Our walk today was a goodly length at 25 km with 570 m of ascent.
People can get their Credencial at Santiago by walking the last 100 km. This means that there are many more people on the Way than we’re used to.
It’s good to see so many Spanish folk of all ages enjoying their cultural heritage. Walking slowly behind a group or having a crowd of eager young people pushing behind is not so much fun.
From near our highest point we could look back over the hills which we’ve traversed. The very furthest range is probably the highest point of the Camino Francés and thus beyond Ponferrada where we re-started this year.
I was impressed with these eucalyptus trees. In my Nigerian childhood we had such a tall eucalyptus in our garden. At the age of about 12 my mother taught me how to measure the height of such a tree with the sine of the angle to the top from the ground. and the distance from the base.
This got me thinking about Heather who was a remarkable woman and mother though of course I didn’t appreciate this in my childhood. From a working class background she went to university at Reading to read maths and physics. This was quite something in the 1950s when there were regrettably few women studying such subjects.
It was good to spend time thinking about Heather and the life she led.
The final walk into Palas de Rei was splendid leaving us at the town hall. There may well have been a king’s palace here at one time but no more.
We were taken by taxi to our evening accommodation which is a delightful rural hotel. Our evening meal has been most enjoyable washed down with a bottle of albariño from Galicia.
Julian and Beryl's camino 