Our bunk room was long and narrow with 16 beds… and we had two extremely noisy young Dutchmen who had broadcasted their tv shows, music and FaceTime yesterday to the whole room… I did kindly asked them to turn the volume down… but true to form they left very noisily early this morning.

We left the albergue at 7:10am, followed by a ghostly, unknown pair of pilgrim poles clickety-clacking through the empty streets of Grandas de Salime…they seemed to echo even louder on the walls in the obscurity.

It was a very difficult start this morning because both of us had bad nights of sleep and I was therefore exhausted climbing up the hill. Our breakfast of wild brambles helped a little.

We found a do-it-yourself Nespresso machine in a rest place, where you had to buy the pods from a vending machine.

This lifted us immediately and I was striding up the hill no bother after that.

There were beautiful expansive views up to the wind farms. It was extremely windy all day and it felt incredible to be surrounded by so much power… power from the coffee, from the wind turbines, from the wind itself, and from the sun. Such pure and powerful energy.

There were many moments of laughter, especially when Luca and Georgio would come up behind us and pass by with police sirens on their phones…what jokesters.

We crossed over the border between Asturias and Galicia and took a photo to send to our families and to our good friend Duncan Chisholm.

It was a quite striking that across the border into Galicia, there are far more birch and rowan trees, as well as the appearance of thistles and more gorse.

We were surrounded by butterflies… it was almost like being in Edinburgh’s Butterfly World. They awakened and soared as soon as we passed.

Then it was down hill all the way to a wonderful café, where we met with our Italians and many other familiar faces…the Polish couple who have been camping all the way, Claudia the young single Polish girl, more Italians and the English/Australian couple. There is definitely a genuine feeling of joy and camaraderie when these now familiar faces appeared.

We had our first homemade empanada with tuna and seafood… washed down with beer, OJ and coffee.

Thankfully it was again mostly downhill to A Fonsegrada

But there was a surprise final uphill into A Fonsegrada itself… not mentioned in the guidebook and it was an absolute killer…

I could not have been more grateful for Hamish the mule train!!!

We were rewarded with an amazing municipal albergue…so much space and almost a separate room. For only €10!

We went out immediately to find food, and the albergue lady told us there were only two options open in town. At the first one, we were lucky to get a table, as it was full and buzzing. They were kind and created a brand new space outside for us. (We saw the Aussie/English couple inside, who told us that the food was delicious.)

The pilgrim menu at Pulperia Caldeira was indeed utterly wonderful and we had Spaghetti Bolognese, Calda Gallega (Galician veg soup), Padrón peppers, Galician pulpo (here I broke my renunciation of eating octopus ever since watching the wonderful film “My Octopus Teacher), steak and chips, as well as desserts and a whole bottle of delicious Galician vino tinto.

Having an early dinner really works for us, as we can wind down, do our washing and get ourselves sorted and packed again for the next day, before the pilgrim bedtime of 9pm.

In this particular case, I was so excited to be in bed at 6:30pm, fully intending to write my blog, but so tired that I passed out!

Total Distance - 28.37k

Total height gain - 829m

Total height loss - 443m