Day 15- Vilar de Barrio to Castro Dozon

We started out this morning with our new Spanish friends Luis and Augusto and took them for a bit of mountain biking on the camino! We passed through some awesomely fun single track through the forrest that was quickly replaced with some serious rocky descents, some of which had to be walked. It was pretty slow going. One of the descents seemed to go forever and Ben and I woohooed all the way down, Ben getting a little over excited and almost loosing his panniers.

Lovely single track

 

 

Hike a bike

 

The single track train

We rode into Xunqueira and realised that Augusto had broken the other side of his pannier racks on one of the rocky descents! He had already broken one side yesterday and had strapped it to his seat stay with wire and zip ties. We left Luis and Augusto to fix the other side, they were going to proceeded on the road for the rest of the day while Ben and I continued on the camino. So we headed on to Ourense.

Ourense

 

Another Roman bridge!

After Ourense the serious climbing started. More climbing than yesterday and over a shorter distance, but this time on cobble stones!!! Bloody tough work!

 

 

 

 

We climbed all the way to Cea, ready for a lunch stop but there was a feria on so all the bars were not serving food! We pushed on and luckily found a place to eat only a few km from Cea. My legs were burning from the day after day climbing in Galicia and I didn't think I would be able to do more of it on the rocks, so from Cea to Castro Dozon we took to the road, which was equally as steep! By the time we rolled into Castro Dozon I was done. As we came into the town we saw two bikes at a petrol station....Luis and Augusto! So Spain won the race, although they did take the road while we were on the dirt ;-)

More tough trails

 

Cea

We stayed at the albergue with Luis and Augusto and made a feast of carbonara, along with some wine and beer. We also met up with another Spanish cyclist Maria Eugenia who is going to join our cycling group for the ride into Santiago tomorrow!

Albergue

With our new friends Luis and Augusto