Colder, and wet

Al took this one

A colder and wet day.
We had been blessed with good weather until today. Honestly it wasn’t too bad except that as it started raining harder and we thought maybe we should break out the rain gear. Where is my rain gear? Ahhh , no where to be found. we thought of the last place we saw it was Burgos when we had sent the bad ahead. it was attached then, but we have had good weather and didn’t notice until today . Allen had his packed inside his pack but mine was attached by buckle to my pack, I have no idea how a buckle came undone. On purpose, maybe, maybe someone didn’t have one,I don’t know. Anyway, no rain gear and its a pretty wet out. We found a store with ponchos, and I need a poncho to cover the pack. The dang thing is only made of Plastic, it has all ready split down the middle. I’m cold and wet to the bone.
We stopped for coffee at this fantastic place, the guy who ran it has done his own Camino and he had taken pictures of bridges, and mounted them all on a poster, impressive.
Then we went over this fantastic bridge, 19 arches, I think. Anyway it’s one of the best preserved medieval bridges in Spain from the 13th century. Just a very pretty town.
We made it to the big town at the end of our page, Astorga, I got a lovely pink plastic poncho here. I actually found a jacket on the ground which had Camino 2013 embroidered on it, I thought cool this can take the place of my poncho. People leave stuff all over the trail here. for some reason they just don’t want to carry it any more. Mostly boots, sweaters, even a sleeping bag once. I didn’t think that was the case here. I figured someone just dropped it. At the top of the hill I saw this guy, rushing back. we are all going the same way, you don’t see people walking toward you very much. Oh well, I found the owner, bummer.
We just passed through Astorga, pop: 12,000′ lots to see, I wish we weren’t so rushed. Another walled city with lots of historic buildings. Astorga was a major crossroads since Roman times. From here we start heading up, back toward the mountains.
We stayed in Santa Catalina, another very small town, just 50 people live here.
Tomorrow we reach La Crus de Ferro, which will be the highest point on our entire route.
Until then,
Be well.