Last full day, #33

Today was thankfully quite beautiful for walking, I will be grateful for the good memories of walking in shady, cool glades with broken sunshine filtering in. I suspect it is also less humid today, the temperature did not seem to leap by 15 degrees when the sun did shine on us for more than a minute or two.
It did start out a bit foggy and chilly enough for gloves and jackets,


But was quickly pleasant as the fog lifted.


These were two friends from Italy walking together, I teased them about being twins right down to their green water bottles hanging on the outboard side!


A couple of interesting markers -





And in this part of Galicia they apparently raise eucalyptus for pulp - there are kilometer after kilometer of wonderful-smelling eucalyptus forest!



We have stopped for the day at Lavacolla. "Lavar" is the Spanish word for wash, this was traditionally a place where pilgrims would wash themselves before their last short trek into Santiago. Today, it is more of the tourist hotel and restaurant suburb nearest Santiago's international airport, but we are much looking forward to our assault tomorrow on Monte de Gozo, the hill before Santiago, which we hope has a view of the city and Cathedral. Got laundry done and boots aired out, although we were asked, when we got downstairs, to please take the boots out of the window (a little too 'albergue' for the hotel).

After a short relax we went for a walk, explored the churchyard. The church only dates from 1840,


But it is obviously THE church in Lavacolla and the resting place of the majority of its citizens.





The oldest stones we could read were only from the 1930s, but there were one or two that we could not read at all. I imagine that stones flat on the ground and exposed to sun and rain just can't last very long.
Just to remind us that we are in the modern world and in tourist territory (although, come to think of it, Santiago has been tourist territory for a thousand years), we saw a commemorative coin making machine in the shape of Santiago. 1€ to make the coin and you use a .05€ to flatten and emboss. I'm pretty sure we have a Space Needle penny at home somewhere!


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