rufmita: Story in pictures

We left Ferreira bright and early, donning smiles, and turned the wrong way. Yup. Our short day just got longer. Luckily we could circle back around, only adding a couple of kilometers to our Day 11 journey to Melide.

I normally have a bazillion words streaming around in my head, but today I focused on images.

Normality returned and we started in the foggy drizzle of Northern Spain.

The crisp air kept us moving quick and we soon forgot about our legs and feet, and relished in the beauty of this place.

Fields of corn.

Fields of cows.

We think this is hay wrapped in plastic. It has a very distinctive sicky sweet smell that has become a part of this path.

I love waking the paths through the farm land, but the little stone houses in the towns are incredible.

Remember yesterday, I asked what these skinny little structures are, well MJ's family came to the rescue and these building are called horreos. The horreros are used to store corn, etc. In the Province of Asturias the horreos are more of a square shape, and not so narrow, but also built on stilts.

Crossing a creek, we found this little shrine. The writing on the slab says to make your own path in life - which seems a little ironic since we are following a path made in the 9th Century by King Alfonso II.

Another difference we've noticed in Galicia is that the cemeteries are on the church property, while in Asturias we saw separate, walled off cemeteries.

Today there was a lot more ups and downs than yesterday. On one of our steep inclines the wind started to blast water molecules in our faces and we came around a corner to see this:

The temperature drop quickened our steps even more and before you know it we've turned another corner to see this:

A lady with purple hair, 2 dogs, and 7 cats invited us in for hot tea. Of course we went in, and she had some handmade jewelry in her little house.

The kittens and pups brightened our mid morning brain, and we continued on.

As we decreased in elevation, that mid day sun burned off our cool cloud cover and the heat turned on.

As we walk through the little towns we always joke about the fact that there are no people, and yet signs of life. One of the signs we see often is clean laundry blowing in the wind. At this point, we are both quite jealous of people with clean clothes.

Each day at about 20 km our feet cry out for us to stop. According to the map, today was supposed to be 21 km, but remember, we took an extra circle this

morning, but we knew we were still quite far from Melide :(

We both do a really good job staying positive and making jokes so that we can laugh. One of the qualities that makes a good hiking partner.

Something else I've noticed on this journey is that people, although we never see them, do an amazing job at taking care of their house.

Flowers planted everywhere, clean yards, and lots of dogs.

Our short day seemed never ending.

We did walk right by a flower nursery.

As we came closer to Melide, signs of civilization picked up. We spent a lot of time on the road again, and looked up to notice this.

Why in the world are Spanish STOP signs in English??

In our normal fashion we hobbled into Melide - for a total of 27 km. This time we were faster and when we got to town it was bustling. We knew that we'd better check in to our hotel, get our boots off, and head to lunch and then to stock up on groceries before the town went into siesta mode.

We also stopped by the big church here and it was open!