The big one

Astorga-Acebo.
40km. Over. A. Fucking. Mountain. The best day so far!!

Started out under a full moon. Bumped into friendly Glaswegian I keep seeing (must be roughly at the same pace), he is walking in a kilt. I didn´t ask too many questions.

Really got ahead of the pack today, zero body complaints. Miracle. I feel I could walk on an on. And so I did. Up into the mountains where I met Jin, a SK who had studied in Nantes. We had a great day laughing about how we were turning French with our ep noises. The path was incredibly beautiful. We had lunch out in the sun with Elvis on the radio. Soo soo good. She also fixed me up with some safety pins as the zip of my craghoppers broke this morning. I tell everyone who asks that my knee needs ventilating or it will seize up. They believe it as well.
As I reached the highest point of the whole camino 1515m, I decided to ignore the cross on top of a pile of rocks until some American (from SF, claro!) insisted I go up. He was cycling from Lisbon to Frankfurt.
Onwards I went until a reached the place I wanted to sleep. I REALLY needed the loo so I dove straight into the albergue and asked for a bed. I should have looked around first as I would have realised that I should have kept on walking. The ´hippies´ running the ´shack´, as it turned out to be, laughed when I asked them ¿tiene una cama? BTW I saw about 15 flags outside, you don´t often see that so I must have been tricked into thinking I was staying in a 5* hotel. They half smiled at me and said "Nooooo.... mattresses.. I played along with the joke, even as they said "y no duchas". Thank god I asked to see the room first - they pointed to a cowshed that was partitioned - cattle on one side, mattresses on the other. No one was there either. I needed to make a quick getaway si I politely said, "No hay gente, voy a continuar" and ran off down the road. It was 4pm and 10k from the next sign of life. Toilet or no toilet I HAD to make it to somewhere better. It should have been an easy 10k but it was partly on asphalt (hard on the feet) and then on rocks most of the way down. To get me through it I began to sing, random songs, over and over such as "I am the music man..", "The Grand Old Duke of York" etc. Hmm... Seeing the town of Acebo over the ridge of the mountain was a real ´hallelujah´moment. After 11-12 hours walking I arrived about 6pm and bumped into the Glaswegian and a Swedish guy I had met earlier. So nice to see familiar faces! I have to say my dinner that night was awful. A plate of peas to start, barbecued steak covered in oil and then a tin of fruit cocktail. A SK guy I had dinner with was in hysterics as I tried to hide my feelings from the waitress. The wine was horrendous too. Anyhoo, catching up with the others, they were having a delicious dinner outside and were staying in a fancy casa rural. To cut a short story long I was NOT well after my meal and had to delay leaving as I got no sleep at all. In the morning I was really upset to not find my walking stick and as everyone else had left I was cursing the bastard peregrino that had stolen it. A real Castaway moment, Nooooo, Wilson!!! Seriously. So when I spotted him propped up at the bar where I had left him I could have cried. The first thing I saw as well was a face in one of the knots. Ha ha, I´ll get a photo to prove it. I arrived in Ponferrada on Friday (even more beautiful city - the castle reminded me of Angers) . Did about 37k. There was no way I was going to stay in an Albergue as I was still feeling rough. On my phone I booked a room at a Parador in Villafranca and it was one of the best decisions ever!! Google paradores and you will see why. This morning I ordered breakfast in my room and seriously overfaced myself!!! I had to haul ass (literally) up a mountain straight after but it was so worth it. I am staying tonight in the mountains (3k from the border with Galicia). The power has been going off intermittently and I thought I was not going to get my dinner (think Dougal getting his steak taken away from him). So I proceeded to drink vino tinto in compensation. When the power came back on and it did arrive I was like a pig at the trough jeje.