Fisterre and Gijon

 after a mighty afternoon and a boozy night we slept well, or maybe I should say I slept well. Not so sure about Russell. A quick breakfast and a brief chat to Fellow melbournians Adrienne Bizzarri and Kylie Rowe ( who didn’t make it to yesterdays booze up) and we were off in the cab to pick up our hire car. As usual it took about half an hour to get the paper work completed, even if they had already received all the info they needed when I booked it, and we were off like a new brides nightie. 

Not too far down the road we realized the old sat nav was not talking to us. Seriously , is it too difficult to for these imbeciles to have the cars set up properly for the renters? This left us with Russell sitting in the passenger seat with his eyes glued to the screen and telling me which turn to take. Needless to say we missed a few. Nonetheless we made it to Fisterre or Finisterre if you like. There we went to the “end of the world” as well as the 00k mark of the Camino. 

Both Russell and I took our stones and shells, stood down on the rocks and threw them into the ocean for their final swim in the Atlantic. Russell lost Betty his mother in law while we were trekking, and was very emotional as he wasn’t able to be with Sue and his family at this time. He also had stones for his mum and dad, Sue’s father and uncle and sister in law Julies father Gordon. I will try to put the videos we took on the blog but I’m not sure how they’ll turn out. I threw stones in for my mum and dad as well as Dot and Ted Benson, also golfing buddy Lance Smith or “Smo” as we called him. My brother and sister in law Craig and Cath were stones that travelled with us but they ain’t brown bread. They also went into the drink. There’s no show without Punch. 

After that we fired up the navigation system and headed for Gijon in Asturias. We arrived there about 5.30 and after dropping our bags at the hotel drove to the underground car park, 787 red lights and 1 green with 20 cars fighting for the only available spot. We ended up driving the wrong way up the narrow lane to pinch a spot before the punters coming up the correct way could nab it. Ah well ! Been in worse situations. 

A wander around Gijon, a bottle cider from a Sideria (see videos if they turn out) a couple of beers later and we found a place to get veal medallions with pepper sauce. Now me old mate Russell ordered the veal but I reckon he confused Manuel because we ended up with veal and cheese sauce sans any semblance of pepper. It was edible enough but only because we hadn’t had any lunch. But here’s the thing. We didn’t have our first drink (if you don’t count OJ and a Red Bull) until 7.35pm. Did the visit to the Cathedral in Santiago have a sobering effect ? Let’s see what happens in San Sebastián tomorrow afternoon before we make a judgement.  

Good night from Gijon.