For the last few days, we have been in Galicia, the fourth administrative region of Spain on the Camino, and the one which includes Santiago.  

It’s very different from the others.  Weather wise, it’s cooler and wetter.  There’s a song from “My Fair Lady” which runs ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain’: not in our case, since the section across the plain was bone dry, and we have had plenty of rain in Galicia, as we expected.  This has predictable implications for the scenery: greener, lusher, and hillier than much of the rest of the Camino.  The path has taken us under chestnut trees generating large conkers at this time of year, and under oak trees so abundant that at times acorns have pretty much covered the path.  There have also been groves of very tall eucalyptus trees.  If much of this sounds like home, it looks that way too, as the picture shows.

The change came quite abruptly, though partly by coincidence.  The long hot spell broke as we reached a town called Villafranca del Bierzo, about 20km from the border between Leon and Galicia.  The route out of Villafranca was a gradual climb, but as the Galician border approached, this became steep and rocky as we left a village called Las Herrerias.  Most unusually – having crossed a few national frontiers invisible on the ground in the past – the path changed as well, within metres of crossing into the new region: a rocky mountain path became a well made wider gravel trail.  Generally, the Camino seems to matter more in Galicia than in some other areas.

Other things are also different.  The Gallegan language is quite prominent:signs explaining, for example, the history of a church will be in Gallegan as well as Spanish, though the place names are less often put in both languages than in the Basque Country.  One clear exception is the first place you come to as a pilgrim, O Cebreiro, which has been welcoming pilgrims for about 1,000 years – when we were here in 1988, it was sometimes known by the Spanish name of El Cebreiro, but not now.  Visually, the farmyards and fields include “horreos”, ventilated cupboards on stilts used to dry maize – the picture shows a fine example with a stone base.  And the dogs are allowed to roam a bit more: many farmyards and villages include a resident Alsatian off the lead keeping an eye on things, though fortunately for me (and no doubt other walkers) they haven’t so far done more than look us up and down.

They must be used to pilgrims.  The Camino is still busy, with an injection of more people and more support vehicles after the town of Sarria, which is a bit over 100km from Santiago, so you can walk from there and still get your compostela certificate.  If we can complete two more days walking (totalling 33), we can get ours.  In the meantime, dinner!