Camino de Santiago Day 30

Wow! I can't believe that we have been travelling for thirty days now! Living out of our rucksacks and only twice have we slept in the same place two nights running (Pamplona and Burgos where we took rest days). We are now pretty organised and can pack our things up quickly in a morning ready to leave by first light. We refuse to leave while it's still dark - we are here to enjoy our walk and take in the landscape.

As we'd stopped short yesterday we had extra to walk today (ah well at least we won't be putting on weight from the wide selection of pastries we sampled in Astorga!). At least the day was quite cool.

We climbed a lot today, Astorga is at 900m above sea level and by the time we got to Foncebadon 27.2km later we were at over 1400m/4600 feet above sea level. We didn't arrive at Foncebadon until early evening, 6.45pm and were only just in time for the communal evening meal at the albergue. A chilly evening. At least we got a bed even though mine was just a mattress on the floor.

Foncebadon is a fascinating place, for some time it had been a tumbledown, abandoned village but during the last few years with the increase in pilgrims some of the abandoned house have been turned into albergues and there is also a shop.

If you've read Paulo Coehlo's book The Pilgrimage this is where he was attacked by the dogs.