Day 3 – Betanzos to Ordes 24- 30km

Day 3 on the Camino was full of highs and lows compared to the previous day. It had the toughest climbs, the finest accommodation, and the best food. We completely underestimated the distance on google maps, mixed up the daily ascents and ended up in a tiny rural part of Galicia rather than a city. To top it all, we did part of the Camino by taxi which I’m pretty sure breaks some essential pilgrimage rule. The miracle of it was we didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty.

It started out well, with a selfie outside the doorway of the church across the square from our Airbnb. By then we had already figured out that today and not tomorrow was going to be the day of climbs so we had readied ourselves. Ready for the first rise of 164m on the 3km out of the walled medieval city of Betanzos.

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The sun was up and doing its Spanish thing. Rain gear safely stowed away we took the hill in good spirits. We passed a Fatima mural above Betanzos, reminding us of the Portuguese links with Galicia before we entered through the forest. As usual, we crossed the A6 in places, the same road we had journeyed on from Santiago three days ago. It was nice to walk through the shady forests with the sun dappling through the shade, enveloping us in camouflage.

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Tony bombing ahead as usual

Outside Betanzos, the road then turned to gravel and we headed downhill. For the next hour, we listened to the ominous noise of barking dogs in the valley ahead. It sounded like a pack of killer dogs loose in the Galicia countryside, preying on slow-moving pilgrims who could not run with their backpacks. So we let James and Tony bomb on ahead as usual. Just when we got to where the noise was coming from, the barking suddenly stopped. We never did find out where the dogs were or what was going on but it must have been a pain for the neighbours.

At the bottom of the green and wooded valley, we sauntered along enjoying the holiday sound of exotic insects buzzing the landscape to life. This turned out to be a very loud electrical substation.  We stopped at the nearby church of San Esteban De Cos for a quick snack stop and to examine the fascinating burial system in the walls. After discussing which images we wanted for our funeral photos we started climbing again until we reached Cafe Carabel. Here we found James and Tony waiting for the locals to finish an argument in their card game before we could get some of their very fine coffee.

The cafe quickly filled up with English pilgrims swapping news of the latest Brexit shenanigans between their politicians and their monarchy so we moved on quickly as we had zero interest. The Camino took us along the main road for a while, sun beating down before we went off-road again through forests. From here to Presado was uphill and steep. My blister, Donald, was quiet enough. Gemma’s was at her and Tony’s was continuing to grow as he raced ahead. Tina had a hotspot and was managing hers.

Outside Presado, we discovered the artistic Meson Museo as we strolled along a back road just coming up to the right side of lunchtime. Tony got there first and as usual, went inside to buy cool drinks for everyone. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell James and both he and Gemma carried on into the badlands of Bruma with its notorious hills and lack of amenities. Meanwhile, we enjoyed one of the culinary highpoints on the Camino which turned out amazing food at all hours of the day in a beautifully designed restaurant decorated with pictures of medieval Camino pilgrims. Not only that but the barmaid spoke English too! Along with the usual Pork Chickpea and Chorizo soup, we sampled the local fart inducing cabbage soup called Caldo Gallego and even some squid.

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Overcome with guilt, Tony gobbled his food and hurried on to catch up with James and Gemma. This was the last we saw of him until he hopped out of a taxi later in the day like he was Doc Brown hopping out of a time-travelling machine. Myself Tina and Ruth finally left the food and followed the green tuft of two-track forest lanes through some of the most rural areas we had ever seen. Passing milestone marker 54, we realised that we were more than halfway home on the Camino. Feck you Donald!

With the group split, the arse began to fall out of the day. Every now and then we would receive terse WhatsApp messages from James, who was sitting on the side of the road somewhere eating whatever sandwiches himself and Gemma has left Betanzos with.  We passed a deserted looking picnic area in Leiro that looked like an Irish dance crossroads from the 1950s.

Next stop was Hospital de Bruma but first, we had to climb up 400m over 5km. This took us a lot longer than we anticipated. Following the Camino sign, we trudged up a long quiet gravel road with no traffic. There was nothing to see here except miles and miles of cut down forest. Not the most scenic of views but most of us were looking at our feet although Tony later swore that he saw a wolf on a distant hill. Every now and then we would see plastic bottles upside down on top of steel rods in the undergrowth – either pilgrim murder spots or forestry markers. It just kept going up.

We met the German from Day 1 at the lake reservoir where we filled up with water and stretched out the legs. He was working while on the Camino and had to stop during the day to take calls from his clients. Because we still had not realised how far away we were from Hospital de Bruma, we told him we were nearly there. The truth was we were still a long way from Bruma and when we would get there, it would be an even longer distance to our accommodation.

The road started to climb again up the infamous hill. Every turn we took, we expected to see the outskirt of this big town with a hospital, but we just climbed and climbed and passed random gatherings of houses that did not deserve the name of a village. At one stage we discovered a treehouse which looked tempting enough to rest in for a while. But we still had a long way to go.

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The climb got even steeper and to add to the atmosphere, a musky smell assaulted us as we approached a walled complex on the side of a hill. This was a giant chicken farm and not as Tony’s messages said a mink farm.  It did smell pretty strong though. Just beyond here was the topmost rise of the hill. Expecting to see a city big enough to have a hospital in the distance we were dismayed to see nothing but smaller hills with the odd farmhouse looking back at us. But there was the main road and we could see trucks passing through the greenery below. We followed the forest trail down to the main road and threw down our bags outside Bar Avelina.

Bar Avelina is a well-known stop on the Camino, but it was here where the demoralisation set in. This was where James and Gemma had stopped for liquid lunch and that meant that we were a long way behind, despite having already done 20km. This was also the connection to another Camino trail from Coruna, so there was scope for some of us taking the wrong turn here and ending up way off track. It was getting late in the afternoon and there were no communications from the others. There was still no sign of this hospital of Bruma. There was a nasty buzz in the air coming from another nearby electrical substation.

While we drank coffee I used the time to check google maps.  Hospital de Bruma appeared to be just a few km away but on the map, it looked like a road in the middle of nowhere. It was then that I realised that Hospital de Bruma was not our actual destination. We still had a good bit to go after that, about 10km by the looks of it. Meanwhile, the lady owner of the bar was doing her damndest to get us to stay the night there. She hovered around us like a fly on a fresh load of shite, dropping flyers and leaflets on our table at every opportunity. She could see that we were somewhat tired and frustrated as we lapped up the coffee and wifi.  At one stage she arrived with framed newspaper cuttings no doubt extolling the many comforts of her accommodation. Perhaps she was just trying to be helpful. I had a bed booked for us in a converted stone cottage somewhere up ahead and I wasn’t going to rest until I found it.

When the German arrived at the bar we took this as our cue to move on. As we passed each other I grudgingly admitted that it was possible that I may have gotten the distance wrong to Bruma. He didn’t look too surprised by this but I dwelled on it as we aimed ourselves down the main road, by the electric substation and into more woods. At last, we came to Hospital de Bruma.

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You would think that reaching Hospital de Bruma would have been a positive note for me, but it was not. As we strolled through the hamlet I realised that I had made quite a few mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. What I don’t like are mistakes which make no sense when I make them. Any normal person would be forgiven for thinking that Hospital de Bruma was a hospital with doctors and patients attached to drips. Not me. I am a history geek and I have a particular interest in medieval hospitals and I knew that they were used by pilgrims as resting places because there is one in the town where I live. I often gave tours of it to visiting tourists. They were hostels. I also worked for years in a hostel organisation and I knew that a lot of European hostels were originally called hospitals. So I knew this doubly. Hospital de Bruma was always a hostel and I knew that most hostels are located in the arse end of nowhere, just like this one.

It was a very nice hostel. It was a famous well-known hostel, but I had somehow skipped over this during all my online Camino research. As we sat outside looking at it, the German arrived and booked himself in. It was most definitely not a hospital in a city and our accommodation was not somewhere in the same city as I had thought. We were in the middle of the sticks.

This made little difference to our journey. We still had to carry on to Ordes, somewhere in the far off distance. But it knocked the wind out of my sails. I felt that old inner panic stirring in my stomach thinking to itself oh look what juicy morsels of self-doubt he has lain before me. Where were the other three amigos? No idea. A message was sent on ahead to tell them to stop, wherever they were, that we had underestimated the distance and that there was a soul-destroying 10 more kilometres to go.

We dumped our bags outside the door of a bar across the road. I needed to figure out how to get to Casa Rural Dona Maria and I had no great idea where I was or how far away it really was. I had made such simple mistakes. I was tired relying on Google maps with bad internet signals and trying to figure out where the off-road Camino trails hit the google map roads. I was tired of walking. I stood at the bar googling away trying to figure out if I even had the right address. The barmaid came down and gave me that universal look which meant how can I help you. Taxi? I said, hoping she would understand and have a number for me. Casa Dona Maria? she replied, like she was some sort of weird guardian angel put in my path.

Before I could reply, I heard Ruth shouting out in the street and when I went outside there was Tony getting out of a taxi. Like he was going out for a drink on a Saturday night. Followed by James and Gemma. After they had gotten our message, they had been standing on the side of a long lonely straight road in the middle of nowhere wondering what to do next when they saw a car coming towards them with a taxi sign on the top. So they flagged it down and it brought them back to Bruma where they recognised our rucksacks sitting on the side of the road.

Unfortunately, the taxi drove off. So we had to go through the whole rigmarole of ringing them again. This time, I knew that the words Casa Rural Dona Maria and Hospital de Bruma were enough. The hostel was a famous landmark and it sounded like the casa rural was well known too. So it turned out. The taxi company spoke no English but they knew straight away where we were and where we wanted to go. Ten minutes later we had the rucksacks safely stowed in the boot of a car and were zooming back down the same long straight road that Tony, James and Gemma had walked previously. As we drove along the roads we could see that there was nothing for miles around, just long lonely roads stretching in all directions.

By the time we reached Casa Rural Dona Maria, we were all glad that we had hopped in the taxi. There was no way we would have made that extra 10km, not with every step feeling as if it was extra to what we planned. The casa turned out to be every bit as nice as we expected. The owner got a table ready for us after our showers and foot repairs. We dined well on fish, local fruits and put the day to bed.

CASA RURAL

Next up, Day 4.

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