Mondañedo June 28

 Lourenza to Mondoñedo is not really a stage, it is part of a stage, but it is one of those decisions tour companies or people planning on their own make when the "official" stage is 30k+ AND hard.  For people going farther than Mondañedo, this is a good stop for coffee and a visit to the huge cathedral. (Maybe by definition cathedrals are huge.  In any case, this one is.)  I arrived at 9:30, which is absurdly early.  Yes, I could have doddled but why?  Anyway, I had a plan.  There is an eight mile circular walk, which seemed just the ticket.  

So off I headed to the starting point and immediately was faced with a huge, steep climb.  That´s how it is around here.  But up I went and started the trek.  It started as a dirt and stone path that morphed into a thick, grassy overgrown, path, that got progressively more overgrown, and it was raining, and there were big puddles, and even though the views were lovely (they would have been more lovely in better weather), I was not loving this new adventure.  There was a shortcut a couple miles in so I took it and ended up arriving at the hotel at about 11:30, so it was still a pretty short day: 11 1/2 miles.  But not easy miles.

The pretty path before it was overgrown:

And the pretty river:

And a dog guarding sheep, uhh, goats:

But the dog was wagging his tail at the same time that he was barking, giving off something of a mixed message.

Pieces of slate like this might make an attractive path in a garden:

A fig tree

There is a supermarket right near the hotel, but it is not very super.  It is about the size of a 7/11 except that it sells fresh meat, cut to order, but lettuce or fresh bread it does not sell.  It is not easy to stay supplied, and the next few days the pickings are going to be very slim, indeed, especially given that one of those days is in a town with a small hotel and a gas station and not much else and the other is a Sunday.

Tomorrow will be a challenging day, no, not challenging,  hard, as in really hard, but after tomorrow, the long, steep, ups and downs become less severe.  The weather continues to be very San Francisco-like, or maybe San Francisco on steroids, which, actually is not bad hiking weather.