Day 38 Arrés to Ruesta, 29 km

A crowded breakfast with decent coffee in the albergue this morning. I left around 7:40. The weather app said there could be rain all day. But I left in sunshine, with some dramatic clouds in the distance, and stayed dry. It did not rain until just after I arrived here around 2:45. And now the sun is out and the sky is blue!

The walk was good. Relatively flat but not boring. A couple of nice bridges. Morning shadows for the first time in ages! Lots of birdsong. An optional big hill, which I took up to a village for an Aquarius (my first!) and a coffee. And then the last parts through a very weird landscape of abandoned roads and weird huge piles? Formations? of grey rock. Of which I seem to not have taken a photo. Lots of wildflowers. We walked on one crumbling road and alongside another one, complete with guardrails and traffic signs. And then the last two kilometres or so through a mossy forest on a soft single file track. There was a little bit of walking with some of the others, two speedy men, and a couple from Switzerland.

We are 5 here. The albergue is maybe not officially open until next week. So the bar with the nice terrace is not open. But they brought us beers upstairs. Only three of us are sharing a room and there is lots of space.

We had an excellent dinner - noodle and vegetable soup, spaghetti, fried milk (leche frita - sounds horrible but is very good). I did not learn that much more about Ruesta and the reservoir. But it was not the town that was flooded — the precarious and crumbling buildings are here — but their land and fields. Ruesta and four other villages. The reservoir is for irrigation and drinking water. There is an ongoing threat of the height of the dam and thus the water level in the reservoir being raised. I have been seeing signs for a few days that say: Yesa No! Yesa is the reservoir. There have been court cases that the raise-the- water side has won, but it seems like it has not all happened. Partly because there have also been landslides. One of the arguments against the higher dam is that it will destroy a big section of the Camino - European cultural heritage.

Only a little bit of evidence of anarchist management - some symbols and slogans and a political newspaper on the desk in the office.

Tomorrow is only 22 km. So we will have breakfast late, which always sounds like a good idea, but I am waking up at 6. It’s a long time until 7:30!Read more