The night night juice was put on the bar, our room was superb and when we woke up, our view was spectacular, yes, the biggest crane Sarria had to offer. The night before we’d wandered around town and found a great stretch by the river with bars and cafes all giving the obligatory bucketful of tapas with every one euro drink, but we went back to see our pal at the Pension as he agreed to do a get well soon message for Stuart McIntosh. Not only that but his tapas was superb, Harry had three bits of Lomo while I tried a different thing each time, if ever a town begged you to drink and eat all night it was Sarria. I ordered breakfast and as the pictures show, my first attempt at cafe con leche was a bit small, Harry ordered another, that’s much more like it! Leaving Sarria was a long haul, as we’d stopped at the beginning of town so after 20 minutes we stopped at the end of town and had some more water and coffee took some pictures and then walked further up the hill before then walking down a really steep hill, swinging back around to the right and as the crow flies we could’ve saved ourselves the climb and just gone around the side in 10 minutes, but that’s not the way of the camino and we like going the long way whenever we see a short cut. On this ocassion we were also blessed with good toilets but if you are wanting to save 15 minutes and a bit of pressure on the knees here’s a tip, dont go up the hill veer around it to the right and you will come across the camino after 10 minutes. You’ll know you’re close when you see the railway track. The camino follows the railway once you’ve done the detour to the highest point, looked at the church and ‘deviation’ . You go downhill swing back right on yourself, East, walk through the woods, North, until you hit the railway then you just follow it West. We were very lucky a train arrived 100m before we were due to cross the tracks. I wouldn’t like to have been halfway when the train went by, its a big old unit and was fair shifting, unlike myself, as I dragged my leg slowly across the tracks. Once over the other side you’re exposed to the sun, but not for long as its back into a fine forest climb. Superb it is. Lots of very old trees, a bit tumbly under foot!
Barbadelo seemed a lot further away than my leg expected. After the climb up through the woods there’s no cover for an hour or so. Harry was miles ahead as I dodged along in my wee dwam (that’s a bit of a doddering daydream), only to be disturbed from it by some cows walking the camino towards me. Normally I’d be running scared but my leg was so sore I was happy to push my way through the beasts as if I was some country dude, even the habitual large farmers dog didn’t cause me to blink. Up ahead Harry had met up with Sara again as well as Yoshi and some Brazilians. I stopped for a moment, but the leg was saying keep moving so we ignored the Casa and walked on. Up ahead was Carlos the hippy from Asturga who we’d met yesterday. He was doing the walk from the south and it merged near Sarria with ours. He’d brought his own dog and was charming some other geezers and an older woman, he’s a natural, but Harry was now in need of some serious comfort so ran past them to the Albergue. I kept going at 1.5km per hour, full in the knowledge that he’d soon catch up. There was a good looking bar but I thought its only 6km in, we really need to keep going a bit longer. Longer it was through the forest, another lovely shady spot but my leg gave way again. I swapped over to the sandals and applied some more volterol. I kept going until I figured we’d walked about 10km. An ice cream stop at the cafe seemed perfect. Harry duly appeared with his tale of woe. The Albergue had been shut and he had to go to the Casa del Carmen just off the camino, I’m sure it was the one we stopped at as the sun was telling me we just did a 180 degree loop, one for google earth, another day. There are cafes all over this section of the route and on another day I’d stop at them all. We met some Dubliners who had just joined the camino at Sarria. They were on the 7 day special and had backpacks to prove it! While Terry was striding out while his mate (Finter?) was struggling at the back with a water system that kept jumping out his pack and onto the camino. Up the crazy paving we went then down into another cafe with cemetery. They like a cemetery here and this one was bigger than the village, huge houses for the dead, but we walked on, I figured we were getting close so we stopped eventually at Mercadiaro, which I thought would be 40 minutes away as we could now more or less see Portomarin. An excellent stop it was too, Tinto de Virano all round and a bit of Tortilla to soak it up. Sadly another detour took us miles off the line and as my ankle complained Terry and I walked like demented mad men and got into Portomarin for 4pm, a lot longer a day than we’d expected, but a brilliant walk, the scenery was superb most of the way and only a bit of vertigo going over the bridge and a dodgy leg andankle wasn’t going to get in the way of the fun. The other two rolled in 15 minutes later and the drinking began again. On http://www.fatal-bananas.blogspot.com is a video of our Father Ted time when we completely lost it during a filming, a superb evening. We never saw the guys again – we figure they would’ve been well ahead with their fresh legs, they’d have made it to Palas de Rei, while we stopped in Airexe.
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