El Acebo ( 16.6km / 546.7km)

Looks may be deceiving … Today we started at an elevation of around 1200m, we ended at around 1200m 16km down the road. That should take us about 4 hours with a second breakfast stop! Well, it didn’t …
In between all that we claimed to an elevation of 1580m, the highest point on the Camino, and then walked all the way back down again! We are back in the mountains which means beautiful views, slower walking and rocky paths at times. The views and scenery are worth the extra work. Tomorrow we keep going down to about 500m so I’m sure there will be some whinging tomorrow about sore knees or something.
Oh, and yes, the new shoes did their job, tested on all these surfaces was a baptism of fire! NO New blisters today …
At the top of the hill there is an Iron Cross. Pilgrims leave a rock or something from home at the cross, a symbolic discarding of some baggage or saying goodbye. It was quite moving there seeing all the rocks and messages and for some people discarding some real baggage. While we were there a lady placed a series of shells with names and had a little cry! We are constantly reminded what a privileged life we have had when we see other’s pain.
Leaving our Monastery was also a lovely moment as the 3 monks and fellow pilgrims were there to say goodbye after morning prayers. It is so odd how good friendships can be formed in such a short time on the Camino when everyone’s open to it.
We are staying in a lovely mountain village tonight and views from our Albergue are incredible. We are going to have to really try hard to be up for sunset (9:30pm) as I think it will be worth it. We had lovely catch up drinks with Tammy and James, who are on a similar time line to us so we will be seeing a lot more of themLue lisää