Today felt special from the start. Even though the pain in my right foot has now reached the level of the worst state of the left foot, I left town excited for this days walk. I left very early, having attended to my feet – tape, silicon pads, cremes… for a long time. When finally on the road, Galicia’s beauty hit me right away after leaving walking out of the town.
It was still very foggy and drizzling at the time, but that made it just more magic and such an incredible atmosphere. Floris texted me, that he was still having coffee in the old part of town, when I was just leaving the city. Because of the pain I started out really slow. So when I hit the first merciless mountain that just went straight up at an incredible angle, Floris caught up with me.
He usually walks a much slower pace then me, but now we were actually going at the same pace. We met a dog that followed us for a while and had breakfast together at the next village. Here we met most of the people from the night before, like Rebecca, Neal and Vas. So we weren’t the last to leave town. Vas pointed out, that Floris had missed a few spots trimming his hair, and being a professional barber offered to fix it.
So Floris got his first professional haircut in 15 years on the Camino👌
We were just 2,7 km away from the magic 100km to Santiago marker, so we decided to move on. After this you need 2 stamps in your credential every day, and if you walk these you qualify for the Compostela. I had brought a good bottle of Rioja and some chorizo and queso, as well as olives and dried bruschetta, to have lunch at the 100km marker.
We almost missed it, because there was a construction, and we had to take a detour. As we both knew it had to be right there, we snuck up from behind and walked up to the construction site, and 5m before was that 100km marker! We did not want to stay there with all the construction going on, so we walked to the next place, a donation based food and drink place.
We got the wine and other stuff out, shared the wine with the owner of the place and had our own celebration of less then 100k to go. We were quickly joined by Libby and her friend, and finished the bottle and most of the cheese and olives. It was a great moment.
We then took off for the last part of the way, through the wonderful Galician landscape. It was a beautiful walk, and the big hills turned into a mostly comfortable walking terrain.
Finally getting to town and crossing the last bridge, there was a final challenge, stairs. And after some steep uphill lives till I was finally able to drop my bag and take a shower!
I met up with Kelly and nice people for a welcome beer, and then gathered there with Francesco, Floris, Lilly and Libby to go to this Italian place. Getting there we saw Gabriel and a lot of other familiar faces were already there. We were joined by Jakob and the people from the racing circle days ago and had a wonderful dinner, and loads of fun.
What a great day to celebrate less then 100km to Santiago! And I have to admit it was nice walking a full stretch together with someone for a change. And Floris, like I can enjoy walking in silence so that worked out great!