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It was a room with four beds, with sheets, something you don’t often find on the Camino de Santiago. No towels but we carry our own lightweight backpacking towels. Bathroom down the hall. Even radiators to keep it warm. Since we were the only people in the room it was like a private room. In the busy season we would have had to share it.

Every day we get up and walk through the countryside and small towns. It is such a luxury to be able to walk 6-8 miles and never have to walk back. Each day’s walk is different and a surprise. On most days, every few miles there is a bar/cafe with great coffee and sometime fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Today I saw what I thought was a long rope (8 feet or more) across the gravel road we were walking on. I looked closer and realized that it was a line of catterpillers. We have never seen anything like it. 

Yesterday two large deer bounded out of the woods just ahead of us. 

We have seen four storks but no stork nests. Perhaps they continue on to Spain to have their chicks?

The first day out, we saw a little beaver-like animal in the grass. 

We’ve seen some peacocks and chickens. A few horses. Strangely, not a single cow or sheep or goat. (But we’ve smelled lots of manure spread in the fields we pass through. All the out-of-town land seems to be farm land.) 

We’ve seen two or three cats and lots and lots and lots of barking dogs behind fences, mostly in the towns. And today, for the first time, two dogs came out from the fence towards us. We were nervous at first but they turned out to be friendly. 

A very nice man, Oliver, runs the place. He had us sign in, we were 34 and 35 in 2017. He said he had about 1000 in 2016.

No printed menu, before each course he asked us which of two alternatives we wanted. We took one of each so we could try everything. The spinach gnochi was as good as anything we have had so far.

This seems to be the only business in Costamezzana, a really small place. They made us hard-boiled eggs to take and eat on the walk the next morning. Here is the outside:

Walking into Costamezzana.

The original VF was made by the Archbishop of Canterbury around 950 AD. Presumably he went by the easiest and most direct route. The modern VF still goes from Caterbury to Rome but often deviates from his path. The reason is that the most direct paths are now often covered by the major highways. Highway engineers also like to take the easiest and most direct path. This makes for unpleasant walking. So most of the VF is not the original path. This makes it less “authentic” but a better walk.

The “Lightfoot” guide is one of the most popular VF guides and has been for 10 years. It defines a VF path and publishes guide books for it and provides GPX tracks for the path. In the past few years the EAVF (European Accociation for the VF) has taken a leading role in improving the VF. One way they do this is to reroute the path away from roads and onto nicer walking paths. Usually this makes the path longer but nicer. They also provide a set of GPX tracks.

Sometimes both Lightfoot and the EAVF provide alternate tracks for some parts. As a result there are many variants of the VF. We have both the EAVF and Lightfoot tracks on our phones. Usually Wynette runs the EAVF track and I run the Lightfoot track (on our respective Track Navigotor apps).

Each day we look at the two tracks and any differences and decide which one we want to take. Since we like short we often take the shorter Lightfoot tracks and do a little more road walking. Actually we like walking past peoples’ houses so it fits our tastes better.

We will discuss “authenticity” issues later in this blog but we can say now that the VF is more like the Portuguese Camino than the Camino Frances. The Camino Frances mostly follows the original pilgrimage path. The Portuguese Camino is more of a pleasant walk through Portugal and frequently deviates significantly from the original path.