Wednesday April 6 - My fellow walkers stayed at a different hotel than I did, my choice, as their hotel is one recommended by the company that organized the lodgings for our walk, while I'm staying at a wonderful little hotel behind the cathedral where I stayed when I came to Santiago a couple of years ago to welcome Diana after her Camino. I walked to their hotel to see them the morning after our arrival, breakfasted with them and then the 5 of us wandered Santiago for a couple of hours before they left to take a taxi to their next hotel. They are walking to Finisterre, about 92K over 5 days. I had been to Finisterre with Diana a couple of years previously and my purpose on this trip was to walk to Santiago, so I had not made arrangements to join them. They too were really feeling weary and in need of a day of rest so we had decided to walk around Santiago, a wonderful city for walking, and then they would take a taxi to their first hotel on their Finisterre walk. Lots of hugs when we separated, a very sad farewell...

Monday Day 12, and gearing up for the final push tomorrow. Out at 8 this morning, once again in the pouring rain. Only 18K today, but some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Yesterday started cold and wet but after the hailstorm the sun broke through and the pleasure came. Yesterday was diamonds but today was stones. I got ahead of the group and really wanted to get through to the end as quickly as I could. The Camino trails were wet and in many places flowing with water. My feet were quickly soaked and after about 7 or 8K when the path crossed a minor highway, think the country portions of Highway 7 or 2 if you know the Toronto area, and rather than face 12K of more wet, muddy trails I decided to stay with roads and use Google maps as my guide.

Great dinner on Friday night, Day 9, the best I’ve had since we entered Spain. Since the parador in Tui our hotels seem to be moving downmarket every night. We were in a 3 star after the parador and on Friday we were in a 2 star and on Saturday and Sunday nights we are in 1 stars. Nothing particularly negative about any of them, more about the size of the room and the quality of the food than anything else. However, our Friday hotel did not have a restaurant and had made arrangements with a local restaurant a couple of hundred metres away to feed us, since dinner is included in the room.

Jut to refresh memories, on Friday our hotel was in a small town at the top of a long tidal bay, some 10 or 12K from the sea. Seafood was obviously the order of the day and we indicated to our waiter that we would not take the fixed hotel meal but order what we wanted and pay the difference...

Thursday morning and a fairly short run today, 16K. Sorry to leave our parador but we were waiting for the restaurant to open at 8 and were on the road by 8:30.

Have been keeping an eye open to see if I notice many significant differences between Portugal and Spain as we walk through both countries especially since one of the most rewarding things about walking is that you do have time to notice. . Have picked up a number of things; I know this may be treading on dangerous ground but I'm not ascribing national characteristics to my observations, simply noting what I see...

I'm in the final stages of preparation for walking the Portugal route of the Camino de Santiago. I leave on Sunday evening for Porto, spend a couple of days getting myself organized and start the walk from Porto in Portugal to Santiago de Compestela in Spain on my 72'nd birthday, March 24.

Daughter Diana did the walk from St Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago a couple of years ago, about 753 kilometres. As a surprise, I met her at the end of her walk on the outskirts of Santiago and walked the last kilometre with her to the Cathedral. It was a very moving experience and we had talked about the two of us doing a portion of the walk together. Unfortunately her teaching schedule only allows her to do it in summer and I've been concerned about tramping through the heat of a Spanish summer so we have not yet found a way to make it work...