Ourense

May 3, 2022

At breakfast at our pension we spent time chatting to a group of five or six (I can't really remember them all) Belgians cycling from Sevilla to Santiago. They are going a lot faster than us (about a hundred kays a day) and to a fixed schedule so it was interesting to hear their views.

Once again it was a great day's cycling. It started off with a big climb of almost five hundred meters straight out of the village. As we have got used to over the last few days there was almost no traffic and we were able to use the full width of the road the mitigate the gradient. We didn't have any target for the day but the strong Belgians were heading for Ourense. On reaching the summit soon after Vilar de Barrio we felt we had to push on as well and so we did. It was a descent of over eight hundred and fifty meters down to Ourense, although there was still a few hundred meters of climbing thrown in on the descent. A total of close to a thousand meters of climbing again today. There is a risk we are going to start feel smug about our cycling abilities.

Approaching the summit with the trees being left evident.

Vilar de Barrio is as simple as a village can be.

At times it seemed like we were in the south of England.

This could also be somewhere in England.

Once in Ourense we made the mistake of heading for the local government managed albuergue. Once again a grumpy official at reception and the kitchen out of bounds. Only twelve of us here tonight but all squeezed into a single dormitory. There are three other twelve bed dormitories unoccupied and locked up. I am not sure what the Galician government strategy is. It certainly can't be to counteract any COVID-19 threats.

Once settled in, if that is the correct phrase, we walked off to check out the local cathedral. Closed to tourists but a choir was giving it a good go inside.

Dodgy looking dudes (although I am sure they are not) manning the door through which some locals slipped in to the cathedral.

With the kitchen out of bounds we had to make do with pizza for supper. Right now all I feel like doing is spending a night wild camping in the tent.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,407 km (874 miles)

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