Saturday, September 20, 2014

Lalin to Silleda and on to Bandeira

After a couple of long, wet days, today looked like the weather would improve, and our walk was only 9 miles to the rather large village of Silleda. Easy day, and we needed it. After the last couple of days, Marty and I each have a couple of body parts that could use a break.

The weather did improve, and was partly cloudy, cool, and with a light breeze as we started an easy climb out of Lalin. Both Marty and I took a lot more pictures today since it was safe to have the cameras out where we could reach them. What was also out today seemed to be a lot of dogs. Probably because of the weather. They were pretty much all behind fences in the yards of homes, but pretty much all wanted to give us some kind of greeting.

The walk today was largely on trails and back roads (paved and otherwise) , and we made pretty good time, looking to finish early.

The historic highlight of the day was the Ponte Taboada, an old Roman bridge built in 912 (don't ask how they now the exact year, but I guess the Roman's kept pretty good records). It's very much intact and original, and the Camino and it's pilgrims cross it as they've been doing for 1100 years. That's hard to get one's head around.

A few miles later we were in Silleda, ready to end the day's walk.

Now, when I got the itinerary for the walk, the Hotel Victorino was described as “right in the middle of Silleda”, but with an address of Bandeira, another village further on. I caught this confusion and asked the planners if the hotel was in Silleda or not. Their answer was the the hotel was “right in the middle of Silleda.”

So we walked through Silleda, got to the middle, didn't see the Hotel Victorino. We walked to the other side of Silleda, and still no Hotel Victorino. Then we asked a gentleman on the street who, like most of the people here, spoke no English, "donde esta Hotel Victorino."  He pointed down the road, and the only thing I could understand was a word that sounded a lot like "Bandeira." I confirmed this out by calling the hotel and learning that the hotel is easy to find. It's "right in the middle" of Bandeira, 5 miles away. After thinking we were at the end of a short day, we had another two hours to go. Let's just call that a disappointment. (There's an email to the trip planner being drafted.)

Anyway, we did what any disappointed pilgrim would do when they learned the day's walk wasn't over. We found a nice little restaurant and had a really good lunch and some really cold beer.


With the necessary fortification we got back on the trail (it was hard not to call a cab), and after a couple of hours we found the Hotel Victorino right in the middle of Bandeira where it's been all along.  The end of another long (14 mile) day.








  

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a good long day. How many more days? You will be glad you didn't call a cab.

    ReplyDelete