There is nothing enjoy more than waking up and putting on every so slightly damp clothes from the day before. A personal highlight is wet shoes. Very little fills my heart with more joy and excitement. I comforted myself with the knowledge that, even if I had started the day with dry clothes everything would soon be wet as it was still raining. At least the forecast was better for today. Admittedly, given we’d had 15cm of rain yesterday, that wouldn’t be hard.
As sunrise is now at about 8.30am, and because I had a confirmed bed for the night, I decided to have a lie in. I still woke up at 4.45am - but snoozed and read a book for a while, eventually leaving, in the rain, just before 7am.
Rainhood up, head torch on - a limited field of vision and the incessant sound of rain on waterproof leads to a feeling of isolation. I kept telling myself that it couldn’t be as bad as yesterday. And, at least for a while, it wasn’t too awful.
And then it started to rain in earnest. I stopped for breakfast in the hope that the rain would pass over. It didn’t. I am sure I passed lots of stunning scenery, but I really didn’t care. I just kept plodding along, questioning the life choices that had brought me to this point and particularly my decision not to buy a big, all encompassing, rain coat that would cover both me and my ruck sack.
The rain was relentless, there were gusts of wind that attempted to knock me off my feet and the drainage ditches were filling up nicely. And then it really began to pour down. I have rarely seen rain like it, complete with lightening (I assume there must have been thunder too but I couldn’t hear that above the noise of the rain on my hood).
At one point the branch of a fig tree fell, narrowly avoiding causing me serious harm. I put my hand out to protect my face - the result being that the ring I have just had repaired snapped at the shoulder. The incident left me a wee bit shaken. I had just passed a cafe that I had considered sheltering in for second breakfast but I knew that my kit was so wet that, if I took off my waterproof
I was nearly at the top of a hill at this point and spied a group of pilgrims sheltering in a bus shelter. I navigated my way across the torrent of water in the gutter and huddled with them.
As the rain eased off a little I set off again, down the hill and then through a knee deep, fast flowing river that had formed across the road. Gortex shoes can only cope with so much…I was glad of my poles here so that I could at least gauge how deep the water was.
About 23km in the Sun tried to shine. Although I was glad to see it, and for the rain to have stopped, it was too little too late! There were a couple more rain showers, interspersed with sunshine. Enough rain to stop ensure that there was no chance of anything drying out, enough sunshine, just, to prevent hypothermia.
I’d booked a twin room with Beth at the Albergue. I thought I’d done well to arrive just after 1pm for a 1pm check in - but had forgotten about Spanish timings so had to wait a while.
I can quite categorically state that I have had enough rain now thank you very much.
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