One Day of Rain

To Granja de Moreruela and Zamora (A 25 km walk and two buses for 50 km).

It was a complicated, but fun-filled day. First, it rained most of the day. I felt the first drops at 8:04, and it gradually built from a light mist to a hard horizontal rain for the last hour. Just before arriving in Granja the rain let up. It had been an unbelievable 27 days with no precipitation, so I can't complain about one day. Portions of this stage are really nice, on a primitive trail next to a lake, and most of it is on pleasant dirt/gravel farm roads.

The bus was complicated. In fact, it seemed that half the village had to be consulted when I inquired about how to get to Zamora. There is no afternoon bus (going south) from Granja to Zamora. But if you get the 2:30 bus to Santovenia (going north for 10 km), then there is a 3:15 bus from there to Zamora (going south, right through Granja, but doesn't stop there)! A 30 minute walk from my final stop was the Zamora albergue, and our friends Gene and Roseanne, who I knew had volunteered to be hosts there for the first half of October.

A communal meal was already planned, so I contributed bread and wine (symbolic??), which I had purchased on the route from the bus station.

It was a thrilling end to my Camino. Several folks from the USA were there for the night, and a good mix of Europeans were also among the 18 around the table. Pasta, of course.

 About 15 young people were working on an archeological site on a high ridge above the lake. They think it was a 9th century church.

 View from near the previous site.

 From the bridge in the previous picture. This section of trail requires just a bit of rock scrambling. The highway is another option if someone has an extreme fear of heights, but it would be a shame to miss this most beautiful stage.

 Back in Granja (similar picture of this sign in an April 2016 post).

 "The bus stops right there, by the yellow trash bin."

John's pasta fed 18 people with this much leftover. There's a reason the "feeding of the multitude" story is told 6 times in the 4 Gospels.