Doing a Bit More to Escape the Crowd

---

---

The Trouble with Rolling Hills

Today was spent in the rolling hills of Galacia. There are some problems for the pilgrim with this. While they look romantic on the postcards, each rolling hill has an up side and a down side. I suppose this should be obvious, and in a figurative sense, one might expect the down side of the hill to be its upside, and vice versa. This is not always the case, and some down sides are so difficult to negotiate that they can be both the literal and figurative downside. So if the up side of the hill hasn´t been great, then hills can have two downsides!

100 km Pilgrims - the Better Side

Starting early had some advantages. There weren´t masses of people on the path, and those 100km pilgrims that were, were remarkably pleasant compared to the worst of the breed that I had walked with the previous day. So overall I had a quite pleasant day´s walking, made reasonably good time, and had the odd pleasant chat. The camaraderie was coming back, and that gave me a morale boost as I hadn´t been looking forward to the prospect of the last few days being like yesterday.

My Theory about Spoken Spanish

I was fast forming the view that every Spanish woman on the Camino knew that the most beautiful sound that anyone could hear was that of her voice, even if one were several hundred metres away. Spanish men were better, but not much - they all think they can sing, but this doesn´t seem to carry as far.

I had decided to push on a little from Palas de Rei, the recommended overnight stop in the hope that I would be free of the crowds for a little while in the afternoon, and again the following morning. I walked on to San Xulian, where there was a small private albergue. This was serendipitous. I had a delightfully quiet afternoon and ate dinner with a group who completely put paid to my emerging theory of spoken Spanish. The two women in the group did not have to raise their voices to conduct a conversation, and everyone was able to join in the conversation.

---