O Cebreiro

Today was a surprisingly lonely day. I had a really nice rest day yesterday and enjoyed reading and spending time planning the stages for the rest of my Camino. I was looking forward to a bigger walking day today and knew it would be mostly incline climbing up to another high peak. Somehow I misread the distance and thought it was 17km but it was really only 8km. I made it to the top and to the town I was staying in for the night much earlier than I expected. Having a lot of idle time in a tiny mountain town with a few restaurants, a church, and a few places for pilgrims to sleep, left me with a lot of time to feel sort of restless and homesick.

I’ve been away for almost three weeks and I have two more weeks before I reach Santiago, spend a day at the ocean, and fly home. As I get closer to Santiago and am in the second half of the time away, I am looking forward to being home.

The constant movement on the Camino, whether walking or not, can be fatiguing. I haven’t slept in the same place for two consecutive nights since I left home, and I won’t until I get home again. Because I sped up my trip with buses and taxis at different points, I’ve also left behind most of the familiar faces I was walking alongside. There really aren’t a lot of English speaking pilgrims - most speak Spanish, Italian, or French - so it’s hard to have much of a conversation with most people.

I’m not sure how the next two weeks will be, but it’s nice to anticipate that I’ll be glad to go home when the time comes. I changed my flight to have a full week at home before going back to work. I’m looking forward to hopefully catching some of the end of summer and enjoying time at the lake.

About 155 km left to go before Santiago. Tomorrow I’ll walk 22km. Slowly but surely, I’ll get there.Read more