Lugo albergue entrance, complete w piano!