12.6 miles
We checked out of our hotel and took a taxi back to our stopping point near the Embalse de Alcantara.
Beautiful weather (sunny day and temp. range 41-65) and lovely walking. More ups and downs than we’ve had for a while. Mediterranean scrub, pastures, oak plantation, pine plantation and lovely forest of cork oaks. Some isolated rock outcroppings.
We saw hardly anyone (a few sheep farmers with their dogs and sheep) until we got to Canaveral where we saw a couple of hikers having lunch at a cafe.
As we were leaving Canaveral, we also met two Dutch cyclists struggling with an uphill.
We saw our first deer on the walk and later learned that a peregrino had been bitten by a tick in the same area. (Some 30 percent of Spanish ticks transmit a deadly hemorrhagic disease.)
We took a 600 m detour from the Camino to the little hamlet of Grimaldo (population 65).
At the one restaurant/bar in town (no other food services), we encountered Rudy (the German peregrino) having lunch with a whole group of peregrinos. They all encouraged us to have lunch quickly before the bar stopped serving food at 4:00. However, it was 4:01 and already too late. We would have to wait until 8:00 if we wanted to eat!
Cesar our host for the night was also lunching at the bar and we walked with him and 2 Swiss women, Sylvia and Yvonne, to our lodgings for the night.
We have the blue Picasso room complete with Picasso biographies on our bedside table.
Cesar is a knowledgeable (he checked everyone’s route guidance for the next stage to make sure that it was up to date) and thoughtful host. He provided cookies and fruit and tea and coffee for snacks and breakfast supplies.
We were able to run a load of laundry in his washing machine (2 euros).
There are two Floridian peregrinos also staying in the house.
Stephen hung up a clothes line in the backyard and returned to find one of the Swiss women in possession!
We all returned to the bar for dinner where we were joined by a 75 year old Dutch woman who injured her knee in a cycling accident and is struggling a bit, another older woman who is walking backwards from Santiago, an Irishman and Rudy.
We ate with Rudy. He comes from a village near Bayreuth and does criminal tax investigations. He doesn’t understand why Stephen hasn’t retired!
Dinner (the 3-course pilgrim’s menu for 8 euros) was decent.