Just about everyone in Albergue was awake and up by 6:00am,
because it was pushing 80 degrees in the room. 60 plus people in one room
put off a lot of heat! Next surprise was walking out the door into nearly
freezing air. Immediately went back inside to change clothing plan! Somebody
said "but we're above the clouds, it's dry cold". It was only
starting to get cold! As we started down the trail, we started loosing
elevation and went down into the clouds and visibility dropped to about 50
feet. Now it's damp cold. Then we dropped a little more elevation and it became
drizzling rain. But, if you keep the engine running, the heat stays on.
Right? In fact, the engine was working a little harder than expected.
Even in 50 foot visibility you could tell we were going uphill! Next
surprise, there is another peak to summit before final decent. This peak is
higher. Like all the way up to the snowline higher! There is a monument
at the top, of a pilgrim struggling in a storm. It fit just fine.
We finally started the decent into Triacastelle. It was a
STEEP decent for almost 10 kilometers. Rough on the legs and feet. Leaving
Triacastelle to Soma looked like a reasonable decent on an alternative
primitive route alongside a stream for about 13K. So away we went for a
little stretch of daily distance. Surprise! Although it was an absolutely
beautiful hike, it was very tough going along a small path that kept having to
swap sides of the stream across ancient bridges. Bills feet were screaming. His
phase of the day around every corner became "Futher Mucker, another
one!" In his northern accent😂 These were the ascents
and descents to move alongside the rugged hillside.
At one point I saw what looked like an old diversion channel
to an ancient building. I bushwacked a little ways over to the building
and found an OLD gristmill. Obviously not used in many, many years. It was
water driven with wood spoke driven stone wheels about 18" thick and 3
feet in diameter. I took what pictures I could in the dark old building.
"You shoulda seen it in color"
Numbers for today
50,150 steps, 22.9 miles, 156 flights
Hopefully, final surprise of day was when we got into town
and the big municipal Albergue was closed, so we are staying in an 800 year old
monastery Albergue. It is a "rather primitive" donativo, but has hot
water and heavy blankets,,,, no heat, no Wifi. We are going out for what will
be my separation dinner tonight. We are only 10K outside Sarria. Everyone
else will be passing through Sarria and continuing onward.
Haven't figured out what I will do just yet. I will have 4
days to burn somewhere. Looked at bussing to north coast and doing
"Camino Ingles" and then bussing from Santiago back to Sarria. But, I
would have to do three 40K days plus a little to get back in time. Not
reasonable, even though I could have pulled two Compostella's because it is a
127K route.😎. I may bus a couple days up the
Camino Norte route just to make road time back into Sarria. I don't want to
hike the part we will do together.
Will send pictures later as I will have to hit Wifi at
dinner.
Oh yeah! Go load "What's app" Seems to
work good for texting, calling and even video call on WiFi. I loaded it
because all the kids have it and I found out that a bunch of people in my
contact list are already accessible with it.
Later,
Buen Camino
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