Astorga to El Ganso

June 1st - Astorga to El Ganso
Wow- what a night at the Albergue San Javier! I've stayed there twice in the past and really enjoyed it and in fact stayed an extra night in 2009 because my friend Ruth had hurt her foot and needed an extra day to see if it was going to be okay for walking. (In the end it wasn't okay but at the time all we lnew was that it hurt too much to walk on). There were never any negative issues in the past at this albergue, but they must have gotten some new beds since 2009 because my god they squeak! I couldn't even move an arm in mine without it squeaking. And as anyone who's done much walking knows, many walker's legs jump around like crazy from time to time. At best I'm a wiggler and a flipper at night and between me and the other night flippers and wigglers we kept up quite a racket and gave all the loud snorers real competition! We couldn't get out of there fast enough in the morning since neither one of us had much sleep and we re both feeling pretty claustrophobic by that time since there must have been 50 or 60 people all in a big room on our floor. We were out of there and looking for breakfast by 7:00 which we found at the Gaudi Hotel - a much more upscale place than we had slept in!

The walk out of Astorga is on the sidewalk for the first couple of kilometers so that's never fun, but it soon turned into a groomed path that shadowed the road and took us through two or three small villages where we managed to stop for coffee or a snack. A particular surprise was the bar at Murias de Rechivaldo where we stopped for breakfast after our first 5 kilometers. We stopped at a little spot that served a lot of organic food and so in addition to our glass of organic orange juice we had a panini (I know wrong country!) with avocado, red peppers, tomatoes and arugula - it was delicious! We really miss vegetables, especially anything that hasn't been cooked to mush or deep fried so our panini was a welcome change. Even after we got onto the path today's walk was mostly quite straight with few elevation changes. But we are getting into lavender country and the smells of the wild flowers - lavender, thyme and broom was wonderful.  Between our frequent stops and the increasingly lovely path we had a lovely day walking in spite of our tiredness.

Then we stopped at the Cowboy Bar at El Ganso, a town made infamous during medieval years for its friendly women who plied the world's oldest trade on the hillsides of the entrance to town as the pilgrims came through the area to replenish their supplies and presumably their spirits. We had thought we might want a couple of short days after our night in Astorga so we checked out the albergue and it looked more than adequate. It had a nice little courtyard in the middle where clothes were blowing in the breeze and more toilets and showers than usual as well as a kitchen that was supplied with bread, butter and jam, the typical little sweet Spanish packaged muffins and cookies as well as coffee, tea, hot chocolate and lots of milk for our breakfasts. So we stayed and had a relaxing afternoon and a good rest.