Day 11: Baamonde to Sobrado dos Monxes

Our hostel last night was named Kilometer 101, and in retrospect, that should have said it all.

Don't get me wrong,  it was new and clean and had a fine restaurant downstairs. It's just that the Camino changes drastically when you get within 100 kilometers of Santiago de Compostela.  And boy, did it ever!

Let me explain.  Up until today, the pilgrims on this walk have been pretty serious hikers, most carrying heavy packs. Usually, they're in groups of one to four people.  Everyone walks the Camino for their own personal reason. Don't judge anyone.

But in Spain, the Compostela (the certificate of completion) is an important resume builder. To qualify,  you need to walk 100 kilometers...  So the last part of the Camino, the part starting 100 kilometers out, gets really crowded, and the atmosphere changes.

Our plan was to wake up early and to walk 20 miles, 32 kilometers,  to the beautiful,  historic town of Sobreda dos Monxes. Our alarms were set for 5:30 AM, and we were out the door at 6 AM sharp. We were wearing headlamps,  and we figured we'd be on the road for hours before seeing a soul. We were very wrong.

 

150 Spanish High School Juniors with Headlamps Following Us at 6 AM

 

I am not exaggerating.  This was going to be the story of our day.  We'd planned a seven hour walk on a path that had few distractions and very few services, and before we'd traveled one block, there was a virtual army of chatty young people on our heels.

So here's the good part.  There are two paths out of Baamonde, and this year, I selected the more direct, shorter one.  Then, a few miles out of town, there's a fork in the road. This year, unlike last, I selected the shorter, less traveled route to our destination.

Now the bad part, so did they.

We're standing on the side of the road to let them pass.  The line never ended, so we joined it.

You'll notice that they're not burdened by heavy backpacks.  Nope, their group is transporting those to their destination.  Food and drink?  They're being met by a van at set points along the way.  It sounds pretty organized, but it wasn't.

Here's how we learned this is supposed to work.  You send your kid off to do this with a church or school group.  Someone's at the head of the line with a flag.  Someone else is trailing at the end with another flag.  There are chaperones dispersed.  If there are more than 100 kids, there's supposed to be an ambulance or medical staff.

Here's the reality.  These kids walked at predictably different speeds.  Their group got so spread out, that it was easily over a half hour from the kids we were walking nearby to the front of the line.  Kids were walking by the ones and twos.  Kids were limping and being helped by their friends.  We never saw that flag person at the rear--all day.  We were pretty mortified!

But let's not dwell on that...

 

Here we are trying to pass the flag person at the front of the line...

We passed them when the van full of snacks showed up at 8 AM, two hours into the walk.

I said enough about them.  Today's walk was again beautiful, but it passed  through some really uninhabited back country.  At about 9:30, we stopped at a little store in a town, that's barely on the map, for a cup of coffee.  We spoke to the proprietress as she worked frantically to keep the students out of her restroom.  That's another thing.  Who schedules a seven hour activity without bathroom breaks?

 

In the morning, we met up with a tall Englishman named Paul who had spent the night in an albergue about an hour out of where we stayed.  We talked about a lot of things (including American politics... everyone here wants to talk about that.)  We asked if he'd met any of our acquaintances from previous days--and he had!  Pilar, the Spanish girl, was in his albergue last night.  He described other pilgrims, but they didn't sound familiar.

The road rose towards a ridge with more than ten windmills.

After that first break, we were armed with the information that we had 15 kilometers to go.  There was a decent sized town in 12 kilometers, but there was a bar in 9 kilometers that wasn't on our maps.  We now had a purpose.  9 Kilometers is about 2 hours, so somewhere about noon, we could be sipping frosty cold Coca Colas. Yeah!

I've been told that this blog ends up becoming a saga of walking from one coffee break to a soda break to a meal.  That's fair.  Let me put it in perspective. Yesterday, we walked 48,239 steps and burned 3,591 calories.  After walking for nine hours, there isn't really enough mealtime to make that up.  To be frank, food and drink is always pretty close to top-of-mind.  But I digress.

We walked even closer, right under the turbines.  Yes, those are students on the road.

This was a great walking day.  The temperatures were probably no higher than the low 70's.  It was breezy.  Lots of the path was paved, and while there were some hills, most of it was level ground.  We made great time.

 

As predicted, at noon, we saw a sign for an inn about 150 meters off the Camino.  There was a group of four pilgrims with heavy packs looking at the sign.  The six of us walked up a hill to a small settlement, where we found a beautiful spot serving drinks and snacks.  We looked at the four other pilgrims, and realized that they matched Paul's description of his companions from the night before.  They were!

 

That settlement through the trees is where we had our Cokes.

So, here we were, in theory six kilometers away from our destination.  It was past noon.  We wanted to get there before two PM.  Why?  You guessed it, that's lunch time in Spain.

 

It was a good plan and it worked.   We walked along a small highway for a while (saving some unnecessary Camino detours), and then left the road when the Camino seemed straighter.

 

Not just straighter, but shadier, cooler, and more private.

Entering our last province. 
 

We got to the town of Sobrada dos Monxes at 1:45.  Checked into another modern hostel, changed out clothes and got a decent meal.  Then, after lunch, we visited the monastery that dominates the town.

The front of the Monastery's church.

The monastery was built in 952.  (That's not missing a digit.)  It's massive.  Monks still live there, but a part of it is an albergue and lots of the people we met are staying there.  We paid 4 euros apiece and explored the inside.

 

Inside the otherwise empty church

The medieval kitchen. Above the platform, there's a chimney.

One of three cloisters.

There are sixty kilometers left to go to get to Santiago.  Our plan is to walk thirty tomorrow and to finish on Saturday.  Tomorrow, by the way, is our wedding anniversary, but on the Camino, it's just another walking day.  Gosh, I hope those high school kids don't repeat today's experience!

 

Tina will tell you how it all turns out.

The monastery as seen on the way out of town.