Castelo de Vilalba

It’s time to leave this lovely town, we have packed our packs, left the key to our apartment on the kitchen table and we are on our way. We follow a road leading up into the hills, starting on bitumen then turning in to dirt and finally just a walking path, it is a steep, hot climb and we are both feeling it, the shade of the trees is a god send and keeps us putting one foot in front of the other. About half way up this hill we come to a split in the road and we rest on a fallen tree with our packs off for a while, an older man arrives, we offer him a seat beside us, he is grateful to sit and rest while he waits for his wife. His wife isn’t far behind, we all chat for a while, and work out we are all going to be in the same town tonight, so we might catch up later. Ok, break over, it’s time to tackle the rest of this hill - it’s a long, hot winding path to the top. Woohoo we finally made it! We see a servo with a restaurant attached and decide to break here for lunch, there are no tables left inside, but we manage to score one outside. A waiter comes and takes our order, we order 2 red wines and 2 mineral waters. When our waiter returns with our drinks he sits the glasses of wine on our table and proceeds to pour the mineral waters into them! We are shocked, speechless and end up just bursting out in laughter! In all these weeks/months of ordering our drinks, this is the first time this has happened to us, and actually, it’s not too bad. We stay for about an hour, eating, drinking and chatting, then push on. We still have aways to go and the heat is severe. Thank goodness, we have finally reach our destination for today, it is still very hot and we can’t wait to check in, have a shower and grab a cold drink. We are staying at a fabulous albergue in a private room with its own bathroom but it has a shared kitchen and lounge area, it is super clean, modern and comfortable, our host is very welcoming and accommodating. After checking in & showering we head out to find a bar, there is one just down the road and we settle in there for a few drinks. The older couple we rested with on the path today spot us and ask if they can join us, of course we say in unison and we sit and chat for the next couple of hours, we book in here for dinner tonight. We meet another pilgrim he is an American called Ruddy, we get to chatting and he helps us out by ordering our meals as he is quite fluent in Spanish. We finish dinner and turn in early, it’s going to be another scorcher tomorrow, so we are getting on the road before the sun comes up.Read more