Our Camino, Stage 13, Portomarin to Palas de Rei, July 22 2013.

Initially apologies.  It has been a good few days since I have posted a blog, I am sure that people have been waiting with bated breath to know how we got on after Portomarin.

Well here we go.  We left Portomarin on a cool morning , Portomarin sits astride a wide river, the Mino so the valley was cool in the morning and stayed cool for much of the day.  The air was moist with a thick fog and the temperature did not get above about 15 degrees celcius until well after lunch.  A good walking day.

Santiago blessed us as we left Portomarin.  His statue ever more present along our way, the thoughts of his resting place and Cathedral ever more present in our minds.

As you can see by this image of the kids above the track was narrow and overgrown in many places.  This is not to say this it is not well-drodden, there are many hundreds of pilgrims on any given section of the Camino on any day and July or xulio (no capital) is not the busiest month.  The fog was so thick you can even see it amongst the very close branches on the left of the kids.

Here is a better image of the fog.  The path emerges out of the bush onto a roadside every now and then.  You may walk for a kilometre or so along a road, never much more on the busy ones.  Here you can see the very thick fog, probalby about 10.30 or 11 am already at this point.

The Camino de Santiago de Compostella is heavy on the consciousness of the Spanish.  In Galicia it is everywhere.  The pavements are clothed with images of Santiago, above you see his cross and the scallop shell centered upon it.  This was just sitting in among some cobbles in an intersection that we walked across.  Below you see the map of Galicia in a man hole cover.

Anyway the day wore un in a pretty uneventful manner.  We walked all the way to Palas de Rei and found our accommodation on the edge of town upon entering.  We checked in, had a nap and a refreshing drink before dinner.

The people I mentioned in my last post that have joined the walk with the same company as us turned out to be from New Jersey, a chinese american couple travelling with their 22 year old son.  We spent some time that night having a good chat to them, it was nice to actually spend time with english speaking people and be able to share our already two week old adventure.  They were amazed of course, having only walked two days they thought the kids were fabulous having walked over 200 kilometres to date.

So do I.

Buen Camino Peregrinos.