Grandas de Salima September 21

Most mornings we started walking while it was still dark, It was not full daylight until 8-8:15 am.

Slate is a native building material in Galicia with many slate roofs. Here is a fence built of slate slabs.

Greg and I wnet to a really great ethnographic musem in Grandas de Salima. This is an enclosure built of rock and slate to keep bears out of the beehives.

And even a few old engines in the museum.

Today was an interesting walk as the terrain was different from that of the last few days. We started out with the usual dairy pastures as we climbed 250 m in the first 6 km. to arrive at a mountain ridge dotted with many wind turbines. From there it was a steep descent with a drop of 800 meters or 2500 feet in the next 7 km. Very hard on the knees. This was through mixed forest starting with pine at the higher elevations and descending through oak, birch, and chestnuts. The interesting thing was the clouds below us at the ridge, then walking through the cloud layer, and into the overcast conditions below. The overcast lasted most of the, but a wind picked up and it us mostly sunny now.

The bottom of the valley is a 35 km long resevoir (Embalse de Salima) and it's attendant dam and hydroelectric facility. We walked across the dam, then another ascent of 400 m in the last 6 km. Greg is now pretty well over his cold, so we both felt good today even though it was another difficult walk.

We were walking around town and looking for a place to eat when we ran across a German we had met several times over the past two weeks and also a Spaniard in his mid 60's who spent most of his life in South Africa and Canada. Had a mediocre lunch, but the conversation was interesting. The Spaniard left Spain at 16 years old so he would not have to be a soldier in Franco's army. He said the 1950's were known as the decade of famine because the country was so poor. He was in Spain visiting his sister but got bored with her and is now walking on his third camino.

Greg and I also went to the town's ethnographic museum. We were not expecting much, but there were a wealth of very well done displays depicting all aspects of Spanish rural life from the 1850's to the 1950's. It was very impressive and I got a lot of photos.

Anyway, the albergue here is decent, I have wifi from the bar down the street, and the supermercado opens at 4 pm. Life is good. Tomorrow we will walk from Asturias into Galicia.