Cesantes to Pontevedra.

 18.3 ks today and reached our hotel the Galicia Palace around noon. Naturally our rooms weren’t ready. I say rooms, because Russell kept me awake all night yelling at me to stop snoring. I demanded he get a separate room so I can get a good nights sleep tonight. 

The walk was reasonably hard today, lots of steep gradients which seemed mainly uphill, which seems strange.  Also a lot of stony pathways with heaps of things to trip over. Great scenery though. Bucket loads more people walking today because I think a lot just want to do the last 100-120ks just to get a Compostela/certificate. We ran into and walked past lots of people we’d met over the last 10 days. 

Once we got to about 6k out of Pontevedra there were 2 ways to walk into town. One was shorter but along the main road. We chose the slightly longer route through the forest and alongside the stream. It was pretty nice and saw a few “entrepreneurs” selling stuff and performing along the track. One keen old mate was playing Spanish bagpipes and selling souvenirs.   I keep forgetting that the Spanish had bagpipes long before the Scots. This will raise the hackles on the necks of the Scots! Ha ha. 

We dropped our packs at reception and scooted out for a few sherbets and the accompanying tapas. Cheese on bread, a nice pasta dish and Spanish Tortillas. After about 8, old sweet tooth Lancashire decided savory was no good any more and so we headed to the bakery. A fake profiterole, half a custardy doughnutty thing and a chocolate chip cookie later we walked back to our digs. The delight on my face and to a lesser extent Russell’s, when we got our rooms, (me on floor 4 and him on 2 ) was worthwhile filming, but we didn’t. 

We’ve had messages from Nick and Debbie from Panama, and Mike and Andrea from Germany so we will probably catch up with them around 6 for Aperativos and dinner.

 Tomorrow it’s a 21k walk to Caldas de Reis and graded reasonably hard. Thank goodness I will have an uninterrupted sleep.