To the top and then down the mountain, ending in a town named for three castles which are all long gone!

Early start as per Camino tradition, with the whole crew of five from our room heading up the hillside in the blue dawn prelight.

Trail curling around and up, we reached the stone village of O Cebreiro in perfect time for coffee as the sun struggled to break thru the clouds hugging the horizon. Reinforced, we continued on our separate ways along, down and up again across hilltops following beautiful pine and silver beech forests.

Maybe halfway thru the day the path turned firmly downwards, leading us via the villages of Fonfría, Biduedo and Fillobal and into views across valleys and towards distant hills, now shrouded with clouds and then now clear under a crisp blue sky.

Home for today came surprisingly quickly, the slight and pretty town of Triacastela. One of the best one-night lodgings of this entire adventure, we shared an entire three-level house adjacent to a hotel-albergue complex. A happy memory from a beautiful day is sitting in a circle of chairs filling up a narrow pub-side street talking to people old and new about life, the Camino and everything. There’s now less than a week – on standard timeframes – to reach the cathedral at Santiago, and real life is perhaps starting to peek thru into our journeys like stars against a moonless night sky.

Stats for today:

• 22.3km
• 473m ascent
• 951m descent
• 2 times I left my walking stick behind and had to go back for it; must be tired