Day 30 - Wednesday, 21st May, 2014 - 19.5 km
[Roundhouse dinning room at Fonfria]
[Roundhouse dinning room at Fonfria]
So today really was cold; it also rained quite a bit.
Yesterday evening we stopped at Fonfria, which is a village, but a village you could walk through thinking it was a farmyard as there are no village name signs and plenty of tractors and dogs. The Albergue has bunk beds that look as if they have been constructed with pieces of telegraph pole and are extremely sturdy. We were told to walk down the hill for our supper and went to a kind of thatched roundhouse, where we were invited to sit at a long curved table with everyone else from the Albergue. It was a true Camino spirited meal and we generally got acquainted with a great number of pilgrims we were walking with. The meal ended when the cook created a large cauldron of hooch to which she added orange peel and all sort of bits and pieces before setting it on fire. It burned for a long time proving how much alcohol was in the hooch before she extinguished it, by puting a dustbin lid over the whole mixture, which was then served out as a nightcap. We all drank it and slept pretty well on its effects.
[Hooch being prepared, Roundhouse dinning room at Fonfria]
[Michael, Setting off from Fonfria]
[Michael, Eila, Rupert, Dropping down to Triacastela]
[Eila, Rupert, Dropping down to Triacastela]
[Michael, Eila, Dropping down to Triacastela]
[Entering Triacastela]
[Michael and Eila - Setting off in heavy rain from Triacastela]
[Scenes on the way to Samos]
We set out this morning to cold air and a day that threatened rain at every opportunity. We dropped down into Triacastela, where after a breakfast we set off in pouring rain. My shorts were fairly soaked by the first bend, but as we continued the weather eased and we enjoyed a good walk to the Benedictine Monastery of Samos. On the way we bumped into Renee and Penny the two ladies we had met the day before (of the women's group fact finding tour fame). This was their second day and it seemed that they had only experienced bad weather on their Camino. They seemed fairly optimistic and had ten days to reach Santiago, so only had to complete 11 km a day. Renee complained that she had just sat in some stinging nettles and Eila suggested that she needed to find some 'Doc' leaves. I quietly suggested to Michael that he might administer first aid, but he didn't seem in a very 'First Aid' responder sort of mood!
In the Brierley guide book all Albergues are shown as [36 divided by 6], this means 36 beds in 6 dormitories, ie 6 beds in each dormitory. The Samos entry said [70 divided by 1] a very different matter, this was one big dormitory with 35 bunk beds. Michael said he needed a good nights sleep and so investigated a double room, so we decided on one extra night of luxury, probably the last before Santiago.
At the end of the day we went to the Pilgrim Mass at the church in the Monastery, which was very impressive.
Tomorrow the rain continues and we need to do a 30+ km hike.
Buen Camino.
[Coming across Renee and Penny (of the woman's group fact finding tour fame) on the way to Samos]
[Samos Monastery]
[Samos Monastery]
[Samos Monastery]
[Samos Monastery]
