Week 3 – Sunday 20th July – Santiago De Compostella

Today we headed for Santiago De Compostella – about a 3 hour drive away. The drive through Green Spain helped explain why Green Spain is Green, as it rained for most of the way. Now that we have cleared France, Bilbao and Santander and all the reasons for trucks to congregate (borders and ports), the driving was much more pleasant, with campervans, a very rare truck and one obnoxiously slow driver the only minor obstacles on the trip.

The road itself was a combination of motorway and back road driving with one section being through a high mountain pass. About an hour out of Santiago, it cleared into blue skies. Jane delivered us to the front door of the hotel, which is a beautiful little hotel just on the edge of the historic city.

The hotel is a renovated historic building and is probably the nicest we’ve stayed in. I’m not sure what makes a 2-star hotel only have 2 stars, but our room is on the third floor and includes the bedroom, which is in the historic part of the hotel which leads through 3 ft thick walls to a glassed in sitting room and a small bathroom, both on the new extension that has been made to the hotel. From the window we get views over a nearby church and then the local country side, so it’s very picturesque and light. It is beautifully cool in the morning as it is west facing and when the sun streams in in the evening, the only solution is to head to the hotels very popular garden bar and enjoy a vino or cerveca (which is what I’m doing now as I type this) sitting under the shade of the wisteria..

After checking into the hotel we headed off for a walk around the historic part of the city. Ten minutes later, we returned to the hotel for me to change my shirt as one of the local seagulls landed a major league strike all over my back in tow places and my shoes – bastard. Returning to the site seeing, we wandered round more of the historic part of the city. There are lots of people there would have walked there as part of the pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostella. The walk which goes from various locations in France and Spain is one of the three most popular Christian pilgrimages in the world, along with Jerusalem and Rome and is known as the Camino de Santiago. We have been crossing the path of pilgrims since our day in St Jean Pied De Port and saw on that day a sign saying that Santiago De Compostella was 790ks away, so it’s quite a walk. You can recognise the walkers because they usually have a scallop shell swinging from their back packs, which is the official symbol of the Camino.

Santiago is the final burial place of Saint James (apparently he moved around abit after popping his clogs), hence it’s attraction to christian pilgrims. We heard it was a really nice town, hence its appeal to us. Having been here for just over a day, it really is a nice town and with the appeal of the hotel it has been one of our highlights of the trip. Funny that this was the one place that we weren’t sure if we would come to. Certainly the town and hotel have made up for the last couple of days along the top coast, which hasn’t been as good as the other stop-off points on the trip.

We stopped for a late lunch at one of the more characterful looking restaurants and then spent the evening in the garden bar of the hotel doing a catch-up of the blog for the last few days of our trip.

After our drinks, we went for a walk around the old town, as there is a stage set up outside the cathedral and they were having a local folk music and dancing festival and one of the acts was putting on a show.

Deciding to forego dinner, as the drinks in the bar came with a bowls of crisps and a bowl of olives with each round, we appeared to inadvertently move ourselves from the top of the food chain to the bottom as some small insect enjoyed the night dining on us. What was even more galling was that the previous night we’d been kept awake by one of those annoying wee midgees that buzzes in your ear all night, but was obviously feeding on something else. This night, the silent assassin was out and now both Anne and I are covered in insect bites.

As I said, I’m not sure what separates hotels from being two or three star, but maybe sound proofing is one of the criteria. Our hotel is lovely, but the guy in the room above us stomps around as if he’s got horses hooves. I hope that I didn’t make as much noise during the night. Fortunately, horse hoof man headed to bed prior to the end of the USA MotoGP and apart from a few obvious pit stops in the middle of the night and the midgee, we enjoyed a good nights sleep. Anne, who has the ability to sleep like the dead, even through the MotoGP heard nothing.