Whoa, I slept in this morning until 7am. I don't set an alarm because people start getting up about 4:30am and eventually the rustling around wakes me up. But this morning I slept through all the ruckus. I got out on the road about 8am, the latest I've ever left. But I must be gaining speed because I did 13.7 miles in 5.5 hours with two coffee and snack stops. That's 2.5 miles per hour. Up until the last few days I could only walk 2 miles in an hour. It's quite a change from my 4 miles per hour.
The family walking with the baby were in the Albergue last night. They are not in the one I am in now, but there are several in this town. Before I left this morning, while I was eating my yogurt and banana, I met three Irish folks a woman and two men. The older retired man was the uncle of the woman. They have been doing the Camino in stages for a few years, one week each year. This year they were starting in Astorga, so today was their first day. I ran into them in all the café and snack stops. They are staying in a different Albergue down the road.
I'm staying at an Albergue run by the British Confraternity so we are having tea and biscuits, which are really not what we call biscuits, they are more like cracker cookies. This evening I'm going across the street to the church to hear the Benedictine monks do Gregorian chants. And I just met a girl from Coto de Caza named Heaven who is walking with a guy from León named Angel. A very amazing confluence.
The Camino today was a slow climb through the lower part of the mountain. Tomorrow we climb to the highest point we will reach on the whole Camino, even higher than we got in the Pyranees. The landscape today was varied and textured. At one point I was walking through this dense wooded area. I expected a hobbit to pop up at any time. In the wooded area there was another fence with wooden stick crosses on it. This one went on for about a quarter of a mile. When I left the Albergue this morning it was chilly and there were huge black clouds out in the direction I was headed. I fear a rain storm, but it didn't happen. It was windy which added to the chill factor and the wind blew the clouds away. I walked against a pretty strong headwind most of the day, except when I was in the hobbit warren.
At the highest point tomorrow I will see the Cruz del Ferro (Iron Cross) which is where we drop the rock or other object we have carried up the hill here I will leave Sandy's purple rock from Australia, Daniel's name, some broken pieces of Camino tile and shells from home.
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