DAY 18 (DAY 2 OF WALK) -MONDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER 2019 – PORTOMARIN TO PORTOS – 12 MILES

I slept terribly for most of last night having to get up during the night for at least a couple of pees and to take a couple of paracetamol to try and induce some drowsiness. Throughout the night I had my earplugs firmly inserted, but despite these, I could still hear the rumble of at least a couple of heavy snorers, but by around 5am sheer exhaustion overtook me and I finally drifted off. The next thing I was aware of was my bed frame being repeatedly knocked upon by a middle-aged Irish lady, all fully kitted up and ready for the days walk, informing me that my phone alarm kept going off but that I was not responding, and being as it was chucking out time at the hostel she thought she’d better try and get me back into the land of the living! Indeed, when I sat up and looked around everyone else had gone. Having established that I wasn’t, in fact, dead, the kind Irish lady wished me luck and was gone, leaving me to get dressed and pack my ruck sack as the cleaners busied themselves, stripping beds and sweeping floors around me to ensure I got the message that I was now, ‘Persona Non Gratis’ and should leave ASAP!

Before leaving however, I had to tend to a couple of nasty blisters that had formed on my both my little toes. So, with plasters applied, boots in ruck sack and trainers on feet I ventured out onto the streets of Portomarin, which because I was ‘late’ in leaving (around 9.30am I guess) al the thoroughfares had become a ghost town. Last night the streets and restaurants were bustling with hundreds of pilgrims. What a contrast and what a strange town to live and work in, with the daily ebb and flow of humanity!

Once off and hobbling, and I was hobbling at first with my painful little pinkies, but gradually the action of them still being lightly buffeted by my trainers seemed to gradually numb the pain and I was able to crack on at a fair pace, such a fair pace, in fact, that I managed to catch up with Una, the Irish lady who had woken me earlier. After a while we stopped at one of the cafes on the route and we had a good laugh as she explained that she and several of the other dormitory personnel thought that the reason for my lie in was because I’d got hammered the night before, especially when the tune that kept blaring out from my phone alarm was a song called, ‘When I taste Tequila’ by Dan & Shay, which makes several other references to alcoholic beverages during the song, such as scotch on the rocks, champagne and red wine!

Una was in the final few days of her Camino after starting 800 kms ago in France about a month ago. Unsurprisingly her pace was much slower than mine, so we said our goodbyes and I pressed on in the dull damp conditions through pleasant surroundings, sometimes through woods, often next to farmland, on quiet country lanes and occasionally next to the busy A road wending it’s way towards the ‘Emerald City’ (Santiago!).

It was along one such quiet lane that I eventually came to the one hostel that I had to book by phone (all the others I'd booked on the net), the Paso de Formiga, which I believe means something like ‘The Passage Of Ants’, which I guess viewed from around 1,000 feet in the air that’s what we’d all look like! Anyway, in the garden they had three unusual sculptures of ants, as you can see from the picture below.

I had a delightful meal that evening where I had the all-inclusive menu, but little did I think that when I chose my drink, vino tinto, that a whole bottle of red wine would be plonked in front of me! I also had the pleasure of meeting Brenda and Ted (Canadian). Raymond and his nephew Paul (Malaysian) and finally a married couple Russell and Laurie (USA) who were blind. Yes, that’s right, blind. I’ll tell you about them tomorrow!