Day 27 30/4/12 Hospitl de Orbigo - Murias de Rechivoldo 22km (cold school room)

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What a beautiful day for walking.....the surroundings are getting back to hills, slopes and trees around us....the walks are getting interesting again with great views.....We are making our stop tonight at Astorga......population 12000.....

We came across a shed /building which had hot water coffee tea some ,biscuits, bread and peanut butter ......haven't seen that on the walk before.....It was a donation so I emptied all my loose change......Ange and James the Texans and the Irish guys we had met earlier caught up to us.....had a quick hello..... had a bite to eat took some fruit and kept on walking.....the ground was flat but in the distance were mountains with snow on their peaks and a very icy cold wind blowing off of them which kept us walking......

We arrived at Astorga and had to walk right through it.....quite a big place.....they had built a hugh walkway over a train track just for people to walk over...... the speed the train was going that passed under us, am not surprised that they didn't want people to walk over the track ....Am not sure how busy it was.....went over a little river....it ran under a house....go fishing on the verandah.....We found the plaza which was quite big and had stalls every where....there is a church that has a clock that when it strikes on the hour two figures move and hit the bell......we stood and waited as it was nearing the hour......the clock struck the hour ....nothing happened or we missed it in the noise it was 1pm .....bit of a anticlimax.....continued on down the street and bought a chorros .....stopped and bought some little braclets for the grandkids to send home......we had decided to stay here but once again couldn't find the albergue we were loking for,so decided to continue walking to the next small town which was only 4km away.....stopped and had a coffee and saw Susan ( she is the one that got bed bugs) and she also said she was walking on......

We reached our final stop...it was getting pretty cold and went to the albegue only to find that it was full of a bus tour.....people that get on the track and walk a little bit.....because its a private one they can accept any one....have to be a pilgrim to get to sleep in the municiple ones.....we couldn't walk any further so we finally found a old school room converted....The guy running it was doing it for 12mths for a friend who was having a break.....He warned us that he didnt have any heating....but when at the end of the day all you want is a hot shower and somewhere to sleep you cant be to picky......we accepted .....possibly the worst matteresses we had slept on and were a bit worried about bed bugs.....Jacqui went had a shower and I had a chat to the german host.....It was quite interesting he was explaining how these places run....the municiple ones (government) the profits go back to the communities and the private ones are just for profit....they are all cash so a lot of them hide a lot of their money....everytime we show our pilgrim passports to be stamped and pay they want to see one passport and they record the information....apparently the police are given the information and they can keep track of any wanted or undesirables on the walk.....because of this the private ones now have to declare a certain amount of the cash as the police have record of the amount of people go throught the doors.....if there are two people like Jacqui and myself they always only take one person's passport.....always wondered why now I think I do.....any money that they make out of their restuarants seems to be cream but the government is supposably be tightening up....Interesting talk


The showers were hot and clean.....we went and found a small pub .....not one person spoke english but we got a couple of reds then went up and had tea.....once again we had to act like a pig to order pork for our meal.....quite funny sometimes and always makes us and the people trying to work out our sign language laugh

We walked back to our no heat school room (absolutely freezing out side) put on about 3 layers of merino tops leggings soxs and extra blankets and went to bed......One thing this guy had was a snoring which he told us about....and he put a couple of guys that had arrived while we were away in there.....There is always some thing good in all the places we stay at....(maybe not the purple room tho)....

Woke up the next morning after not a to bad sleep and I wasn't cold and no bed bugs.....I think Jacqui's back was a bit sore from the mattress

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