Day 31 - A scorcher and 4 days to go

Sarria to Portomarín
22.7km
Accumulated distance 751.7km
Marcella laid on a mighty communal breakfast at the alburgue, including pancakes with chocolate sauce, yum. On the road reasonably early to try stay ahead of the heat, wi the noticeably more pilgrims on the trail.
Very soon bumped into Maz from New York (ex Zim) and Leigh from Sydney (ex Cape Town) who is met at breakfast. We spent the rest of the day together.
It was a very pleasant day of walking, more than half in dappled shade out of the heat. A real surprise was bumping into Andy Ramage from England, he was a documentary maker and has spent his recent career trying to coach people out of alcohol, a really inspiring guy and thoroughly down to earth and decent. He has a new doco coming out soon which he showed us a clip of, it looks really interesting.
The number of people on the trail was noticeable, and the newbies stood out a mile off. We laughed at the fact that we sounded like the old pros comparing ourselves to the new walkers.
We pushed through without lunch but did have a very welcome beer stop about a half hour out from Portomarín.
It was really hot again, about 32deg when I checked in, so a good shower was enjoyable. Popped out for a late lunch, a magnificent burger, and noted the temp was 37deg at 4pm. Eish this place gets hot.
No dinner but a stroll around at 7pm when it cooled down and had a very nice surprise with a phone call from Christy and Declan.
The moment of the day was meeting and spending the day with Maz and Leigh, as well as the couple of hours walking with Andy and hearing his fascination research and findings around alcohol use.Read more