Day 22 walking!

We ate our dinner last night in the Hostal and combined tables to eat with the other Peregrinos there, another Brit, a French lady who had cycled from Dijon originally towing her dog in a trailer but bad weather forced her to ask a friend to look after the dog, a French chap and a man from Taiwan who wanted to be completely disassociated with any groups of Koreans!!!
We had some strange conversations and my French has come in very handy!
We set off to another day of glorious blue sky as we headed out on the way, although we could see heavy ominous grey clouds in the distance over the looming mountains!
We followed a road initially into Astorga, sort of market town size place with nice cathedral and castle type place by Gaudi. As we left Astorga, we’re passing into the mountains of Leon which will then lead us into Galicia. The way turned into a dirt track surrounded by mixture of farmland, scrub and trees but nearly always wild flowers at the edge and happy bird song including the enchanting cuckoo! It was a hot day, not as hot as yesterday and we had cool mountain breeze. We climbed gently and passed through quite a few villages and took every opportunity to stop and have a cold drink and rest for a bit. We climbed gently to just over 1,100m to our destination Albergue La Senda at Rabanal del Camino after about 24 Km. Nice enough Albergue but back to bunks! Lovely old village with cobbled streets and old buildings.
I’m getting on ok with the walking sandals and socks, but the track is very dusty and the dust is clearly visible on my blue socks when I take the sandals off!! My toe felt fine walking today, but possibly it was little too far and doesn’t look good tonight. Tomorrow is the climb to the highest point of the Camino and the iron cross but I may share a taxi with an American lady who has bad knee (and can hardly walk) instead of walking up and down. I think going up would be ok for me, but the hardest bit is the steep downward path.Read more