Day 23 The Duracell bears went over the mountain and what do you think they saw?

A helping hand at O my Goodness

Our stay with Smiley at Alto Poio

The rolling valleys of Gallicia

mmm same photo same hill climb

The stone which marks Gallicia Region

This was the biggest climb of the Camino up to O´Cebreiro (1330m) rechristened by me " o my goodness" The climb was through the beautiful green valleys and mountains as we passed into Gallicia. These vistas opened up to us as we grunted up surely but slowly and it really wasn´t as hard as we had imagined.

We reached O My Goodness at noon and had a coffee. There was quite a hysterical canadian pilgrim lady in the bar. She had lost her friend for the past 24 hours and the police were there. All ended well as at the end of the day we witnessed from our Albergue a tearful reunion. Her friend, who seemed geographically embarrassed, had wandered off into another vvalley...easy done and had no way to communicate.

It was ironic actually because O my goodness was where the former parish priest was the initator of the Camino upgrade and had come up with the yellow arrows which now line the whole camino.

He had built a beautiful albergue there but it was too early and we had to move on.

We at last reached Alto Poio which I think means high chicken and don´t ask me why , We had a very bad night at the Albergue last night ( Could I just mention an Arriba Aribba spanish tour group which was playing hard and came in at 10.30pm and turned on all the lights and spoke loudly to each other, turned off all the lights, had a long conversation about a chain saw snorer, one big guy walking up and down and i thought he might kill the snorer. Meanwhile in the next room the Danish ladies told us of a Frenchman who was poking snoreres with his walking pole.....snorers beware... well actually I can forgive snorers but really not bad behaviour.

We booked into a pension hostel which had a very user unfriendly manager who I called smiley. He was OK really but at one stage I was lying by myself in the room and he knocked on the door and then went into the bathroom and turned the light off." consumere". I was a bit scared of him after that and turned off every light around.,, must be a energy saving..

So ended our entry into Gallicia

We had Bob with us for tea which was good company and also two Danish ladies who told Betty their husbands would never cope with the Camino.

myself