Might make a run for it

im between 75 & 80km from Santiago. The weather has turned very nice which works in favor of trying to finish in 2 or 3 days.

I'm also past my cell data budget so I'm trying to keep it off during the day.

Really just reporting in that all is well since I didn't post last night.

Why can't they forecast fog?!

Sunday evening in Ourense. For some reason I'm exhausted. It might be because today was disappointing. I'm a real weather watcher lately and after several gloomy days I was expecting it to be very nice today. All the weather sites agreed that it would be be mostly sunny all day. I left the house I was staying in at around 10 this morning. It doesn't get light til around 9. The town I was in is called Xunqueira de Ambia and it was old and quant - compact with three bars.

I stayed at a Casa Rural called Miraval. I've never stayed at a crappy CR and most of these country houses are really nice. They're especially pleasant off season because chances are you'll get the whole house to yourself. Miraval was exquisite. I think it was originally built is 1356, then rebuilt in 1776. From what I could gather from the caretaker, Maria, it's owned by a family in Madrid and is literally their country house. Maria lives on the bottom floor and takes great care of the place. Live plants all over, spotless windows, etc. The family has eclectic tastes. It's was like a cross between a museum and spotless, tasteful Adams Family house. As an example, when I called to ask about a room, Maria was somewhere else and had to meet me there. The key to the place is like eight inches long. I'm guessing its the original door and hardware from the 18th century. It's a Dutch door with a modern lock on the top part so she detached the top from the bottom and showed me how to unlock the top, push it in then unlatch the bottom. Anyway there were lots of old-time touches like that.

Anyway, back to the weather. It was foggy like a Nantucket morning all the way to Ourense - and the whole day was on roads. Not long, but an unpleasant five hours.

It's about 100km to Santiago so I should be there on Thursday. I could pull a 60km day (or two 40 km days) but the way I feel now, it's unlikely.

My expectations were low

Last night in A Gudiña was grim. First of all it's not a very nice town - it seems to be there to cater to big agro. I ended up in a truck stop hostel. Usually places like that have decent food and really crappy rooms. This one had pretty nice rooms but after paying €2 for a caña, I wasn't sticking around for dinner. I had a chunk of tortilla at the truck stop next door where the same caña sells for €1.20.

I had checked the weather earlier in the day and all three of my go-to sources agreed that today (Friday) would be foggy with showers in the morning and steady rain in the afternoon. I'd also checked the description of today's route from A Gudiña to Laza. The site I use (gronze) is in Spanish but I figure that at this point, I speak bar, taxi and gronze Spanish. "long", "hilly", "highway", "AVE" (AVE is a high speed train line. They're building one from Madrid to Ourense and there's a ton of construction). I was expecting a very crappy day today.

Before bed I pasted the bronze route description into a translator. Between the bronze words I recognized were some that I had missed. Like "never really on" the highway, AVE "from a distance" and a sentence that I'd completely missed which to paraphrase, said that it's "the most beautiful day's walk in Galicia." I rechecked the weather and low & behold, fog would lift by 9 (sunrise is 8:45), party sunny in the morning and mostly cloudy in the afternoon.

It was pretty magnificent.

Galicia, as advertised.

It not raining hard but there's been that steady mist for the past couple of days. It's supposed to continue tomorrow as well but I think it'll clear up on Saturday.

If all goes as planned, tomorrow will be my last Friday of this Camino. If not for small things like that, there would be no end in sight.

Puebla de Sanabria is a great litttle town but I've been here long enough. The tourist office assured me that the specific fires that were in front of me are out now, and that it's going to rain all night.

That said, I'm not a bundle of enthusiasm. I woke up this morning, went out for the usual breakfast of coffee and toast, then went back to my incredibly comfortable and stylish room with the 40 inch tv. I already knew there wasn't going to be any channels in English, but the line-up was pretty much what I'd get back in the States.  On one channel they showed The Middle all day long, and on the other they showed one episode of Pawn Stars - which is great in any language, followed by non-stop Storage Wars - which always sucks.

Anyway I gave myself a programming exercise to complete. I made it up in my head in between dreams of smoking cigarettes. I thought it would take an hour to render seven buttons, one for each day of the week, with different colors and identifiers. I'm happy to report that it took less than five minutes using the new javascript ES6 backtick tricks I learned in school.

Same old same old

Alls well, nothing's new.

I'm in a place called Mombuey.  Staying at a truck stop. Not the worst place I've ever stayed but in the bottom 5%.

Finally some rain next week?

Its been hot & dry for the past couple of weeks but after tomorrow there should be three days of clouds and some rain. I think there's a hurricane headed for England?  I hope they don't take that lightly. I was in London for the hurricane of 87 and it was no joke.

This region, northwest of Zamora is pretty ideal for caminoing. It's so much less expensive than the mainstream Camino has become. People are really nice, and the pueblos are well maintained with decent bars and food. I'm in Camarzana de Tera where I have my own room & bathroom, plus dinner and breakfast for €30.

I won't stay in a barracks again unless it's an emergency. I'll order a Cabify if I have to.