Day 30 - Triacastela to Sarria

Pilgrim central - top of the hill in Sarria.

Today we arrived in Sarria. To take just one of the many options on offer, we have 113km to go - just five more days. To understand the significance of this: To prove that you've walked the Camino, you can pick up one or two certificates. One certificate certifies that you've done the walk for spiritual reasons, the other just that you've covered the distance. To get these, you must prove you've walked at least 100km. That means Sarria is the starting point. From now on, numbers on the trail will double (or something like that).

A small section of the passport showing from St Jean Pied de Port to Astorga.

To prove that you've done it, you need to acquire a pilgrim passport and get it stamped every day. Over the last 100km you need to get it stamped twice a day. Cyclists need to complete the last 200km. In checking the Pilgrim Office in Santiago, it seems that 815 pilgrims have already picked up their certificates today, so we can expect to see a whole lot more people on the path from now on - it's going to get crowded out there. You can see why there is so much pilgrim accommodation here in Sarria. Incidentally, pre-Covid it was estimated that 300,000 pilgrims a year walked in to Santiago. We're approaching peak time, so there'll be more per day for the next month or two, but over the winter months there'll be far fewer. As well, there are many pilgrim routes - only 60 percent are said to walk the French route, but over the next few days walkers on the Norte, and Primitivo routes (and possibly others) will merge with our path.

Goodbye to Casa Pepe at 7.30am.

Back to today. We had the option of an early breakfast, but decided to wait until it was light. The usual breakfast of coffee and juice, which are great, but then yet more toast, stringy ham and cheese. I've opted for honey lately, as we have our own jar. I also threw some cake in my pack. For some reason cake (pre-wrapped and presumably everlasting) is always an option for breakfast.

It wasn't raining as we set off for the first kilometre on a nice sealed surface along the valley floor.

This very isolated art gallery was open for business before 8am.

It didn't stay that way for long. The trail reared up, climbing steeply on a very rough surface.

Over the next 2km we climbed more than 200m, which warmed us up considerably.

Finally, we came out on to another sealed road with some good vistas of the surrounding countryside.

Inevitably, there were a few steep descents.

We did the normal routine of finding coffee and toilets, but things were fairly uneventful after that. As always, we constantly found what seemed to be nice photo opportunities. 

These slugs are interesting - we see lots of them. This one was about 10cm long.

Donkeys are always cute.

We've both been feeling very tired lately, but fortunately it was a short day and Sarria soon hove into view.

We walked up the main pilgrim street. We'd previously stopped at the pilgrim office to get a stamp in our passport. They told us that tomorrow is the festival of San Juan (St John) and tonight there's all sorts of celebrations, including a big bonfire starting at 10pm. It's also got pagan roots relating to the summer solstice. Given our current state of lethargy, you can guarantee we'll be tucked up by then.

Our hotel was through town, so we decided to have a big lunch on the way, then rest up, with a supermarket salad in our room and an early night. I've been out and got supplies, we've already had a siesta and we're looking forward to a relatively sober early night. (although only a few of our relatives are always sober)

Distance to go - how precise is that?

Just one last thing. All along the way there are concrete posts marking the direction and giving the remaining distance to Santiago de Compostela. They purport to be very precise, but are wildly inconsistent, but you get the idea.

Here's today's Relive video: https://www.relive.cc/view/v8qkBW3Jz36

Here's today photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/LzDFXK5XayKerh6D8

Music is a bit problematic. Cathie's sister Amy has sent a link to Bruce Springsteen, but it was too sophisticated for us. Here it is though: https://youtu.be/izSK_fFv4tM

Cathie chose this: https://youtu.be/Jr0hQOSur4w

I'm afraid I've let the side down completely: https://youtu.be/jkmInTN-9NA

As a footnote. I went to the supermarket a couple of hundred metres down the street. Two 1.5 litre bottles of water for 19 cents each. A cesar salad for 2.29, but the highlight was the huge mixed salad for 1.80.

We had absolutely no chance of eating all this.

As well, a litre of beer for one euro. Not that it was a very good beer - just a tasteless lager. The surprising thing was that in such a huge supermarket, with a vast range of nice-looking beer, that was the only one you could but cold. We ate very well, though, and healthily.