Today’s distance 36 km
Elevation gain 400 m
Elevation loss 418 m
Total distance from Almería 1,357 km

We leave a little later this morning due to losing an hour’s sleep with the time change on entering Spain.

The promised sunshine failed to materialise. The sky is full of low cloud, although there is a speck of blue pushing through here and there. But all in all yet another day starts very grey, albeit dry.

We are soon walking along a freshly strimmed track with the pounding waves to the left and ancient stone walls to right. There is a lovely fresh smell of grass and sea. All very dramatic and beautiful.

This selection of photos was taken when the dial on my camera had turned onto an unknown setting. I don’t normally edit my photos at all, other than clipping. These look extremely dramatic. Normal service is resumed below.

But soon enough we are walking inland, uphill with the track running parallel to the PO-552 – so even if we can’t see the traffic, we can hear it. Then we are walking along the not too busy road which has an extremely wide shoulder so no worries about safety. This forms a pattern for today’s walk, lovely track for a while /road with wide shoulder for a while / repeat. Overall I think there was more road than track.

I plugged into my camino playlist and strode out for a while, enjoying getting up some speed. I passed a woman walking in socks! I paused to ask if she needed anything to help her on her way, but she said she was far more comfortable waking like this than in her boots which had been eating her feet. Such a pounding she would have taken on the hard surfaces.

The sun finally fought its way through and to celebrate I took my first shadow photo for what seems like weeks.

Then we were up, up and away from the road, climbing over rocks and boulders looking down on the sea and lighthouse. It was fabulous to be on uneven land for a while, even if it was a bit of an effort, and then down the other side, through countryside and farmland, until we approached our intended stage end at Baiona. But in following the arrows we realised we had bypassed the town and ended up a couple of km beyond.

The best use for cobble stones in my opinion!

We have followed the arrows all day today which have taken us pretty close to the coastline for most of the time.

After a drink and discussion we decided to continue to Ramallosa where we are staying in Pazo Pias, a lovely albergue attached to an hotel. The property used to be a monastery and I guess the albergue rooms are the cells the monks slept in. We each have a single room with washbasin, bed linen and bath towel. There are good bathroom facilities. The only other services are microwave and vending machine. 15€. Very comfortable in a beautiful old stone property in a nice town with plenty of shops and bars.

You can see I’ve enjoyed having a rare dry day to take some photos!