Day 3

Good morning Palais de Rei. The forecast today is sunshine and a night of 21°C. (70°F) That’s definitely hat and shorts weather.

Today’s plan is to walk to Melide and that’s a shorter walk. My left foot and right knee are still bothering me quite a bit so I’m planning to get ahead with a cab and walk nine or 10 km into town. Each day when I wake up my foot in my knee feel a little better.

What a great way to train for a Camino.

The start of the day was perfect. Not. Cloud in the sky and a gentle breeze whenever you needed it. My injuries are not gone but I felt better than I have for the past two days. Of course that’s not saying much.

I was gifted a watch that tracks my heart rate amongst other metrics. On my first day my heart beat was charted from 56 bpm to 135 bpm. Let me see, what would have gotten my heart rate up that high? Oh, yeah. That range was slightly lower yesterday and today my heart rate rate typically was between 103 and 107 bpm. A pretty big improvement. In all honesty today wasn’t nearly as challenging as the past days.

There was a first however. I smoked past someone on the trail and they never past me. Smoked meaning I got ahead of someone who was walking. I may not be the slowest pilgrim contrary to popular rumour. So there…..and it wasn’t someone with one leg, our making their way in a wheel chair. They were simply slower than me.

Just before I got into a small town before Melide I decided to step off the trail and have an Aquarius Lemon. After I finished the drink I made my way back to the trail and there, lo and behold is Siobhan. I scurried up the street and Stephen and Ivar were there as well. They had past me 30 seconds before without seeing me.

This crazy coincidence is really hard to imagine. I must have been walking ahead of the the whole time. Stopping for 10 minutes was just enough time for them to close the gap.

So I joined up with my team and we walked into Melide between 12:30 and 1pm. This turns out to be too early for check-in at our Hostal/Pension so we decided to have pulpo. There is a very famous restaurant called Pulperia a Garnache made famous by Susan, Bene , and I eating here in 2013. Here’s the good news. It has only changed its pricing; otherwise it is the same place in every respect. Delicious.

From there we walked to our accommodations and checked in. I’m going to tell you….Ivar has selected some pretty swank places. This is likely the best.

Now, to do laundry.

It’s not practical to bring enough clothing for a week’s walking so doing laundry is a necessity. Lucky for me the Albergue beside us has a lavandrie. 5 Euros to wash, including soap, and 2 Euros for 25 minutes of drying. As you might expect there is a lineup of stinky pilgrims needing these machines. By some mysterious coincidence I walked right in and got a machine to wash. I stood at the end and actually got the only dryer. Options including line drying will take a lot longer.

I’ve got places to go and people to see…

When the drying cycle was completed I discovered an extra sock in the machine. Lacking a better idea I just put it on the top of the dryer thinking the owner would stand the best chance of finding it.

Shortly after I got back to the room, it was time to meet up with Ivar, Stephen, and Siobhan. We had agreed to go to a bakery. That is Ivar‘s family‘s favorite. After having some delicious pastries, we headed back towards the hotel and stopped in a bar. Now you wouldn’t think much of any of this except two people sitting at a table beside us said “excuse me, but did you do your laundry right after us today?” I did recognize the two and said I believe I did and they said did you find an extra sock to which I said I believe I did. Turns out they had left the sock accidentally in the machine and I had found it and they had gotten it back and we’re so appreciative. Anne and Ivan from Tennessee were just thrilled to get their sock back.

The Camino provides.

So tomorrow, I don’t know how I’m going to do. One thing is for sure I’m not going to just be headstrong and hurt myself, and there is a chance of drizzle partway through the day. Today was exceptional weather and tomorrow’s gonna turn a bit on us.

Let’s see what happens.