Wynchar Camino 2025

Using a local direction sign and adding a yellow Camino arrow. Looks a little odd but makes perfect sense.

Wynette crossing on the streams.

The old, beloved Camino yellow arrows are being replaced by more modern signs.

The Galicians love their horreos. In this trip we have seen ones with thatched roofs, which we had not seen before. This is a small decorative one but we have seen full-sized ones with thatched roofs. We heard that old, authentic ones are valuable, with up to $20,000 or more.

Yet another style of nutcracker.

Wanna buy a lake property in Galicia? It looks made-made. We heard a loud chorus of frogs as we were passing by. One phone number for locals and another for international buyers.

A beautiful field we passed.

On the trail.

A pilgrim rest and vending area with nice tables and benches. It even had, on the left, a microwave and a toaster oven. The sign said feel free to use the facilities even if you don’t buy anything.

• Camino walking: O Cádavo to Lugo, 6.4 miles in 3:35 hours, moving 2:32
• Elevation: up 607 feet, down 807 feet, from 1463 to 1942 feet
• A fairly short day. We walked six miles and then called a taxi to get us into Lugo, avoiding some major up and down into the city. The walk was again very nice, through farmland and past many streams. They sure have a lot of water in Galicia!
• We passed an albergue that we had had a reservation in but canceled when we changed our plans. When we got to the place we checked if it was open and took a photo of it because it had a nice logo. Apparently the owner noticed this and came out and ask us what we wanted. Wynette said a coffee and he said come on in. So we had another place that opened up early just for us.
• We saw quite a number of pilgrims today.
• We’re back in Lugo for two days. It has an ancient Roman wall that you can walk on all the way around, 1.4 miles. Apparently it is the only completely intact Roman city wall and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was great fun walking all around it.
• Total miles walked today (Camino plus wall plus around town) per Wynette’s watch: 11.45. Equivalent flights of stairs climbed: 64. That includes 3 to get up onto the top of the wall.
• We’re in Spain so we had another Indian food lunch. It was a set menu and was so massive we are skipping dinner.

We had made a reservation to stay in a private room in the albergue pictured above but cancelled it a day or two before because we couldn’t get some clear information we needed about the reservation. (They seemed to be the world’s worst communicators.)

We ended up sleeping a few miles before this place, where we blogged last night. We were glad for the change, but when we walked by the albergue today, we were curious about where we might have stayed and, also, we were hoping they’d be open to sell us coffee and a bathroom. When we got there we tried the door (locked) and looked in the window (dark inside). So we took a photo and started to move on. Then … a man came out from further down the street and asked why we were there. I guess he’d seen us looking in the window. I didn’t tell him we were the people who cancelled, but asked if there was a bar in town. He thought for a second and then said “follow me” and led us away from the albergue. At first, we thought he was inviting us into his house. He opened some large doors and indicated we should go in. It was not a public bar but evidently the bar/cafe that was associated with the albergue. (It’s not surprising it was closed. Albergues tend to kick the pilgrims out early and close early.)

We were able to order coffees, water, use the bathroom, plan the rest of our day.

He was gruff but nice at the same time.

While we were there, he’d left the door open and several other pilgrims came in after us. He served them as well.

There is an old joke that people who speak three languages are called trilingual, people who speak two languages are called bilingual, and people who speak one language are called Americans. I am in that category. I have studied French, Spanish, and Italian a little but never got any good. I just don’t enjoy learning languages.

But I do enjoy watching Wynette speak Spanish with the people here. A lot of language understanding is based on context. When she talks with, say, a taxi driver I get some things just because I know what they are probably talking about and hearing words I do know and cognates.

Once in a while I get what they are saying when she doesn’t because she is trying hard to understand their words and I just hear a few words I know and think about the context and what they are probably saying. Kind of a forest and trees situation. This happens less and less as she gets better at Spanish.

Yesterday, we were walking from our pension to a restaurant. We approached the woman shown above. She seemed to be in her 90s or so. She stopped and smiled at us and it seemed wanted to talk. Sometimes the older Galicians do like to chat. She looked us up and down and then said (in Spanish) “you must be peregrinos!”. Then she pointed to our shoes. We didn’t have packs or poles but we were wearing walking shoes and sandals respectively. Part of the Camino uniform. (Many pilgrims, like me, change to sandals at night to rest our feet.)

I may have misinterpreted her but what I got out of that is that she was surprised to see such old peregrinos. We have noticed that we are quite a bit older than just about anyone we have seen on this Camino (Primitivo). The vast majority of walkers we see are probably 50 or younger and most of those are probably 30 or younger. Although today, where we had lunch, we met a couple from Ireland who were probably in their 60s. They mentioned that they were newly retired.

We passed this in a little town today and I was thinking it was some new kind of satellite antenna. We we tried the new feature where you have Gemini (the AI) look through your camera and you can ask questions about it. It said it was an old-style TV antenna that people used to use before cable and satellite TV. Oh yeah, I do vaguely remember that.

In my defense, this was a pretty small town in the mountains and I didn’t think they would be close enough to a broadcast antenna for a regular antenna to be useful.

This was in a small grocery store. To me it represented the old-time style that we love about Spain. Note the slate roof. We are in slate country again.

This is a closer view of the old picnic tables beside the chapel. We saw several more along the trail, all in bad shape, some better than these. They look pretty bad but I got to thinking about it and I decided they were actually high quality constructions. They were maybe 50-60 or more years old and still there. The wood planks were thick and sturdy.

Yes, we are in slate county, even the sidewalks. We see slate stacked up everywhere.

We’ve seen some beautiful, very even slate roofs and many like this, a bit worse for wear.

The coffee machine at the little bar that opened especially for us. It has a Camino shell. They are all pretty similar but I did see a modern one where you had buttons for the various coffee styles.

A pay scale in a bus station. Get your weight for 20 euro cents. I remember these machines but they were old-fashioned even when I was young. That’s my pack.

Spain has a lot less crime than most parts of the world. Definitely less than the US. We’ve talked about this in blogs of previous trips, but we are always amazed at how trusting people are here. For example, it’s extremely rare to pay for coffee when you order it, even if the bar is full and busy. They never bring you a bill. When you are done, you walk up to the counter to pay. They, somehow, always seem to remember what you ordered. One time, last year, we forgot to pay for our coffee and a sandwich in a bus station. We remembered it after we were on the bus and many miles away. Oops.

With the pack transfer we are doing, there is a high amount of trust involved:

You pack up our bag and leave it in the hotel lobby in the morning before you set out for the day. (Have to get it there before 8:00, no sleeping in.) Often (usually!) there is no one in the lobby minding the desk. The door to the lobby might be open and certainly not locked. There may or may not be other bags along with yours.

You say a little prayer and head out. You get to your place for the night and the bag is sitting in the lobby of the place where you are staying. Again, unattended.

Obviously, this works because there is very little theft going on in these towns.

If we lost the bag, it would be a huge inconvenience. Possibly enough of a problem to halt a Camino since you need just about every item in that bag or you wouldn’t have brought it on the Camino. Of course, we don’t transfer things that would be a major problem to lose: e.g., medication, passports, phones, etc.

But lots and lots of people do pack transfer and so far, I haven’t heard of anyone not getting their bag eventually. If the bag wasn’t there when they arrived at their place for the night it wasn’t because of theft, it was a screw up of the transfer company or some screw up in communication.