Rainy rest day

The Church of San Salvador in Grandas de Salime traces to 1186, although today it has very little if any of the original. It looks a little sad in the rain. But it's indisputably the most impressive thing in town. There are, however, 5 bars (beer, coffee and maybe sandwiches), 2 restaurants depending how flexible you are (one is quite good), my La Barra Hotel, an alburgue (hostel) for pilgrims who have to or think it's a necessary part of the Camino experience to sleep in a bunk bed dormitory with two dozen other people (one of whom inevitably snores, I'm told, and at least one other who hasn't washed since the start). As well as a grocery store, hardware store, electronics store, and so forth. So Grandas is a vast improvement over the four building hamlet where I had a bottle of water at noon yesterday and was supposed to spend the night. I couldn't figure out what I'd do all afternoon, let alone eat for dinner. So pushing on an extra stage seemed an obvious solution. Especially since it was forecast to drizzle all day today, which it has. It seemed too much trouble to reschedule all of my remaining hotels, so a rest day seemed the solution. I'm happy to be dry, but restless. Walking can become addictive.

Best water slide ever?

Not designed as such. These are the sluice ways for a large dam, several hundred feet tall. I thought that it would work as a slide if you relaxed and kept your whole body leaning back against the sluice. My pilgrim companion shuddered and thought you would surely pitch forward and tumble down. We were both a bit giddy at that point. We had just walked down 700 meters vertically to get to the narrow roadway along the top of the dam. On the other side, we had 6 kilometers of stiff uphill walking to get to Grandas de Salime, our destination for the night. The second picture shows the view from about a kilometer along the way. You can see the dam we walked across at the end of the reservoir.

Bartenders make poor photogs

Either Sebastian or Christina decided the bartender should take a picture of us at breakfast. So of course everyone had to have a picture. The results -- given the backlighting from the window -- were deplorable. Everyone pretended to be impressed that my app could produce a picture that was merely terrible. Since pilgrims tend to be solitary creatures, we then set off separately with vague thoughts of sharing a morning coffee in Campiello, 14 km. down the pike. Another beautiful morning. Today there was a heavy bowl of fog sitting in the valley, which the Primitivo path quickly climbed above. Later, waiting for Sebastian at the cafe in Campiello, a pilgrim from Madrid told me that in Spain, it's illegal to work when you're over 65, since that would be inconsistent with your (apparently mandatory) state pension. Sounds both pleasant in a way and fiscally suicidal for the economy, the latter being his point.