Day 9 - Beariz to Forcarei

So this morning it was time to say goodbye to Pazos and jump into a taxi to get back to Beariz. A nice Spanish woman came to say hello and buen camino, practising her English. On leaving Beariz one comes to a sign, one offering the traditional route and one offering a diversion through a place called Alvite. The traditional route was shorter and involved less ashphalt so it was an easy choice.

Walking through the woods

One of the things here is the sheer mass of lichen - its a very good sign of clean air.

Moss, glorious moss...

It was one of those cloudy days when the rain can't decide whether or not to start. So there was a fair bit of putting poncho on / poncho off.

There was a bit of diversion in O Sisto where a sculptor had decided to carve pilgrims out of wood. Nice but the pilgrim kid had a face only a mother could love.

A 200m change in elevation built up a good appetite for lunch in the little town of Soutelo de Montes. It being a Sunday I was wondering whether I could get a decent lunch. The San Roque restuarant in the town centre was open and welcome.

It's one of the differences that I increasingly notice between the UK and much of the continent. The UK used to be a very high trust society - one could assume that to be a victim of crime you had to be very very unlucky. Now in our exciting new Britain, one assumes that one will be victim of crime unless one is careful and defensive. In the San Roque, I was asked to leave my rucksack on the floor in the downstairs bar, where anyone could have taken it, as the restuarant was on the first floor. So I did. And when I came down it was still there. But how nice to live in a society where trust is still taken for granted.

Lunch was also notable in that a chap on the next table got excited at talking to a pilgrim. He was a bit sneery about the taxi shuttle last night / this morning "you're not typical pilgrim, you luxury pilgrim" but otherwise interesting. He wanted to know opinions on Alvite and seemed shocked that one had missed out on passing through this village. He lived there and was involved in efforts to restore the place and was clearly very proud of the communal effort. It turned out that he had done the French translation of the guidebook that I was using and was a pal of the author.

Then it was a pretty easy 10km into Forcarei. What was less easy was that the room I had booked was at the top of four flights of stairs which was quite a haul at the end of the day. The manager of the hotel recommended Restaurante Victoria to eat at; unfortunately, being a Sunday, the place wasn't open. So went back to the hotel and persuaded the manager to serve up some bread, ham, cheese and olives. The hierbas was a mistake as I discovered, climbing back four flights of stairs.