nearly time.

A week today I will be in Seville, ready to start walking the next morning. I have been practising regularly, I walk at least 6kms every day with a couple of days, each week, of walks between 15 and 20 kms. this has been greatly helped by the fantastic weather we have had this month. The weather has just got warmer and warmer, not even frosts at night now, today I walked in a T-shirt! The picture below shows a stream that I couldn't cross last winter! The water came over the stepping stones and poured into the abyss below and I froze half way over, I thought I was going to stay there indeffinately but eventually I managed to get my weight onto my back foot and I returned the way I had come.

Now there is almost no water, it is the same every where. We need water. Whenever I walk 'off road'' I am walking on dry leaves, I think this has caused my hayfever to come very early, something has, and there is no pollen about. The other cause could be the smoke everywhere, my smokey fire in the house at night and fires outside during the day. Lots of permitted fires, so many that even the locals are querying why, and lots of 'accidental fires', as there is low pressure the smoke is sitting like a layer of pollution.

This is a little chapel in the middle of nowhere, dedicated to 'Our Lady of the Snows' though there has been no snow this year.

I took this picture because it showed my village and where I had walked from but it is all lost in obscurity and haze.

The weather forecast says there will be a change next week and it may rain, I hope the rain falls up here and not too heavily in Andalucia and Extremadura!

walking!

Actually the miserable damp weather only lasted a couple of days and we are back to freezing nights and sunny days. I have started walking further and yesterday I excelled myself, I walked about 25kms, much further than I should have done so early in my training. I didn't expect it to be quite so far! I decided to try a new path, or rather, to combine 2 paths I know with a new bit in the middle. The new bit was long:(

I started by walking through the woods of A Fraga, I wanted to do this whilst the weather has been dry beacause, to get to where I wanted, I had to cross a mountain stream, with water-falls, on stepping stones. Last year the stones were under water in the winter and I could not get across, I froze with panic half way across, for a few moments I thought I was doomed to stay there forever! This year there has been no rain and the crossing was easy. I then got onto the road to Navea.

This road seemed to go on forever but the scenery was lovely.

The little church in Navea.

A reservoir beyond Navea.

It was the 'beyond Navea' that became interesting. I thought, naively, that once I got to the village I only had to cross a bridge and do a short walk to Trives. The picture below shows Navea in the distance and the road down to the bridge, taken from somewhere on the 9kms walk from the bridge. In Galicia, if you go down to a bridge you always have to walk back up again!

I did discover the answer to something that has perplexed me ever since I started walking here, that is, why is there a canal across the mountains. Now I know, the canal carries the water from the reservoir at As Guistolas to the top of this hill where it runs down pipes to an electricity station, I suppose to some kind of turbine, rather clever really. The road visible is part of the route I had to take to get back!

The reservoir is then formed by all the water flowing down the pipes and the the water is used again firther up, clever really.

I was exhausted when I got home, I thought I was going for a 4 hour walk but it took 6 hours. I didn't start till 11 and it was still very chilly then but it warmed up, as long as I was in the sun, which I was most of the time. My left hand swelled up whilst I was walking, it has never done that before, and today my hips are painful. Old age is starting to tell

The best laid plans......

So, I won't be in Seville for Holy Week. Dear Ryanair! Once again they have messed me around, flights from Santiago to Seville stop at the end of March, the alternative means going to Madrid and then on and this means even more money, especially if I want to be in Seville for Holy Week, so I have changed my flight to early March. The flight is really cheap and accommodation is much cheaper in March so there is an upside.
There is a second downside! I have a month to prepare and the weather has just changed to being damp and miserable. I have been walking about 6kms every day but this is not enough, I must be strict with myself:) I WILL WALK LONGER TODAY, it's actually not cold outside just miserably damp, but the excercise will warm me and it is cold sitting around indoors:)