29th of August the stormy weather made the clouds roll in with curtains of rain over the mountain ridge, and the windows were washed by the horizontal flying rain. It didn’t take us too long to decide that this will be our day off the bikes and we’d be ready to relax and catch up on our diary.
Ivan had already left very early and Martina and Francesco were getting prepared to leave while we still had our breakfast, looking out the window into rain and fog. We wished them “Buen Camino” and had from then on the place completely to ourselves. The landlady Modesta could really be proud of her achievement with her beautiful Casa Galego. It was a former stable which she had turned into a very reduced simple architecture, offering big groups to stay in a bigger room of up to six beds and several smaller rooms with double beds. Everything was very minimalized and well organized. In the center she had her reception and a bar from where she had everything under control.
Due to the fires most of the people had avoided this part of the Camino and there were no other bookings than us for that day. So I could set up my little office and work on our website in the community room without disturbing anyone.
Only two pilgrims came by and had coffee and breakfast to warm up from the cold outside, Beatrice and Beppe from Brescia. We had a nice and intense conversation about the privilege of having the possibility to discover the world as we were able to do. We were discussing about the responsibility we have in our jobs, if we would look at it from the effects our acting has on the climate. She was working as a travel agent and said it was sometimes difficult for her to sell packages with a disproportionally high carbon footprint to clients. She said that it doesn’t make sense how expensive and complicated it is to travel by train within Europe, while the airplane is way too cheap and people would mostly prefer this option as the easier version, not thinking about the effects.
As we were getting hungry again Modesta was like a mother to us and made us lunch. For the rest of the day we were completely alone. Robert did laundry, but couldn’t hang it outside as it didn’t stop raining. So the dryer had to do this job. I was sitting most of the day behind the laptop. Anyway the day passed by much quicker than we thought.
