Catching Up

This was the final long day I needed to walk in order to catch up with my friends. Unfortunately, I had to get a late start, as I had only been able to reserve my albergue with breakfast included, but for some reason they didn't start serving breakfast until 8:00, over an hour after my preferred departure time. But I wasn't gonna let that money go to waste, so I ate my yogurt and orange juice, put the apple and water in my bag for later, and set off.

I was about 10km out from Portomarin, the normal stage town after Sarria, and got there around 11:00. On my way there, not much happened except for one notable milestone. Literally. I passed the 100km marker!

Upon arriving in Portomarin, it turned out that the trail did not actually go through town. I took a brief detour to go up to the town gate and see the view, then kept walking. And walking. And walking. For the entire rest of the day, there was only one memorable stop, which was when I got to take a detour to go through the excavation of an old iron age city. Then it was back to walking.

I had been doing long days for almost two weeks at this point, and I was tired. Tired of waking up early and getting in late, tired of outrunning the people I met on the road, and just physically tired. The tricky bit about long walking days is that you don't just put more strain on your body, but you also leave yourself less time to recover from it. Walking 35km instead of 25km takes an extra 2-3 hours, and those are often the hours I would have had to relax, rather than showering, eating, doing laundry, and doing other necessary chores on arrival.

I could probably have done two more long days to push through to Santiago if I had had to, but I was ready to slow down. I had wanted to push myself, and challenge myself to meet my initial deadline of the 31st, even though doing so meant making up 6 days in just 19 days of walking, and I had done that. I think pushing myself further would certainly have been possible, but that I had reached the point where injury was becoming much more likely, and I was mentally in need of a change or a break. Despite all of that, I am glad I challenged myself to do this. It was cool to see how far and how fast I could go, and to get a chance to push myself in a safe environment like this one. But I think it'll be a while before I do something like this again.

Once I got to Palas de Rei, I checked into my albergue, and went to get cleaned up before figuring out where my friends were. But lo and behold, when I opened the door to the room, there was one of them standing right in front of me! We'd coordinated which albergue we were staying at, but I had not expected to nearly literally run into them on my way to my bed.

(This was the only picture I took at the albergue, other than the door and wifi codes.)

Once I got settled in, we caught up on the past few weeks, then me and one of my friends went to get a wax stamp from a guy in town who did them. He was an odd fellow, very grumpy but also refusing to accept payment. Afterwards, we all got together and grabbed dinner in the little restaurant adjoining the albergue. The pilgrim meal was much heartier than I was expecting, a welcome surprise after so much walking, and we spent an enjoyable evening chatting until it was time to go to bed and await the following, shorter, day.