Pontedeume to Betanzos- June 3

 I’ll cut to the quick. It’s 10.15 on Saturday evening, I’ve walked 15 miles today, a lot of which was uphill, and I’m tired. So it’s a short update.


A beautiful day with a typical misty Galician morning. 








More Peregrinos out walking. Met the 4 Italian women for the the 3rd day out of 4. They are to be known here onwards as the Venezia Violets. We also met a couple of German ladies a few times. Once they recovered from the shock from me speaking in German to them, we established that they were from Darmstadt. A town whose football team have just been promoted back to the Bundesliga……so tomorrow we’ll move up a gear to negotiate a ticket deal for a match next season. For those who don’t know, Darmstadt is a relatively faceless town just south of an even more faceless city; Frankfurt.

At one point the Camino waymarkers took us a mile and a half up what we thought was the wrong side of a river (it certainly differed from what our book showed). But the Camino knows best, and an hour later we seemed to be back on the expected course to Betanzos.






The highlight of the day was a magnificent “donativo” rest stop at the top of a long uphill slog. Donativo means donation. The rest area had tables and chairs etc all under gazebo’s, and a range of drinks and snacks laid out in cool boxes on a table, all paid for on an honesty box basis. Being well and truly beyond moist having scaled the incline, this place was the ultimate oasis. We sat and idled there for nearly an hour. Can you imagine something like this in UK? Almost incomprehensible isn’t it?







We finally got to Betanzos at around 3pm. It’s typically Galician, and very charming. So much so, we spent the early part of the evening sitting in a lovely church watching a video about it, and the town’s history. Far more interesting than the boring FA cup final!










I’ve thought a lot about things today, but I’m too tired to share them now. The one thing I would say is that this “Camino lifestyle” removes a lot of daily irritants and frustrations, making me far more patient, and less tetchy. 

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