Saturday, April 5, 2014

Day 25: to Portomarin

One side effect of comfy beds and quiet private rooms is that it's just so hard to get going, relative to smelly dorms and early morning flashlight-and-rustle shuffles...

Once up we walked the two hours into Sarria at a reasonable lick. It's quite a large town and notable for being the last place you can start and still receive credit for a 'full' pilgrimage (>100k). As such it's a little excessively pilgrim-themed... 

We followed a school trip's worth of teenagers out of town, overtook them and then spent the afternoon meandering lovely small Galician lanes. Could easily be rural Cornwall, or Wales. Here's what you need to be a Galician farmer: many falling-down moss-covered barns. One brand new building roofed in the proper style: massive rounded scale-like slates and a top ridge formed by interlocking slates with edges like dragons tails. Multiple small old tractors and one immaculately kept ancient and tiny car (eg Renault 4). A flourishing camellia. A traditional upright Galician grain store (see photo - designed to keep rats out and your annual crop of maize in). Some chestnut trees. A small number of beautiful cows, like overgrown Guernseys but with horns, and possibly also a couple of goats. A line of brassicas around the edge of every field, regardless of what's in it.

Amazingly, in 9 out of 10 hamlets there's no attempt to cash in on the **quarter of a million** hungry / thirsty pilgrims who walk through your farmyard each year.

(It's really noticeable today how many more people there are, both because we're getting near Santiago and because it's the weekend.)

Just before lunch we passed the 100km-to-go marker.  It's actually more like 105 (and good to know that Lubla still plans to see Martin soon...) - but either way we are getting close.

Portomarin, our destination for the day, is rather extraordinary - built in the 60s when they drowned the previous village for a hydro scheme. It's sort of a new version of a perfect Spanish town, if currently covered in Spanish teenagers. We headed for the quietest albergue we could find, which is full of Koreans instead - hopefully quieter than Spaniards and currently producing the most delicious smells in the kitchen!




1 comment:

  1. I'm exhausted just reading this :) but also slightly envious. At least you don't have to do the next 100k in 24 hrs but knowing you could must make it a little less daunting!!

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