It is hard to believe we have made it this far, but we are not yet done. As I have said before, we have discovered that the Camino can have lots of unexpected challenges up its sleeve, today was one of them.
Before I start I have to tell you a story about dinner. Language is always a problem but this time our waitress did have more english than usual. When she came to our table we struggled a little but got across we both wanted meat. She then explained the chicken was closed. We said no problem I would have the beef and John the pork. She seemed in consternation that the chicken was closed. We tried to explain we didn’t care about the bloody chicken we wanted beef and pork. After much back and forth we realized she was trying to tell us the kitchen was closed until 8:30.
We knew we had a day of climbing in front of us, some of it steep but we were not concerned that it could be more demanding that what we had already done.
It was!
I hope I don’t bore you with the tale of our ride today but I do want to give you a flavor of the experience. Not much great scenery today unfortunately.
This morning was probably the toughest yet of our journey.
We started out finding our way out of Ourense to get on the Camino trail. This turned out to be a steep climb paved with large, uneven, granite blocks. We thought we might be able to cycle up, we made a few hundred meters when we had to give up. It was just too steep.
Here we also met Mariano and Anna who were also pushing their bikes up.

They are just behind John.

This went on for a few km and then the surface turned to gravel and we thought we could get back on the bikes but no, it was just too steep and too unsuitàble. We were back pushing for another few km.

This continued for another few km and we found it pretty tiring.
At the top things improved and we had a relatively easy downhill

We pass through a small village where we saw some more interesting ‘art’ in a garden

After the village we are back on the Camino and climbing, however, once more the path is not suitable for bikes

At one point we pass over a small 14th century stone bridge.

While the going was really tough we also realize that your average tourist would never see things like  this.

Part of our difficulty today was also that none of the villages we passed through had anywhere to buy coffee, water or anything to eat. Once again Sorcha saved the day with her energy balls. At 10:30 we really needed them!

The path continued like this until we reached Cea, the town at the end of our first stage. It had taken us 3 hours of hard work to cover 21 km! We had a sandwich and coffee in Cea and then took a diversion to visit the Monesterio de Oseira, a Cistercian monastery and the most important in Galicia.

The monastery was about 10 km from Crea and we hoped to get a tour of it. Unfortunately when we arrived they were having siesta so we saw the outside and got just inside the entrance of the church

I seem to be running into issues importing photos so will have to leave these as is.

From the monastery we now focused on finishing our days ride and getting to Silleda at a reasonable hour. There were lots of climbs but thankfully the surface was good and the ride went much easier from then on.
We did bump into Mariano and Anna once again. Mariano told us how he had found large porcini mushrooms along the path

It is hard to believe that if all goes well tomorrow I will be writing from Santiago de Campostela, our destination, however we are cautious as we have little idea what tomorrow will bring!