We really enjoyed our stay at Trabadelo in our lovely room and bathroom with a bath,  shampoo and conditioner and a hairdryer!  The owner, Ellie, was slightly quirky but very nice and made great tasting vegetarian spicy dishes like tagine and curry, a big change from the usual pilgrim menu.  We had tagine the first night but went to another place last night as the menu was pumpkin soup, lemon chicken and chocolate mousse with bread and wine all for 10€, how could we resist.  We shared a table with a mother and adult son from Sweden and another more elderly couple from Belgium.  The Belgian couple lived between Brussels and Antwerp and he had been a secondary school principle and his wife had been a secondary school teacher.  They both had taught German and were very quick to point out that they could not speak French!  They started their camino from home in 2014, walking two weeks in the Spring and two weeks in the Autumn.  They were now on the final stage of their journey.

The Swedish pair had only started in Astorga but were hoping to walk to Santiago within two weeks.  They were doing 35 and 40 kilometres a day!  The son, who is a software engineer, said he was used to walking, while his mother said she was not.  It perhaps comes as no surprise that after the first day she got an enormous blister on the bottom of her foot.  Fortunately, she is a nurse and has an appropriate first aid kit but she is still suffering and said she may have to re-think their schedule.

We knew we only had to walk a little over ten miles today (we actually walked eleven) but it was going to be climbing most of the way.  We left Trabadelo at 572 metres and over the next six and a half miles we had a steady climb to 722 metres, although it was not just going up, several times the path dipped down quite a long way which, of course, meant that we then had to climb back up.  We passed through several villages – well, not so much a village as a small hamlet or group of houses.  There was a beautiful little church at La Portela de Valcarce where I lit a candle and we had our credentials stamped.  On leaving the church, we noticed a large well tended vegetable patch that had been planted with Radicchio lettuce in the shape of an arrow, pointing the way out of the village.  We quickly passed through Ambasmestas and Vega de Valcarce and headed for Ruitelan, our first stop of the day.  It was 10:25 am and we had climbed 100 metres overall and were more than half way to Laguna.

We left Ruitelan and climbed another fifty metres to Las Herrerias (722 metres) where we knew the really long hard climb was to follow.  This was a pretty place, with a stream running through it and a small bush where people had tied hundreds of tiny messages to the branches.  Also, this is the place where, if you wanted to cheat, you could ride on horseback up the remaining four miles to Laguna!  We walked, first on road out of the village, which again dipped down, then onto a steep rocky path that our guide book describes as, “… slick with mud and horse shit.  Tread carefully and think happy thoughts.”  It wasn’t so difficult as there obviously hadn’t been many horses today but it was steep and just kept on going up for mile after mile.

Just as we reached another group of houses (maybe six houses) at La Faba we passed a local farmer herding his three cows down the steep hill.  We were surprised the place had a shop so we stopped to buy an extra large pasty for lunch, a couple of bananas and to fill up our water bottles.  We carried on marching ever upwards until we reached Laguna and our albergue (1152 metres) at 1:20 pm.

Looking back at where we have just come from, the views are sensational and no photo can ever do it justice.  We are about one kilometre from the Galician border and are now surrounded by the Galician mountains.  We still have further to climb tomorrow but I’m sure it will be well worth the effort when we finally get to the top.