For this leg of the Camino we were blessed with beautiful dry and sunny conditions all day – perfect for walking.

It is quite amazing to think that we have completed over 680Km of the Camino so far and today we will we reach the 100Km milestone from Santiago de Compostela.

The scenery was spectacular today, we crossed some stunning streams and rivers , many of which ran right across our path.

We all arrived in Portomarin within about an our of each other.Tom , who we left gingerly navigating a very steep down hill section first thing in the morning , somehow arrived before everyone else and was half way through his first beer when we arrived.

The original village of Portomarin was submerge following the construction of a dam back in the 1950’s , the church was then painstakingly moved stone by stone and taken to higher ground.

Our Albergue ‘Casa Cruz’ was a real find, it had a well equipped kitchen so we decided to cook. Described by my Band of brother buddies as ‘Jabba the Hut’ – I was the self appointed delegator of duties ; Geoff was head of shopping and ‘ trolley dolly’ in the supermarket, Davin technical support and cooker hob instructor, Richard was Chef with others on lighter duties.

We were joined in the Albergue by Angela and Julia from Koplenz Germany – the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers and home of the famous Deutches Eck statue.

As they were both vegetarians, our friendly, but quite reserved young roommates politely declined our offer of Spanish chicken even though we explained it was Chef Richards signature dish.

However, they  gratefully accepted Richards offer of smoked Paprika which they liberally added to their Veggie stew.

It didn’t much help Anglo – German relations when some bright spark spotted that the tin of Paprika was in fact Chilli powder – Buen Camino!

Thankfully the good humoured German girls saw the funny side and found our schoolboy error very amusing…a good evening was had by all.