Luarca to Santiago de Compostela

We rise early and get ready to go, there is little movement as we step out of our hotel and walk the few streets away to catch our bus, the only other people up and about at this hour are the street cleaners, it's so very quiet. We arrive at our bus stop by 8:00am, we are 20 minutes early, so take a seat and wait. Our bus pulls in about 20 minutes later than its scheduled time, we hand over our backpacks and hop on, we take our seats and settle in ready for our four-and-a-half-hour trip to Santiago de Compostela. 40 mins into our trip we receive a message from George, there has been a change in his plans and now he will be heading to Astorga with Michele and Victoria to meet up with a friend they met last year when walking the Camino Frances. We were really looking forward to catching up with George and his family but, he will have a fabulous time with other Camino friends he hasn't seen for a while. We have 6 stops in-between Luarca and Santiago de Compostela and this trip is full of twists and turns, I feel quite ill by the time we get there. We pull into the bus terminal, and hit the ground running - we need to get to our stored luggage at Casa Ivar's before 2:00pm, of course we are late arriving due to our delayed departure from Luarca this morning, I have been emailing Iria who will be meeting us so we can access our luggage and swap out some of our summer clothes for winter clothes ready for our walk in Galicia (this will be the third time of walking in Galicia, it rained the entire time on my pervious Caminos, so I know my base layers & poncho are a must). We arrive at Casa Ivar with 5 minutes to spare, it gives us enough time to pay the money we owe and just take our suitcases with us. We also need to retrieve a box of stuff from the Correos, that we had mailed ahead. I stay put with our suitcase and box whilst Lisa heads to the Correos to pick up our other box (Iria said the Correos closes at 2:30pm today), we somehow manage to collect all our luggage before they close, then we lug it to our hotel. On check in I ask if we are able to leave a couple of suitcases here for Iria to pick up and put back into storage on Monday, unfortunately the answer is no - they just don't have to room to store it. So, we now need to find an alternate storage method, this day just keeps on giving.... Lisa and I are both feeling like shit, but we have no option we need to sort through all our stuff and arrange storage at the Correos tonight as our bus departs at 9:00am tomorrow and nothing will be open at that hour, argh! We eventually get all our stuff sorted out, put into storage at the Correos, and then we crash and burn. Extremely happy for this day to be done!Read more