For days now there had been forecasts of rain which had not really manifested. Suddenly, though, we were at Day 5 - half way through the whole walk, and the rain came. There had been a downpour before we left MariCarmen's house and I think we were hoping that might be it. We had packed our raincoats (we're not complete idiots) and we had had our breakfast (I am now belatedly thinking, was there the usual plate of meat at breakfast? Maybe not. Maybe she had catered to our request to be vegetarians and we never even noticed! Feeling super-guilty now.) Our lunch rolls were wrapped up in tinfoil and were still warm, filled with tortilla. I had one last go at trying to make her love us, or at least warm to us, but there was nothing. No love. She didn't love us. Why should she? Had we not just recently been laughing about her kind hospitality? Had Peter not gone so far as to start referring to her house as "The Bates Motel". She didn't love us and she would never love us. It was unbearable.
It was about 19 minutes into our walking day when the skies opened and a torrential rain hit us. Peter doesn't know this but as soon as I'd got my own coat over me - which was nearer the top of my pack than his, I manfully covered his back while he screamed his displeasure and dug frantically for his coat and his camera case. If his camera got a soaking and stopped working, life wouldn't be worth living for anyone. Thankfully the camera was saved and we got our coats on, and before long the sky had cleared and rainbows were jumping around the sky.
It was never warm though - we'd worn 2 t-shirts in anticipation that it was going to be cooler. It made for good marching weather and I was still feeling in fine fettle physically, so we stormed along, and even overtook and then dropped the opposition (although it wasn't a race, obviously.)
I think the path had been described as troublesome until the English Cemetery after which it would be easier walking. I was finding it all easy-peasy and enjoyed taunting the more serious booted and poled runners by just popping past them.
The English Cemetery came surprisingly soon, and we didn't hang around as it was draughty. I think the story is that a big English battleship went down on a stormy night as it couldn't see the lighthouse they had then, which led to the building of a much larger lighthouse to prevent any such disaster happening again.
The Big Lighthouse in the distance.
We had lunch at 7 miles and were making good time. I didn't know it yet but at this point I'd given myself a blister marching in wet socks and shoes and probably karma for MariCarmen and then for being cheeky to the other walkers and then not paying enough respect at the English Cemetery. Sigh.
One of my favourite things about the whole walk was all these empty roads winding into the distance. They give me a feeling of...ah....freedom, adventure, moving forwards, mystery, surprises....delightful. To hell with the Romans and their straight roads. Give me a road that winds.
After a while the current winding road arrived us at this big, famous lighthouse. Okay, I'll look up the name,,,,The Cape Vilan lighthouse. There are facts about it. Peter had been teasing me that there'd be a cafe here and then telling me all the things I'd get - and then telling me it was closed. What an absolute fool. When he and Nick were there, he said, there was something there, but it was closed. Maybe there'd be a cafe. As we neared it we saw that the door was open and so we stepped inside.
I'd been out in the wind for so long I had to gather my thoughts to even begin to try to communicate, so in retrospect, rather oddly, when we entered the building, we turned our backs to the woman at the desk and looked for some time at some posters on the wall. Or pretended to. Then I thought of something to say. I said it in Spanish but I'll translate it for you because you're probably not as fluent as me. I said - do we need tickets to enter here?
In solid English she said something like "Yes you do. It costs 1 euro each. You cannot climb the lighthouse and the information is given in Spanish and not translated." Having come so far it just seemed the right thing to do to hand over our euros and drift in, although we didn't really know what for. There was a toilet there, so I used that. There was no cafe, and there was some art which Peter declared bad, and some big burnt out lightbulbs. There didn't seem to be a reason to buy a shopping bag with the Cape Vilan lighthouse printed on it. That was enough for us and we left.
Peter had been telling me some story about how Nick had made them go up to a church for no reason, adding in an extra hill towards the end of a long day's running. He doesn't like a church and I think at the time had felt this was extra work he didn't need. As luck would have it, our route had been changed so now it DID go up to the church. At the top of the hill there was a van and a skulking untrustworthy looking black dog, just about the height of a man's groin. It came over and gave Peter a good sniff, not wagging its tail and not friendly. We had to think that if it was a TERRIBLE dog the owners, having seen us, would have called it to them. It didn't do anything but it seemed like it was letting Peter know it could if it liked. I was mighty glad to get down the other side of the hill. So we didn't spend a lot of time on the church.
Peter tells me this is a fire beetle. V cool.
It had been a long day out and coming into Camarinas we were keenly anticipating getting some food and beer and a shower and then going out later and eating and drinking more.
We had had a good-tempered day, but now I could feel my blister, and my feet were sore in general. We badly needed something to eat - and Peter, who gets the hangry much worse than me, was starting to flip.
It was cruel, to be fair. We'd just missed all the afternoon food - the whole town smelled of fish and chips but presumably that had all been eaten for lunch. It was Sunday and apparently that's a big eat-out-for-lunch family day. The family must have eaten everything in town anyway - none of the bars had snacks and there were no food shops. We made it into town around about 4pm and to cut a long story short, couldn't get anything to eat until 8pm. We had an ill-advised beer but that made tempers flair even further. When we did finally go out to eat we weren't on our best form or in our best moods. We had a waitress who I quite liked because she was laid back but she was irritating Peter because she was - I don't know - maybe enjoying the role of being a waitress more than reliably delivering food to our table. I can see his point. We asked her what all the different kinds of meat were and they all turned out to be pork, but taken from different parts of poor piggy - so we had a plate of raxo which is from - one part of the pig - that with potatoes so thinly cut and then fried that they were nearly crisps. We had decided to share this dish but we had put it away in minutes so we had a plate of some other kind of pork to follow - which was a shame because it wasn't as good as the first one. We also had a couple of glasses of quality red wine and we went from ratchety and annoyed with each other to fine. I can see why people drink. It works and it works quickly!
We also went from empty to full super-quick so by the time the waitress came by with the postres menu, we were done, and headed back to our hotel.
At the hotel we were able to buy more red wine and did. We had developed a mighty thirst for red wine. Peter tried to go and get another glass once we were back up in our room, but this time was told no. And it was just as jolly well because it was a school night.
Maybe all this was a distraction from looking after my blister properly - in fact it definitely was. I just hoped it would go away.
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