New record

Russ

As we said in our last update, we had a short 20 km walk yesterday and rested up in Ventosa, staying in a lovely hotel last night. It was a grand Spanish mansion that had been converted to a hotel. Lots of modern conveniences mixed with a beautiful old house with 19th century furnishings. Lots of marble and old wood. Dinner was quite nice in the only restaurant in the small town and of course the Rioja wine was excellent.

In spite of the nice accommodation and food I was feeling depressed that we'd dropped back and were no longer traveling with our friends.

This morning after a good rest we struck out for Azofra, about 15 km away. We felt pretty good so we decided to carry on to the next town, Ciruena. Turns out the place is a virtual ghost town. There's a big golf course and a bunch of condo developments that are essentially uninhabited. It seems the development got caught in the 2008 downturn and hasn't recovered. Well, that left us no choice but to press on to Santo Domingo de Calzada, coincidentally bringing us back onto our previous pace. The good news is that we found our Danish friends Eric and Margit. The bad news is that I hobbled the last 10 km or so.

We walked 31 km today!!!!!

We will see tomorrow whether I'm a cripple or not.



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