Day 23: Triacastela – Sarria 18 km

Sarria, my French walking companion and I decide, is the beginning of the end. For him, this is much enhanced, he has been walking since early September. Even I feel this, eleven days into my trip. The tourist pilgrims start in Sarria. They arrive en masse, and walk the bare minimum required to get their pilgrim certificate in Santiago. I learn that they’ve actually required folks to get an extra stamp per day between here and the end of the route, just to prove they’ve actually done it and not been chauffeured between stops. This feels like industry. The unshaven, bewildered masses who have been slogging their way through a month’s worth of hard walking are now mixing with clean-booted, well-groomed, camera-wielding production-line coach loads. And presumably there are some good folks too.

Our wind-down continues from yesterday, we’re joined by a pilgrim who joined yesterday from O Cebreiro at midday. The pace is much slower now. A leisurely stroll even. We amble along more Galician hillsides, misty valleys, dry stone walls, vast quantities of manure. Robins and blackbirds fill the sky. Oak, beech and ash tower above us. Mint, wild carrot, fennel and yarrow release their scents as we clamber over their stems on the verges.

Mid-morning, we pass by a volunteer run cafe. A Dutch lady called Susan brings me a cup of cafe con leche on a wooden plate with a small slice of cake and a tiny calendula flower. There is a table of food for pilgrims, a meditation ball, a stone labyrinth, a permaculture garden. It’s a strange place to see in the middle of a Galician village. There must be 30 pilgrims stopped here.

A few hours of joyful Galician country later, and we see a change from rural to suburban fade in. Sarria is a small city, but the contrast is stark. Rural life here is so intensely pastoral and bucolic, that city life almost seems and affront to it’s simplicity.

I’m told there are coaches here, but fortunately yet to see them. Five more stages to go until then. Let’s hope the tourists don’t spoil things for the hardcore hikers, and honorary ones such as myself.