Sunday 14 October

It has been very quiet today and it would seem that the number of pilgrims on the camino is now tailing off as we only had 11 pilgrims tonight. However Granon still works its magic here every night even more so with a small group. Apart from 4 pilgrims who just did not seem to fit in, we have found that Granon attracts some very special pilgrims and we see the magic it weaves with all of them every night. Rachel has assiduously taken pictures of them all so she can remember them. Most of them arrive as pilgrims but depart as friends and I have never hugged so many people in my life. The 3 of us took some time off this morning after cleaning to drive to Belerado and Tosantos, stopping off at some of the beautiful churches in the villages along the way. It has been very cold today with an icy wind and then rain later this afternoon. We have a wonderful treat this evening with a Dutch pilgrim playing our guitar quite brilliantly, almost like a classical guitar, at our Oracion in the choir of the church. Our replacements arrived this evening - a young Spanish lady from the Barcelona area and a middle-aged Italian who does not speak any English but looks as if he is one of the 3 Tenors and about to burst into an aria at any moment or to give a rendition of O Solo Mia. We are now showing them the ropes and they will shadow us tomorrow. We will have 2 extra pairs of hands for cleaning so will get through it quickly. We will be leaving here on Tues at 7.45 and will then officially hand over our 'uniforms' - our aprons - to them. I bet that already they can't wait for us to leave so that they can change things to their way- just as we did with our predecessors. We are feeling very sad but acknowledge that 2 weeks and 2 days is long enough here. We have had an experience of a life-time and have grown so much in every direction (including girth with the carbo-loading meals we produce for pilgrims) but it is time to move on. I have cooked my last famous chicken stew and tomorrow we will go around saying goodbye to the villagers. Barbara and Rachel take a train to Madrid for the night and I carry on walking to meet Maggie in Astorga on 22 Oct but that will be another journey. I wonder what Barbara and Rachel will do after this experience. Barbara has walked the Camino 3 times and Rachel worked as a volunteer in the Israeli army for 2 weeks last year. After tomorrow I will only update my blog when I can find wifi as my Spanish sim card is proving to be far too expensive for daily use. While I am here I have been doing my blog at night after 10.30 on my phone (have only used a computer once) so I am not sure what mistakes or typos there are. I hope this cold weather is just a cold snap otherwise I am going to freeze my butt off along the way.
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