Puebla de Sanabria

As I am nearing the halfway stage of my walk, and have endured a fair amount of excruciating discomfort during the cold nights along the way - no heating at all the night before last for instance - I have lashed out and taken a room in the Parador here. It´s a particularly welcome break from the routine of albergues as I seem to have picked up an injury to the tendon in my right leg, probably through having had to walk more than 30 kms. yesterday to find somewhere to sleep.

So I haven´t done a lot of sightseeing in this interesting-sounding town, and am not sure how I shall be feeling like walking on tomorrow. The good thing is that there´s a bus if necessary, the Camino running parallel with the main road into Galicia: we are now getting near to it.

Setting off today from Asturianos, the track was the muddiest yet, more like a river in fact. I skirted parts of it by climbing into the field, brushing my way under the trees. After about a km., the rain started, so I went to put the cover on my rucksack - but where was it? I tuck it in as a matter of course behind my shell. Had I been careless enough to leave a bit hanging out, so it had caught on one of those trees? Faced with carrying a wet rucksack for another 10 or more days, there was no alternative but to go back and look for it. No sign though; and my leg was hurting, and the rain looked set in. Time for some hitch-hiking, I thought to myself, but still I had to struggle on to the next village before anyone would stop.

Arriving here eventually, I started to unpack everything from the damp rucksack - and there was the rain cover, safely stowed away into a pocket I didn´t know existed, behind my shell.