Oh my goodness, it's all coming back. This was a long, long day. The day's walk was in the region of 15 miles (it was always marked in km so we were never that sure) but we somehow added in another 4.
We had to go and find somewhere to have breakfast and there wasn't that much choice at whatever it was in the morning - maybe 8. We went into somewhere because it was open, not because it appealed, and it had three or four older guys up at the counter/bar who had either been up all night drinking or had got started good and early. I had to try and shout over them in bad Spanish to put in a breakfast order. This did work - always a surprise - and we got some sharp toast and good coffee. Someone was smoking just outside the doorway and the smell was drifting in and it made me feel sick. I think I had a food hangover from the binge we'd had the evening before. (Pale chips and mayonnaise and sausages soaked in salty wine.) It is astonishing to me that I was ever a smoker. Now it makes me gag. It also reminds me of a mystery that followed us through the journey and to which we never got a full answer. I wasn't 100% sure but people seemed to be asking me if I wanted Tomate with my tostadas or would I like manzanilla y mermelada? I'm not to this day sure what the tomato option would look like.
Aww, I've just googled it. It looks like it would have been tomato and garlic toast. I would have liked that. I'm going back.
Anyway, so this morning involved going back into town, and then later, we had to go to another town for lunch. It was the first morning that wasn't just classic scorchio. There was a bit of rain on the pavement and some low hanging clouds.
We went a bit wrong early in the journey and were rewarded with stumbling upon a "beautiful demoiselle. Quite an astonishing thing. It was me that found it by the way - it is doubly rewarding to see the thing and then have PB go ape-shit about it. We soon found our way which was a bit further down the road, but we'd added in more distance.
I promised myself that I was going to photoshop bears onto these tables later on.
Hahaha look.
There was a long stumble along sinky sand which was instantly improved by spotting a blue winged grasshoppery jumpy thing. We tried and tried to get a shot of it in flight but it was just too quick. It still looks amazing with its wings folded but I swear to God when it flew it had bright blue wings.
I don't know what this means.
You could just see fish in the river. Have these people never heard of pollution?
Oh yeah and we found ourselves on this weird, absolutely spanking new road. On a day like this, with a bar breakfast, and beautiful demoiselles in the woods, and later bears at picnic tables, and then a new road that nobody's ever walked on before - well you can start to question if your plane actually crashed on the way to Spain and you are now in. another dimension. There could be a bad film with Robin Williams about it. Was that pilgrim lady in the cafe a ghost, or were we ghosts? Was that why the student left in such a hurry? A lot of questions to be answered and not a lighthouse to be seen anywhere. Typical.
I must have been "focused" because there are no photos for ages. I remember us trailing around some town trying to cobble lunch together and it not going particularly well. It probably accounts for the rest of the extra mileage we did that day. Then there was a lot of walking on roads past houses with dogs that you're so grateful are behind bars. Their tails say "we're just playing" and their large barky growling heads saying "I'd like to take a big chunk out of you. Maybe I will." F-u-c-k.
It was much later on we came across this chap. I have no idea how Peter saw him as he was pretty much indistinguishable from the leaf litter on which he was sitting. It was one of these love at first sight things anyway. Pretty soon Peter had it swept up on a stick and was taking its photo. The thing wasn't super keen and it had a pointy dagger coming out of its back-side. "How do you know it's not a scorpion?" I asked him. He wasn't sure, but he wanted his hand near it for scale. PB you have big hands and they make things look smaller than they are, but anyway, here you go.
Love, love, love
Satisfied? I think he found out it was a grasshoppery thing in the end.
What you can't see is that we had just passed Tomas and Regina from Switzerland, who were the only other walkers we kind of bonded with. We kept bumping into them along the way. They were a bit older and weren't doing the exact same thing as us but seemed to be doing it in a similar way. We had just come across them sitting on a rock and had a chat and then moved on when we found the grasshopper scorpion, so they caught back up to us and whipped out their phones and tried to get photos of it too.
And then later on there was some more sinky sand. I know because I have a picture of it. Maybe this is a picture of us coming into Laxe - which is pronounced "Lashy" or roughly so.
We spent the night at the Hotel Playa de Laxe, which Peter had said was a bit anonymous and not one of his favourites but I really liked it. For one there was a receptionist who was really nice and funny and spoke good English and she knew exactly who we were and that we needed our bag and all that stuff.
I was too lazy and unadventurous to get it fired up, but the bath had some kind of whirl-pool thing you could turn on if you wanted. Instead I stood under the shower with its water thundering down on my tired head, and I felt better. I was genuinely worried about my feet - if they were going to hold up. They were really sore and they didn't want me to put on shoes. "I have to put on shoes or we can't get anything to eat" I told them and so they let me squeeze them back into the smelly, tight prison of shoes. "If I was you I would take some paracetamol" quoth Peter - and I really don't like to do that but I did - and in a while - after a beer or two, and more insane chips and croquettes in a bar because we just couldn't be doing with the fiddle faddle of a proper restaurant (we ordered salad too but after an explosion of banging noises in a back room, the bar maid emerged and said "I'm really really sorry but there is no salad". That one will just have to remain a mystery too.)
As an aside, before we went out to eat, I heard a commotion in the street and to my surprise looked out and saw cowboys and...american indians...on horseback, chasing each other down the street. It was not a hallucination, but again, I have no idea why. I have had a google but am none the wiser.
When we got back to the hotel the nice receptionist was still on and she showed us the Lighthouse Way wine - there's a local white wine and it comes in bottles with all the different lighthouses on them, so you can collect the set. There are 8 in all, but she only had 6 behind the bar. She brought them out to show us, I think Peter got a pic, and we had a glass just to make sure it was a good wine.
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