24 km (14km for me)
Another wonderful sleep in this incredible countryside. 7:00 still comes too early though.
Shorty after 9:00am were are on our way to walk. This is the last ‘long’ walking day as tomorrow is a short 7 or 8km into Santiago.
Paul, Leslie & I get dropped off at, which we thought, the 6.5km – 7km and thoroughly enjoyed the people, the farms, following ladies herding cows and daily life in Galicia.
About 1/2 way it is time for a leisurely coffee. At one point Leslie & I were so engrossed in our conversation, we looked up to see Paul nowhere in sight. The look of horror on our faces must have been priceless “OMG, have we lost Paul?”! How did we miss him walking past us? Before we panic too much, we discover he had gone in search of the facilities and we breathed a sigh of relief!
Onwards we go as we don’t want to be late for lunch (wouldn’t want to go hungry or anything 😂😂). We are closer to Santiago so the walking is certainly not as remote, however still very beautiful. We are seeing many more people on the trail which makes us all reminisce how much we liked starting back much further away from Santiago.
We reach the village of Salceda, but it seems to take a very long time to get to the Meson de Equipa. We are the last to arrive and Paul declares a “world record” when he finds out he actually walked 8 km! We are both pleased with his achievement!
Lunch was fantastic, salad and wonderful BBQ pork ribs. Full, Leslie and I decide we definitely need to do the afternoon walk!
Tonight our hotel does not have a restaurant on site, so we were given the option of a place 500m from the hotel or we could purchase a ‘picnic’ style dinner. We stopped at a local super mercado (I love grocery stores in other countries), and we all purchased snacks for tonight.
From here, most of set off for the 6km walk to San Payo. Leslie, Cecilia, Tammy, Annie and I walked together for short distance, until Cecilia & Annie went turbo charge and left us. Apparently they beat the fellows to the meet pace – good on you ladies! The afternoon was hot so Leslie and I were dragging until we saw the vans, plunked ourselves down and had a cool refreshing agua mineral con gas y limon. It hit the spot.
The hotel Xan Xordo is another gorgeous country home that they refer to as Rural Tourism. There were a few other people staying here, but we took up the majority of the rooms.
By the time we all got back and organized ourselves it was around 7:30pm and the sun was setting. Alfonso, the hotel owner, had set out beautiful China plates, cutlery, glasses and napkins for our dinner picnic. It was so sweet. We spread out our purchases of cheese, grapes, hummus, chips, tostadas, Iberian ham, nut, fruit & chocolate on the coffee table and had a veritable feast. We purchased wine and drinks from Alfonso and sat chatting until it was time for bed. What a lovely evening once again!