After a very good breakfast at the Albergue, I set off to walk to St. Vincent with Simon from Cork, which turned out to be a lovely enlightening chat with a very interesting man. He’s done all sorts of exciting things and has some great insights. As Simon was having a short day of only 10 K and I had another 20 to cover, we said goodbye after the coffee and I headed off into St Vincent, where I ran into the Liverpudlian couple again and join them for lunch. They explained all about the Garanandal visions and predictions.

After lunch, and quite a long uphill climb to go in land away from the sea, I paused for a drink at the top of the hill, where I got chatting to another Irish couple who really put me to shame – they were running the Camino at 50 to 60 km per day. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen people running with quite significant backpacks, I was in huge admiration of them, but I doubt I’ll see them again as their pace will outstrip my stages very quickly. We shared an extended water stop with 0% alcohol beer, which I have found to be the ideal refresher when it is hot, and then they ran on and I strolled on!

The afternoon countryside was a very gentle walk, which was welcome as the temperature rose quite a bit to around 27c. My walking day ended after 27 km in a place called Pesus, which seems to be a truckstop rather than a town, and although I had booked into something called a Hostel, I was actually quite excited to discover for that for only 20 Euro I got a room and a bathroom on my own, which is actually quite a welcome treat after a few nights of communal sleeping.

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