Day 45: Silleda to Eiravedra

Today began with very promising blue skies. After Mass and breakfast, we set out from the little hotel for the penultimate day on the road. I think the past three days of rain and slopes had taken its toll as I can't say I felt very animated, but at least it was dry. Leaving Silleda and then dropping down from the main road on to a rural path, looking along the valley, we could see rain approaching. Fortunately, when it came, we were near a watering hole - a roadside bar - so stopped for another coffee till the shower had passed. By this time the distance to Santiago was already below 40km. We would see that number drop during the day to below 20km. Very heartening when the total was almost 1000km at the start of the whole Camino.

The rain stopped quite quickly and we were back down to the rural path and on the way to our first scheduled stop in Bandeira. The guide sums up the countryside as peaceful rural pathways and serene woodland walks. That was precisely how it was, alternating between the two. One of the things which has been notable is the proliferation of different fungi. I've always thought it would be very interesting to get to know about wild mushrooms and benefit from the knowledge through foraging but of course it has inherent dangers. Looking up some of the fungi we have seen along the way, it is frightening to see them possible consequences of eating some of them, but also how some quite colourful ones are edible. I think I'll leave it up the experts.

The food in Bandeira was all very edible. We dropped in on a bar for a bit of lunch and ended out with shared plates of Iberic ham from Alba de Tormes in Avila province, Cantimpalos chorizo from Segovia and some Castilian style cheese. It seemed only right to have a little glass of wine to accompany it, again from Castile. The lady in the bar was very friendly and wished us well on our way to Santiago. Credentials stamped (they have to be done at least twice a day on the final 100km to qualify for the Compostela parchment), we made our way along those peaceful pathways once again.

Today's route was punctuated quite nicely by villages with bars which broke the stage up very nicely. At Dornelas, I was greeted by the hospitalero at one of the albergues who had a bar in the hostel. He was obviously a bit of a handyman as he had made the bar and furniture himself from timber he had bought locally, from an entire tree. The bar also had a lagar (a winepress) which was a great conversation starter. The hospitalero and I chatted quite a lot about the Camino and I noticed that, although his Spanish was perfect, he has a slight accent which I discerned was Italian. True enough his name was Andrea from Milan and had left a former way of life 15 years ago to come and move to this idyllic village in Galicia to do his woodwork and welcome pilgrims. Quite a character!

More woodlands and another village, San Miguel de Castro, and the road took a very steep downward trajectory into the valley of the River Ulla. Crossing the bridge over the river at the aptly named Ponte Ulla, we had lost all the height we had gained since Ourense. The valley is traversed also by a high speed train bridge, recently installed to complete the Madrid-Galicia Ave train route.

The final two kilometres were gentler in gradient than the downward stretch, thankfully. I navigated a path to Eiravedra which is only slightly off the Camino, though the main reason was to avoid walking by the main road again.

Eiravedra is a village by the National road and our lodging tonight is a pension-bar-restaurant, the sort that used to be very popular and well used before the advent of high speed roads and rails. It provided all in one place a comfortable bed and a great pilgrim dinner (omelette and then sea bass and apple tart for me) for €15. And so to bed, to prepare for the last day into Santiago.