I am sitting in our room as dawn comes. We are far down on the valley and there is a heavy mist outside. I was thinking of that long, steep run down the mountain yesterday to here. While that was a nice way to end a long day, we have to climb it’s twin out of here this morning. It looks like it is as high as our first climb yesterday but much steeper!

Let me also apologize if I didn’t reply to your comments here. There is no wifi in the hostel , we went to a local bar last night to get connected to upload the post.
We leave the hotel in quite heavy fog, such that we put lights on our bikes to ensure we are visible. The climb up the mountain is by road as it would otherwise be impossible by bike.

We have a 1.5 km warm up before hitting the climb which is continuous for 7 km and rises about 700 m.
This climb was steeper that yesterday mornings and gave the legs a good workout. After about 1.5 km we got above the fog and the sun shone.
Around the 5.5 km point we were high enough above the tree growth that we could see into the valley

Sometime later there is this amazing feeling of pressure coming off the legs, then you realize you need to gear up to maintain the cadence and you realize the slope has fallen off and you are near the top! What a great feeling.
At the top of the hill is a village,Albergue ria in which there is a ‘ Camino famous’ bar. We stop for a coffee, hard boiled egg and muffin.
The bar is covered in scallop shells, each with the name of a peregrino who has stopped by. These all cover the walls.

We had met Mariano and Anna climbing the mountain so we had our snack together.

We asked the owner to take our photo

And we added our names to the shell collection.
Leaving the village I thought I would capture more of the old buildings

Now we begin the descent. We decided to go off road but discovered after about 100 m that it was impossible and dangerous by bike so we pushed the bikes back up the hill and rejoined the road.
The view on this side of the mountain is very different.

After we got down the mountain we passed through Boveda where we saw some interesting art

And started to see an unusual structure beside many of the houses

These were raised high with no obvious way of access. Having no idea what they were for, John, in his fluent, pidgin Spanish asked a lady what they were for. She responded with a rapid fire string of Spanish which, based on her tone and demeanor,  I took to mean &$#* off and get on with your camino. Our Italian friends later told us they are for storing grain!.

We now rejoined the off- road and we’re delighted. It was pretty flat and generally in good shape.

The character changed but was still ok

This took us to the next town of Bovedala.
The off road here looked a little worrisome to start but we figured it would be ok and it was only about 6 km to the next town and lunch.
One thing we have learnt on the Camino is you can never tell what it will serve up.
This turned out to be impossible to cycle. The uphill was just too uneven and rocky. We had to walk and push the bikes.

Te downhill was even worse, even walking with the bike was difficult.

Whoever thought this was a good idea was crazy. However, there was a payoff as we got to see something we would otherwise have missed. Up there in the middle of nowhere we came on a large collection of functioning bee-hives!

We eventually reached Xunquiera de Ambia and stopped for lunch at a little bar.

There were three Spanish peregrino (walkers) there. As they had walked along they had picked up a huge collection of mushrooms and were cooking up a mushroom stew in the bar with the help of the lady!
The church in the town was closed but had an interesting old stone crucifix. The front was pretty weather worn but the back had this

Leaving here we went from the ridiculous to the sublime in terms of path. After a medium hill climb we basically coasted down a gentle slope for 17 km into Orense.

It is hard to believe, here we are in Orense, the last big city before Santiago.

Today was another great day full of work, fun and interesting people and places.

I have to say I cannot imagine a better way to experience rural Spain.