6th September during breakfast we got to know Amy and Jaqueline from Connecticut, the two ladies who arrived late last night. They had chosen the winter Camino to avoid the crowd, but had to realize that the infrastructure on this Way of Saint James was so poor that they had even problems to find water. Yesterday they had arrived at a church where the priest had invited them to join the mess and later to stay for dinner. That was the reason why they had arrived late by taxi, and didn’t join our table anymore and went directly to bed. But they still heard Francisco on the hurdy-gurdy and me getting my first lesson in trying the “Ode to Joy”.
After breakfast I worked a bit on my diary and Robert continued the conversation with the two pilgrim ladies, convincing them to join the Camino Frances to be better off and having more opportunities to find food and lodging along the main way. We had the impression that the Camino Frances was currently not too busy. They took a taxi to get to the Camino Frances while we were packing our bikes. Today most of the tour was no longer following any river valleys, but more on high lands which were very exposed to wind. Luckily the wind came from the south and brought very hot and dry air from the Sahara. We made good distance on the northbound Carretera Nacional, which was wide and without too much traffic.
The closer we got to crossing the Camino Frances the more we were curious if we would recognise the part of the trail which we had already taken to Santiago. When I looked on the map and I saw the main road going over a ridge I remembered the eucalyptus forest and the bridge we had taken crossing the road. We stopped at a restaurant in Hospital da Cruz on the hilltop at km 80 before Santiago, from where we sent a message to Lisa and Flori to see if there was a chance to meet them, but they were still in Ponferrada.
We got again a Camino stamp and something to drink and eat, but as we didn’t feel very welcome at this place we soon got on our bikes again. From now on it was mostly downhill to the river of Ferreira, and the hot tailwind pushed us even more. We could see some fire trucks coming towards us, and we saw smoke further east rising from a forest. Biking up to the pass close to Monte Picato we could overlook the horizon and tell where the clouds came from. The strong wind carried the smoke all the way to us, and the air got more and more hazy and caused us to cough. We actually had to bike through the smoke clouds to get back into clear and fresh air on the other side.
On our way to Lugo we passed through a village called Esperante and I asked Robert to take a photo of me at the town sign turning it into Esperanto with my hands forming an “O” instead of the “E”. While doing so our talk was heard by a lady on the opposite side of the road because she understood German. Her name was Pilar and she used to live in Switzerland and was so kind to invite us for a drink. She just moved back to Spain and was in the middle of the renovation of her house, where she was closer to her mother to be able to take care of her.
At the end of our visit the wind had managed to carry the smoke even over the mountain, and she was very sad that she could smell it again and was worried about the threat to lot of nature once more. We had to continue and it was again mostly downhill to Lugo as the city was again at the Rio Miño that had accompanied us all the way from the Portuguese border.
Lugo is known for its complete Roman city wall which still exists in a full circle around the old town. The surrounding buildings of Lugo were not very impressing from an architectural point of view, because nowadays nearly 100.000 people live in this city.
Entering the old part of town through the Roman gate at the Cathedral Santa Maria we went up the Roman wall and biked on the 2 km long stretch surrounding the heart of the former Roman military camp. The wall still has 85 existing towers. The place was founded exactly 2.000 years ago by emperor Augustus and therefore originally called “Lucus Augusti”.
Having a perspective from the half round shaped towers being up to twelve-meter-high above the city floor you could perfectly look into town and discover the backyards and several ruins of Lugo. You could tell that a lot of buildings and surfaces had been abandoned and were in bad condition, while the modern city continued to grow more outside the wall and the show facades were developed mostly along the main roads. Maybe we had not enough time to discover the better side of Lugo that Pilar had fondly talked about, but we had to continue our way to get to our place for the night outside of Lugo, following now the Camino Primitivo to Romeán.
We reached the pilgrims hostel just before dusk, when the first clouds moved in.
It was an old typical granite building and we had dinner together with other pilgrims from Slowakia. Robert did laundry and I even found some time to work a bit on my diary before we went to bed.
