It was going to be another hot day so we decided to leave early – by our standards anyway. So we left at 8am. Given that we had left early it didn’t seem necessary to rush so I stopped at another farmacia to see if they had strapping tape (it has now become a challenge). They sold me another 20 euro silicon thingy which actually seems to help. I stopped at another shop or two and husband waited patiently. We also spotted an egg plant which impressed us both.

 

We eventually hit the second C town and walked and walked but no swimming hole so we stopped in air-con for a cold drink. As we were leaving we had to walk across some road works and there low and behold – another river to swim in. The road works interupted the access however so we kept walking. It was getting very very hot but we just wanted to get to our albergue in Villa. Diver Dave’s watch said it was 39 degrees as we headed to Villafranca del Bierzo. We went into heat wave coma and never checked again. I’m sure it was in the 40’s as we hit that last 4 kilometres. We did however see someone who we thought was the youngest person walking the Camino.

 

Albergue Leo was lovely – another Shirley recommendation – the young ladies even took charge of our washing and returned it to our room dry! I’m sure they only had to sit it in a pile outside for 10 minutes it was so hot but it was very nice of them. The beds even had pillows and lovely clean sheets! To the uninitiated you need to carry your own sleeping sheet on the camino – a sleeping bag is a luxury that I did miss some nights!

We headed up to the main square to withdraw money and eat some dinner and failed again to find a Jazztel recharge provider to recharge our Spanish sims. Things were looking grim – they expire on the 2nd July! We might have to spend hours trying to buy new ones so we can keep in touch with each other and call ahead to book beds. We were distracted from our worries, and at the same time quite impressed, by one of the in progress renovators up on the main square.

 

Anyway we had a lovely breeze through our room at night as Villafranca is at the base of some other mountains and is usually quite a cool place (or at least they said it was but this could be another rumour.)

I think we each had a bit of heat stroke today and perhaps it was not the best day to have done the morning wine tasting after all! Oh well – such is life.

 

 

Buenos Noches.