Est! Est!! Est!!!

Sunday:
We are rewarded for the privations and discomfort of our hostel by a stunning sunrise, giving fantastic views from the hostel steps. Galicea is so often shrouded in mist (it is Celtic in culture and in weather) that that we are incredibly lucky to get these views.

The path skirts the mountain side and through a wood. We edge to a signpost signaling a right hand turn. On this post, Helen (former CathSoc President) and her sister Mary have left a note. Helen walked the camino in July/August and I told her she should be like the cardinal's servant who went before him to Rome in the famous Est Est Est story. And so this was her message.

It's good to get this message on such a perfect morning. Helen gave such a lot of helpful advice. It's also good to have a connection with pilgrims ahead. There's a strange way on the camino that one can feel as much in communion and yet as much separated from those pilgrims who are just a day or two ahead as those who walked 600 years before.

The Galicean countryside is as green and rolling as anywhere in the British Isles, and usually (so everyone says) it is shrouded in weather as grey and damp as that which covers Britain. We are incredibly lucky to be seeing it under blue skies. The path is just enough of a challenge, and gives superb views.

We arrive at Triacastela in time to catch the back-end of some kind of festival. Market stalls are being packed away, people are riding horses, a jeep of hunters drive in causing huge excitement as they display their kill, but the major attraction is the pulpe stalls. Octopuses are being cooked whole in large copper pots, the cooks fishing them out by the heads and chopping up the legs with shears. It's served on wooden plates with paprika and salt. We all have some. After a free-form Roman rite liturgy celebrated by the local PP, we cook and eat chilli.