Stage 26 : Eirexe to Ribadiso

So just some last minute notes about yesterday.  So the routine is to checkin, shower and find a chair to relax.  That chair is best if it's in view of the camino so you can view and chat up the people who walk by.  Later around 7pm we go to dinner.  Last night at dinner we had my California friend, Irish friend, Belgium friend, and a new French couple.  They spoke a lot of French at dinner.  Now I feel like I'm in a foreign country.

As we ate dinner out the window is a guy walking 6 cows down the road.  Next thing you know the cows are grazing out the other window.  One of the cows had a real itch, he was using a tree to relieve that itch.

Now on to today, we walked around 34km so we can position our selves for a nice entrance into town on Sunday.  Mass is at noon.  The morning started out at 5:50am but then after walking a few meters I realized it was too dark for me.  So I waited and around 6am I started again with my Irish friend.  It was a beautiful morning thru the woods.  

This house must have been high end in its time it had a private hand washing system.  You can see the ridges on the top bin.

Some of these gradine rise have been restored real nicely.  Not sure what they use them for now.  This area is very diffrent than before.  Here the towns are single houses, not all adjoined.  Their fields are small, not the mass production as before.

Believe it or not but this is an old house you can just make out the door.

The churches are much smaller and all the graves encircle the church yard.  Maybe the ground is too wet to dig or the church just doesn't have the space.  Both old and new graves are done this way.

Many of the houses have here beutifully flowers.  The camera didn't quite capture the blues.  There have been three diffrent colored ones, all very pretty.

Here is the walk thru the woods with all the traffic.  Today was not bad, people seem to walk at similar paces so a group would go by then your left with no one.  

One funny thing about the camino is the old style telfone service.  It started with a real call last night to see if we had seen our Dutch friends pilgrims passport.  Which we hadn't.  Then today we saw a group of four we play leap frog with.  The German in the group had found her passport, so the word was passed by the time we stopped at the albergue, she happened to be there, she knew who had it and was just watching for them to walk by.  It's very cool.  I also heard that someone had someone's shirt once and it was passed along and eventually made it back to its owner.  I also talked to today to a lady staying here that remembers us from Roncesvalles.  Amazingly cool.

Lovely walk thru mostly oak forest I think.

These trees I think are eucalyptus, were loosing their cloths(bark).  I assume they do this every year because old and new trees were doing the same thing.

 This is our Albergue for the night.  6 Euros and it includes anriver to ice your feet in.  My feet have not been so happy in days.  It did take a bit of time to get in, boy was it cold.

Here is the bridge where the above picture was taken. Little fish keep jumping, it's a great way to relax laying on the grass chatting and enjoying nature.

Here is a foto in one of the buildings where if you have food you can eat it.  There's also a kitchen but no pots, pans, plates or utensils.  Not sure how useful it is but oh well, it's nice.

Tonight at dinner I lost count at the number of friends at the table.  I sat next to our Finish friend who is great.  She was doing yoga earlier next to the river.  There were many stories, I heard there was a blind Italian doing the camino with his grandson as his guide.  Also they had met the postman with his wife who was in an electric wheelchair.  They are from Oklahoma.  Tomorrow will be my last night of the camino, I am excited yet sad.  It's been an amazing experience and I have met some wonderful people.