When I woke this morning my sore toe had become alarmingly bright red and swollen. Despite this we had a goal to reach Azura, almost 30 kms away, so I administered Betadine to my toe , put on two blister pads, took some painkillers and we set off.

After a few kilometres of increasingly painful limping I knew that 30 kms wasn’t going to happen. We passed the 63km marker and I wondered how many more I would pass that day.

As we chatted to people along the way it seemed that a malaise had infected the long time pilgrims. So many said that like us they were hoping to get to Azura, but they were struggling. Melides, a mere 13 kms from Palas del Rei, seemed the most common destination. I was still hopeful we would get further and after our first stop for the day D2 and I decided to meet in Melides and take it from there

I was not much in the mood for taking photos but who can resist a ‘tunnel’ photo opportunity.

The track was dotted with signs for taxis, and outside one village a line of cars looked out of place, someone told me they were unregistered taxis.

I have now developed a nodding and smiling relationship with many of the newcomers, a French gentleman yells out “Courage, Madame, courage ” every time he sees me.
I unexpectedly meet D2 at a bar a couple of kilometres out of Melides. She is enjoying a hamburger and beer…..so this is what she does when we aren’t walking together! It was so lovely to see her.
We held a morning meeting over chips and beer. D2 said that her body could go on but her mind couldn’t let her go any further today, so we decided to stop in Melides.

We met up with our Brazilian friend, she also was stopping in Melides.

We made it into the Albergue in Melides where D2 slept and I had coffee and pastries with a German guy who started on the same day as us. We looked at each other’s photos and reminisced about the last 5 weeks. It was when he said “I am going to slow down and enjoy the last few days”
that I wondered, is this what the spirit of the Camino doing? Telling us all to slow down, your time is almost over, just enjoy it. I like to think so.