Camino Pilgrim

Four weeks have passed already. This week has been the biggest one on this Camino with 213.8km of distance walked.

Today it was almost all on asphalt. There was supposed to be rain and thunderstorms all day long. There was some rain, a lot of clouds, but no thunder. For a full day of walking on asphalt, it was perfect.

I chose the direct route south from Baamonde. The other option had way more bars and places to sit, but was 8km longer. I would not have made it to Boimorte if I had chosen the logistically smoother option.

The shorter route had just a few hills. Otherwise, a very fast trail with not that many places for shade. Since it was a cloudy day, then that was not an issue. The issue was that there were no places to sit almost all day. The tiny villages did not have public benches to sit on.

The villages did have a lot of dogs roaming around freely and barking at you. Most of the dogs today are not chained up. Before on the Camino, all the dogs were chained or at least securely gated. One dog even crawled from underneath the gate just to come bark at me from a meter away.

There were just three bars I saw all day on this 40+km day before reaching Boimorto. I had such a nice big pilgrim meal in As Cruces in the middle of the day, that I did not really feel a need for any other stops. The second half of the day went extremely smoothly.

The first 27km, before reaching As Cruces, my heels started to hurt a lot from walking on the asphalt. After a big meal, the heels felt just perfect.

Overall, it was a great hiking day. The municipal albergue in Boimorte was closed for no reason, but I could easily find other accommodation options in town. Not many pilgrims stay here, because they use the other route and have an albergue in the monastery 10km beforehand. I don’t really know pilgrims that walk only 10km a day.

Tomorrow there is another choice to be made. Either you walk the long option through Arzúa and connect with Camino Frances or you push all the way to Santiago airport in solitude on asphalt without many bar options, but its shorter.

I might go for the shorter version and try to see if I can do the last 100km into Santiago in two days. I have never done two 40+ days in a row. My feet feel like it’s totally possible. My mind says maybe.