Day 20/35 Palas de Rei - Melide Leisurely start as short walk today. After my comments about so many pilgrims, today the road seemed quiet and not a lot to report. Arrived Melide around 3. Nice hotel in a cute area. Rested then headed out for PULPOS - octopus - for some reason the specialty of this “inland” area. It was good. A roadie at a lovely wine bar - Monday night so all quiet. Coffee €3 Lunch €6 Supermarche €10 Dinner €27 Bed €50

Day 19/34 Portomarín - Palas de Rei We woke very early and headed for breakfast before heading off on our day. Coffee and tosta - the tosta is fresh baguette toasted - hard to miss my Vogel’s with this option! I guess we just have to get used to the increase in the numbers of pilgrims - but it is truly significant. A lot of people start in Sarria. There are lots of groups - school kids (boys from Ireland on school trip), girlfriends away for a week together,...

Day 18/33 Sarria - Portomarín We left our “bunker” style accommodation around 0800 and headed out of town. We had totally missed quite a nice area, further up where most of the Albergues were. Lovely views from the top over Sarria. A low mist but no rain the whole day. We were ambushed by fundraisers for the “Deaf & Blind”, bit strange and hope it was genuine. A really nice walk through lots of forest. Stopped for breakfast at Barbedelo and then n...

Day 17/32 Samos - Sarria A leisurely start. Nice to be able to make coffee and toast at accommodation. We headed off around 0900. A low fog after rain all night. Temp around 12d. Quite a bit of roadside to start. Again we thought a coffee stop about 3k in, but not a sausage! Again it was 12k before coffee. We passed through 5 villages marked on the map - most of them like ghost towns, very sad. A few had some nice houses with well kept grounds, but the other...

Day 16/31 Biduedo - Samos Headed off at 0800 and a lovely walk to Triacastela. We saw Max & Anthony having a say off, and David and Suzzane. We passed through a quite a few small villages. The real difference since leaving Villafranca is the type of villages. They seem very much farm working villages. Stock get moved around regularly through the villages so there is s*** everywhere! The villages are less likely to offer services ie COFFEE! So today think...