Dear Diary: Today I walked. A lot. In the sun.

Ok, so I know that title is a bit boring and could apply to any day on this camino but there really wasn´t much to write about today.

I´d left the hostel by 6:10 and was gone before anyon else in my roomhad woken and made my way along the 17km stretch of nothing! I´d heard rumours that there was now a cafe about 9km along but was skeptical. Hopeful, but skeptical. Sure enough, 9km along, there is a ´cafe´ which consisted of a cabin, counter outside, plenty of tables and chairs, and char-grill BBQ, toilets and chill-out music! He was a bit pricey but I was glad to have the closest thing to a bacon sausage and cheese toasted sub I´d had in a while. Tapas are great, don´t get me wrong but with everyone smoking in the bars, including the person serving you, plus the fact that you aren´t quite sure just how long some of these snacks have been sitting there in these country villages, does turn you off them slightly.

O MY GARD! THAIR ARGH LIKE SOO MANY AMERRYCANS AROUND HERE!

So I headed on to the halfway town (Caldazilla I think?) and everyone was sitting at the bar. I had 2 schooners of beer to celebrate the half way milestone (Ok, it was 10am but these are big achievements when all you do all day is walk!) and continued on. The next 6km were - interesting! After that the track started to behave itself and stop wobbling all over the place.

BTW I´ve passed everyone I know on the Camino so it was now time to make friends. O MY GARD! THAIR ARGH LIKE SOO MANY AMERRYCANS AROUND HERE! And Stacey from Leeds but she was trying to hide her accent. So I raced ahead of the Seppos and met a guy from France who started his Camino in Le Puy in France. He´s on about 1200km now. (Ouch! My ego has been struck down!) And he plans to buy a bike in Santiago and ride back home (Ow! There it is again!)

I begin to set off after a rest in the shade with my new friend and MY GPS DOESN´T WORK! It just didn´t come on! It was working 10mins ago but nothing now. I tried all the obvious solutions but to no avail. Yes, I´ll still find my way but I won´t have a record of the last pat of my trip! I´ve been bookmarking all the little towns and villages I´ve stopped in and saved where I´d been each day but now can´t. Plus it was handy to see, by way of deduction, how far to the next place and how fast I was walking. My little companion has died! <sniff!>

Now the town I´m in tonight has a pop of abut 2800 which means you can see it long before you enter it. It´s reassuring to know you´re going in the right direction but frustrating because it seems to take AGES to get there. Today was a good example but to top it off the track changed direction by 90degrees! I thought that maybe I was supposed to enter from a different side of the town but after 600m I found I crossed a bridge, walked past a church and then proceeded to walk back towards the very road I had come from. Great! There´s a kilometre that was completely unproductive! I arrived and saw that there was a municiple refugio for a donation or this new one which sounded good for €6. Municiple refugios have the great reputation of being places where they cram everyone into a big hall and it´s impossible to use any facilities as too many people want to use them at once.

As it turns out, this is the best hostel I have ever stayed in on the Camino. The only thing missing is a TV room! At least this was some cheer to my day. I was thinking of taking a day off in Leon in two days time as my achillies are playing up a little bit and I have a hill of around 1500m coming up this week. Am thinking of maybe taking a day here off instead as it´s so nice. Some more long stretches of nothing tomorrow otherwise. Just me and all the flies that dive into your face as it´s the only bit of shade they can find in miles. Really wish I had one of those Aussie cork hats. It IS that bad!

Total now 411km down/367 to go!