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Day 43: Camino Francés: Portomarin to Palas de Rei · WCBH

• 0:25
  Good morning, day 43. A little bit puffed already, straight into another hill.
• 0:31
  22 kilometers today from Porto Morin to Palace de Re.
• 0:36
  And if we go back to 2017, this was our nightmare day where that nearly broke us, wasn't it? It was.
• 0:44
  I think part of it was checking to see how far we were along.
• 0:50
  And we'd estimated we only had 2k, but in reality we had five.
• 0:54
  And we weren't as well prepared as we were, as we are now.
• 1:00
  No, there's a big difference, isn't there? Firstly, we hadn't done the prep before we went away.
• 1:05
  Secondly, we went straight into big kilometres where we're actually much fitter
• 1:10
  now because this is day 43 of walking. We've built it up nicely.
• 1:15
  Thirdly, do you remember day one?
• 1:19
  We were struggling with the cold because it was late December.
• 1:24
  We hiked in thermals for part of the day
• 1:27
  or the whole day got to the accommodation went to sleep with the heaters on
• 1:31
  in thermals and then woke up a couple hours later absolutely dehydrated the
• 1:37
  both of us and that would have had an impact on the following day because we
• 1:41
  would have gone into the day being dehydrated which would have had flow-on effects etc and.
• 1:47
  That was pretty silly of us, what we did last time. Yeah, we were very well cooked.
• 1:51
  By the end of that, I think we woke up and both of us went to the restaurant
• 1:56
  and just ordered like two bottles of water and sat there and drank them to try to rehydrate.
• 2:02
  I remember waking up and feeling I'm going to be sick because I was so dehydrated.
• 2:06
  But anyway, we haven't had that issue so much on this.
• 2:10
  Well, not at all really on this walk except for one day for me and that was
• 2:15
  going into day three when we woke up in the albergue in the dormitory where
• 2:20
  I was servile us because it was so cold I'd slept in.
• 2:23
  I'd slept in my jacket. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night,
• 2:26
  put the jacket on and I woke up having a really big headache and partly would
• 2:31
  have been from cold and dehydration and lack of coffee, etc.
• 2:35
  But apart from that one day, every other day I'd woken up feeling pretty good.
• 2:40
  So yeah, 2017, I remember walking into Palace de Rey.
• 2:44
  We were walking on our way to Palace de Rey, getting close, being heartbroken
• 2:49
  because we thought we were there and we're actually the town before there.
• 2:52
  So that taught us a good lesson of don't convince yourself that this is the
• 2:58
  town until you 100% know that it is the town.
• 3:03
  We cheat now. We've got GPS trackers, et cetera. I know.
• 3:07
  But my feet were so sore then. we had
• 3:10
  these heavy heavy heavy hiking boots which
• 3:13
  we hadn't broken in high ankle not great comfort and I can remember each step
• 3:20
  my feet it felt like the bones inside I could feel them and every step I was
• 3:26
  just walking on bruised feet it was it was horrible day too we did slowly get better after that,
• 3:33
  but the benefit of conditioning ourselves this time.
• 3:37
  What is the same as last time is we woke up, we got ourselves ready, we looked out the.
• 3:45
  And everyone had wet weather gear on, and we could see in both directions a
• 3:51
  fair amount of weather around.
• 3:53
  So we're actually loaded up with our wet weather gear today,
• 3:56
  like we were back in 2017.
• 3:58
  But fingers crossed, it just stays overcast and it doesn't rain.
• 4:04
  But I tell you what, I'm feeling the heat being sort of packaged up in this,
• 4:08
  rolled up in this plastic bag of wet weather gear as we walk up this very long and very steep hill.
• 4:15
  Yeah, my gear isn't quite as hot. It's got vents in it, which is good.
• 4:20
  There were a few sprinkles when we started out. They seem to have disappeared,
• 4:25
  but it couldn't come back.
• 4:26
  Soon I'm going to take the weather jacket off just to cool things down and might
• 4:32
  leave the wet weather pants on because they're a bit more difficult to get on when you're on the go.
• 4:37
  So, 22 kilometres to Palace de Rey.
• 4:41
  It is beautiful walking out of Port-au-Marin.
• 4:45
  There's a big river that runs through, like, one of the large,
• 4:49
  in terms of width, one of the largest rivers that we've seen. It's up on top of a hill.
• 4:55
  And you'd have to say the bush that we're walking through now is right up there
• 5:01
  with some of the prettiest path and bush and trees that we've seen.
• 5:05
  Yeah, we've been really lucky. The last few days have just been so beautiful on the path.
• 5:12
  And down there below was right up with it.
• 5:15
  It's starting to come up into some more open woodland, I think you'd say.
• 5:21
  We've lost all the moss-covered rocks and stuff.
• 5:25
  And I'm very out of breath because we're still going up. Yeah,
• 5:28
  just to describe this hill a little bit further, this is going for over a kilometre, this hill.
• 5:35
  And we're at a, a fair degree of angle here.
• 5:40
  It's just unrelenting. It's not necessarily difficult if it was,
• 5:45
  but it's just because it's so long, it's unrelenting, but we're doing okay.
• 5:50
  Like how many times have we actually stopped just to catch your breath?
• 5:54
  I think just once. Once. Well, thank you.
• 5:58
  And we can see the crest up here where we'll stop again. And that might be a
• 6:03
  good spot to take off this wet weather jacket.
• 6:06
  So we're here in Palace de Rey and I thought we were walking 22 kilometres,
• 6:11
  but I've just plugged the distance into the phone and it turns out it was actually
• 6:15
  25 kilometres. Any surprise to you, Gerilyn?
• 6:18
  No, I thought it was around that. And when you kept saying 22,
• 6:22
  I was like, I remember it being around 24, 25. and I do remember it being quite
• 6:28
  a difficult day of walking last time.
• 6:31
  And it was challenging today, but we came into the town a lot stronger and a
• 6:38
  lot better off than we did back in 2017.
• 6:40
  Back in 2017, very sore. I didn't walk into town. I shuffled into town in a
• 6:47
  whole lot of pain, but we powered into town.
• 6:50
  We actually picked the pace up really in the last five kilometres. but that town that,
• 6:57
  The one major town before here, we didn't make the same mistake as last time.
• 7:03
  Like we knew we still had kilometres to go and that's where we... The Mirage Town.
• 7:09
  The Mirage Town, but that's where we really lifted our game and picked up pace.
• 7:13
  But there was a fair amount of hills today and it was a long stretch.
• 7:18
  How is your recollection of the walk compared to what you remember from 2017?
• 7:25
  There were parts that I remembered.
• 7:28
  So this steep climb we did this morning, I have vague memories of that,
• 7:34
  but I definitely remember the top part being up in the open in the pine.
• 7:39
  And I remember the pine part where, the pine forest part where we were.
• 7:44
  It was further along on the trail.
• 7:46
  And then there were sections just before the Mirage Village,
• 7:50
  that hill. I remember that hill because we were excited last time going,
• 7:55
  oh, we've only got a couple of kilometers.
• 7:57
  And in reality, I think at that stage, we probably had five to six kilometers to go.
• 8:04
  And the last stretch, I didn't remember the stretch being the last 5K being
• 8:10
  that long. It felt really long.
• 8:12
  Maybe it was longer than five kilometers because we thought it was five because
• 8:19
  we thought it was 22 kilometers in length, but it actually turned out to be 25 in length.
• 8:24
  So possibly it was eight kilometers, that final stretch.
• 8:28
  The part that, and I kept saying it all the time, as we come into Palace de
• 8:31
  Reyes, we go down the hill on the left, there's a soccer field,
• 8:35
  there's a football field. And there was.
• 8:38
  I think they've done some upgrades. They're playing on synthetic turf now,
• 8:41
  and I think the orientation of the pitch has changed. But the game was just
• 8:45
  starting this afternoon.
• 8:46
  That was sort of branded in my memory, and it's still there.
• 8:51
  So it's nice to be able to sort of remember something, and then you actually
• 8:55
  see it again, and you think, yes, got that part right, but there was plenty
• 8:59
  today that I had forgotten about or where I'd merged other days into one.
• 9:03
  Now, one of the things that we had today, which was a bit of a find,
• 9:10
  was the chocolate brownie.
• 9:11
  Yes, that was delicious. And that was at the Oasis Town?
• 9:18
  That was a little bit before. That was on the hill that we both remembered.
• 9:22
  The hill on the way to the Oasis Town. So I'm going to put down that the reason
• 9:28
  that we came in feeling good and strong and powerful, it was because of that chocolate brownie.
• 9:33
  It was very good brownie. The only thing that could have improved it was if
• 9:37
  it came out hot. Oh, yeah, that would have been good.
• 9:41
  Now, we've had two relatively long days. Yes. The last two days.
• 9:47
  Yesterday was a hot baking day. Today was largely overcast and cold. It was cold today.
• 9:55
  The last little part of the day, it did clear up, but it was still cold with a cold wind.
• 10:01
  The next two days are shorter.
• 10:05
  To Malide to Azua, and then we pick up the distance to O Pedruzzo and then to
• 10:14
  Santiago. I think it's about 20 kilometres on the last day.
• 10:17
  20 kilometres, that's all right. We're getting there. How many kilometres have we got left to go?
• 10:24
  We have, according to the app, about 68.
• 10:28
  Wow, 68. That's really getting low now.
• 10:32
  It is. yeah that will evaporate very very quickly it's quite amazing it started
• 10:38
  at 790 and now it's down to 68.