Fifteen kilometers along by mid day today at Xunqueira de Ambía, AJ and I elected to walk nineteen more on to Ourense (KM 890). We were enjoying café con leche and a “bocadillo”/sandwich in comfortably breezy mountain temperatures in the sweet little “Bocatería Beje’s Cafe” with a pretty, teenaged, brunette table helper who was willing to practice her high schooled English. A spectacular donkey cart load of hay left us all momentarily speechless.
Galician countryside makes pleasant walking. Usually. By shortly before 6 p.m., we were of a like mind that Ourense required the most difficult “city penetration” effort that either of us had ever attempted—miles of industrial concrete giving way to interminable high rise worker housing. It was 38C degrees/100 Fahrenheit, we were tired and hungry, and our “Convento de San Francisco” refugio seemed to be receding from us up at the top of Ourense’s highest hill.
Settled in and showered, amazingly, by 9 p.m. in the Café Bedoya for a Menu del Peregrino dinner, we were agreed that it had been a good day.
