Sep 28, 20174 min read

Day 25 – Fire it up!

Day 25- Villafranca to La Faba. 32kms, 8 hours.

What a day. Of course Anna and i are suckers for punishment. As if 25 days and 650kms werent enough already. There were 2 routes for the first 10km. Follow the road or straight up over a mountain and add an extra few kms. The roads no challenge so we chose the route up. Straight up! Jess the smart one (though she did get lumped with clinger Tim, an old american man) decided to follow the road.

We took forever to get out of bed today, forever! This camino is such a mental game. Physically its tough but mentally its an absolute killer. Anna said we need something to pick us up and finds a Barack Obama motivational speech ‘fire it up!’ on youtube. And after saying fire it up a hundred times out loud we got ourselves together and made it…downstairs. We couldnt even be bothered walking our usual 5-10km before stopping for breakfast. We just ate downstairs at the albergue. The old couple who ran it were just so sweet. The lady was so concerned for rain that she found us all ponchos/raincoats to take with us. So we are loaded up with heavy raincoats on the off chance it will rain. It hasnt.

So off we hop. We split up and anna and i start our ascent. A couple of pilgrims saw us heading up and yelled out ‘are you guys crazy?! You know we have 2 days of mountains ahead of us?!’ Yeah we probably are but maybe its fomo that we knew the road wasnt an option. It was the best few hours. We climbed up this mountain, the views back over villafranca were great and we were up above everything and had escaped all the pilgrim traffic. It was just us on the path. It was like a bushwalk at home, through burnt bush in parts. I ran into a man with a donkey and jokingly asked for a ride and photo. It ended up with me getting headlocked and kissed and no donkey ride! We veered off track a little and ended up in Pradela. A tiny rural town surrounded by veggie crops. We were ravenous so stopped at the first place we could find. What a find! The lady made us a bocadillo – Warm bread, she carved fresh ham off the bone in front of us, cheese and then the sweetest tomatoes from her garden. We ate outside on the usual plastic table and chairs while the cutest dog and cats begged for our food. The towns popular for chestnuts apparently so we had the biggest slice of her homemade chestnut cake and then as we were leaving she offers us a shot of chestnut liqueur. Holy moly! Mouth burning strong. Glad it was only the smallest shot! She joked ‘pikino shot buen camino, uno shot no camino!’. Id believe that.

We then descend back down to the road and spend the day walking along side freeways, roads and under huge viaducts. Was getting my planning nerd on, just in awe at the engineering of them all.

We had told jess to meet us in La Faba a village on a mountain. At about 3pm we knew we must be getting close to the climb. My legs already a little wobbly from the days hike already but then we had another huge steep climb up an uneven rocky path. I just went for it and powered up only stopping when we came across an old spanish man looking after 2 cows. Anna speaks spanish so we chatted to him before he offered for us to live with him in La Faba and look after his cows. Maybe next time…

Arrived in La Faba, exhausted as per every other day on the camino. Our albergue was an old stone building next to a church a little out of town on almost something similar to a peninsula with valleys either side.

Went out for a communal dinner at a vegetarian restaurant run by 2 italian and 1 irish guy. Set menu, was delicious but why serve lentils when you know we all are in close sleeping quarters!?!

After dinner, maybe cos we were over tired, while patching up blisters and restrapping my ankle (yeah add that in the mix now), everything was hilarious. The towns we are in now are on the 150km pilgrim route where a lot of people just come to walk the last sections of the camino. We had all these older german people giving their opinions on what to do. And trust me after a month, its wearing thin. Weve tried everything, heard everything. One guy even told us you need to lather your feet in so much vaseline that at the end of the day when you take your sock off and throw it at the wall, it sticks. Buddy if you are carrying that much vas around you are a fool!. Anyways, i just decided to strap most of my feet, parts that werent even a problem just to confuse the non english speakers. Tim the american goes ive been so lucky so far my feet are fine. Tim, youve walked 2 days and hitchhiked half of those days. Come back to me when youve done 25.

Our bunks were up on a mezanine level with bathroom and laundry underneath. At 9:13pm all of us nearly witnessed the start of world war 3. A fresh new american lady put on a load in the dryer and it made such a racket, woke up people, got people confused as to what it was. One young german girl who stsrted when we did, wasnt having a bar of it. Threw her blanket back. ‘WHO IS DRYING?!!!! YOU CANNOT BE DOING THAT’. she then storms downstairs confronts the american woman. ‘Ill turn it off at 10pm when the lights go out’. The 15 of us upstairs are peering over the balcony in the dark trying to get a look. ‘CANT YOU READ?!! IT SAYS NO. DRYING. AFTER. 9PM. TURN IT OFF! All of us sniggering. She then turns it off and storms back upstairs and jumps into bed. Love a bit of bedtime drama

R.x