Today we spoilt ourselves with a sleep in until 0700, then breakfast downstairs in the bar.
Our journey was north and we checked with two locals to confirm our direction, there were no yellow arrow markers as normal. Initially alongside the road the camino revealed itself with a left turn down a dirt road between fields. (It would have been easy to miss if we hadn't been actively looking at that very moment.) We went over the fast train track and heard two trains race through. On our horizon was a hill, a very high hill, adorned with solar wind generating windmills. It looked for all the world like an elongated cake with about forty candles.
The day started off crisp at 2 degrees and rose steadily throughout the day until by 4pm it had finally peaked at 19. We reflected on the temperatures that had caused us grief in the early stages of our walking. What a difference it makes.
The road rose and fell with crops and ploughed areas. Again many fields are higher than the road and increasingly there are cork trees. As we went across another range of hill we noted that the trees all around are burnt and dead, presumably from the recent bush fires in this area. Lynette, this is presumably what you messaged about previously, a time that seems so long ago now, closer to the commencement of our Camino. We have finally arrived here! The blackened branches are artistically arranged with their charred fingers spreading upward and outward, silhouetted against the blue sky. Life is returning on the ground and the cover is fairly constant and complete. The exception to the death of trees is the cork trees which remain very much alive, indifferent and unaffected.
Across the range the track reduces to two wheel ruts and the area around is a substantial plain, seemingly wrong being so large an area and so flat. Some of the area is ploughed while other is planted with cork. Another steep climb and the vista revealed our destination a few kilometres ahead, a hillside village with mining or quarrying scars above the town to the hill tops. Further on are more mountains, menacing in their clear message of what lies ahead. The next few days will be long and require much uphill. The highest part of our trek is just days away. It's only when you reflect on your personal travel that you realise what a significant improvement there has been in our fitness in the process of getting us thus far. The steep tracks have lost their daunting taunt (or so we tell ourselves.)
Our accommodation is an albergue where Jenny and I share a double room with a shared toilet and shower next door. But as the only guests tonight it is little difference to a hotel or hostel. Other than having to make our own beds with the disposable paper sheets and pillow cover provided. It's cold here now so we will go for dinner at the local bar/restaurant run by the same lady who owns our albergue, then a good sleep, early rise and breakfast at the same bar before a 20k+ walk tomorrow. Let the serious hills begin. We are ready!!!
The bushfire landscape is so stark.