Video blogging the Primitivo

I left Lugo across its wonderful Roman bridge in the morning fog. After 10 kilometers I stopped at the only (coffee) bar on today's stage. I struck up a conversation with Marcin Bandych, a young Polish e-commerce entrepreneur. We spent the rest of the day discussing his small business, Polish politics (he disagrees with Anne Applebaum), Donald Trump (inevitably), etc. He's also video-blogging his Camino on YouTube. Search on his name. My connection here is much too weak for video. But if he posts today's video, there should be a few of me, and one I took of him crossing a creek on an ancient stone footbridge. My second picture (how low tech) is of Marcin, when we were crossing a field.

Lucky Lugo

I just reached Lugo, through this portal in the massive Roman walls built in the 3rd Century. They're still intact. If it wasn't raining, I could walk around the top, a 2 kilometer circuit. But Lugo was still abandoned in the 8th Century, despite its world class walls. Not to worry -- at least for the long view -- the Catholic Church refounded the city in the 10th Century. It was, and is, an unbeatable anchor for the Camino Primitivo. Indeed, today Lugo is about all there is in central Galicia. It's a bustling, prosperous city with a fine cathedral and great restaurants (I'm in one now). The countryside around it is beautiful but hollowed out, with few young people and those remaining are desperate to leave.

Rain in Spain does not fall on the plain

It may have made a good elocution lesson in My Fair Lady, but actually the rain in Spain falls mainly in Galicia. Today though it mostly held off for my walk. It's now quite nice to look out at the real rain through my hotel window. As usual, my window offers a fine panorama of flowering trees, pastureland with stone fences, and forests of conifers and hardwoods on the hills leading to mountains in the distance. Even better, if anything, in the rain. My walk was just as good, apart from threatening clouds and a cold wind in exposed areas. The usual aggressive climbs and steep descents on muddy tracks. But the country side more than makes up for any of that.