9/18 – 16 miles today, with grey skies and lots of rain, so no pictures. The walk was mostly flat, and mostly asphalt. At midday, we bought tuna and bread from a mini-market and looked for a place to sit down and eat lunch. We sat under the portico of a church, just before the sky opened up, drenching all the passers by, while we were sheltered from the storm. Pretty neat.

When we reached Agueda, there was a tourist office, so we stopped in for directions to a place to stay. Turned out that the alburgue in our guidebook was closed, and the other residencial in town was “not of good reputation”. We ended up walking another mile and a half off the trail to reach the Residencial Celeste, which is also acting as an alburgue for pilgrims. It had no restaurant, and the rain was pouring down, so the receptionist called Telepizza, and we poor wet pilgrims all had pizza and beer for supper.

We ate with two young women from Germany. Ruth is an IT professional, on six month sabbatical from Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and Annetta is on one month’s holiday from her job as a criminal judge. Annetta brought her little dust mop dog along, thinking she would enjoy walking 20 miles a day on those itty bitty legs. Annetta has to carry the dog and her backpack too!

Of course, their English was excellent, so we had a wonderful conversation about many things. Pilgrims could solve all the world’s problems, if given the chance!