Today was a hard day. The mood on Camino was somber, after days of chatter and laughter many pilgrims seemed to be struggling.

The first section of the day was 9kms mostly uphill, with no coffee!! I remember this section last time when I dragged not only body and backpack, but blisters and half the mud on the track up the hill. This time it was dry and my feet felt ok, but it was still hard. I know I should stop more regularly but there was actually nowhere to stop, apart from sitting your backpack by the side of the road, which when I am tired leads to the possibility that I may not actually get up!

After brunch at the local golf club we headed off to Santo Domingo, a bit easier walk.

 

We stopped for lemon beer at a local bar before heading off to check out the cathedral.

It’s famous because it houses a rooster and hen in honour of a local legend about a family of pilgrims whose son is wrongly accused of a crime and hung. When the grieving parents return from their pilgrimage they find their son still hanging but sill alive. When they consult a local dignitary about how this could happen, he said their son was as dead as the chicken in the meal he was eating. Whereupon the chicken jumped from his plate and bit him on the nose!

The rooster and hen used to be housed in a cage so pilgrims could take a tail feather, but the poor things would be plucked clean these days so they are in a cage up high. Impossible to take a clear photo because of the lighting, but here’s the cage.

The cathedrals of Spain have many statues and paintings of San Roche, featuring a dog and a big wound on his leg. I keep forgetting to look up his story but I’ll let you know.

The walk in the afternoon started off well,

then was mostly uphill and I was finding it quite a challenge. With the village in sight over the top of a particularly long hill I told D1 that I had just told myself to toughen up princess! I was determined to stride into town with my head high, strong step and smile on my face. As I reached the top of the hill and looked at the path which went down, down, down, then up, up,up, before leading into town  I heard floating towards me from D1 up ahead “Toughen up princess”

A pilgrim is grateful. We were grateful to share a beautiful casa rural with a young Korean couple who Liz had met earlier on. They called me Mama and made us soup for tea, gave us orange juice for vitamins and made us apple, banana and jam sandwiches for lunch the next day.