It was ‘chalk and cheese’ compared with yesterday’s ride. Shorter, drier with reasonable hillage. All together a fine day.

We met the Italian Mob today. They stayed at the same hotel as us last night and we caught them up on the first hill of the day. To be honest, straight after one’s breakfast it was a bit of a slog. Karen and I had warmed up with the odd hint of perspiration, while one of these guys was soaked! I think he had an E-bike as well! We stopped to offer to take a photo of them all, while preparing to take our own shot at this summit. They were all very jolly at this offer, and insisted they took ours.

And the summit sign, the first of three sets of rollers up to and down from 1300m:

At O Cebreiro we passed some traditional round houses, some were thatched. The design of these dates back before the Romans!

Largest of all the pilgrim bronzes to date. About 3m high.

Interestingly he was not sporting the gourd on a stick and opted for the gourd on a belt.

The large pilgrim has a nice view:

Some Eurovelo signs are now popping up. Eurovelos are the long distance cycle routes that run all over Europe. EV3 is 5300km long, starting in Norway and ending in Spain, at Santiago de Compostela. That’s handy, as that’s where we are headed for this leg. It does have odd route choices at times, preferring to send bikes down rough steep tracks as opposed to nice smooth roads.

This is Alfonso the 9th. A small statue just before our digs in Sarria. While sporting a large sword and good sized crown he does not look too happy with his lot in life. I suspect he ordered a 200m castle with outlying houses and was most upset to realised his ‘mm / m’ typo when he received the castle from Amazon. Alfonso was the King of Leon (province) and died in Sarria while pilgriming to Santiago de Compostela.

Now that’s a pizza. Beer is included solely for the purpose of scale, its a very large beer. Our well-earned lunch after two days of hill climbing.