Rabanal

After a bit of albergue rage last night - I told a guy to shut up  who was talking loudly when every one in the room was asleep or trying to sleep - this morning I took the road route out of Hospital del Orbigo. It is a bit shorter and the gradients kinder than the scenic route Anne and I took last time. If you ignore the traffic on the N 120 whizzing by some 30 metres off to the right, it was quite pretty, with fields of poppies and lavender, and lots of little birds chirping and flitting around. Be there no plot so narrow/ But may well employ each faculty of sense/ And keep the heart awake/ To beauty and to love. As Coleridge might have said.

I got to Astorga way too early to stop for the day so after an indigestible tortilla on the plaza
- just like last time - when will I learn? -   I kept on going. Lovely to be walking in the mountains again after the Meseta, with splendid views across to peaks with plenty of snow still on them and quaint stone villages. I swear the same old geezer was sitting on the same stone bench outside El Ganso as when we passed last time, rolling what was probably not the same fag. After a warm afternoon's slog, I wound up here in Rabanal.  It is such a pretty, laid back village and great to be here again. The church of Santa Maria in Rabanal, which is my favourite on the whole Camino  - I can say that with authority now - has deteriorated significantly since I was last here. There are ominous cracks in the arches that support the central body of the chuch, and a truly nasty bulge in the side wall. If it was in Australia, I think it would be closed as a safety hazard. I sat in there for a while but a strong instinct for personal survival told me to leave. I don't think i will be getting on down there for mass tonight.

I am staying in an albergue that redefines personal space and breaks all records for the number of bunks squeezed into a given space. Also the lowest number of toilets for the greatest number of people. The worst so far but it is a bed and I did not have to walk on to the next village. I found a friendly bar, on the road into town,  serving food early bless them, so all is well with the world at the moment.  I seem to have obsessive compulsive walking disorder at the moment. I enjoy the walking most of all, so I seem to be putting in some long days. I bumped into one of the people I met on the very first day, up over the Pyrenees. I asked how she was going. Her response: "I have an empty head and a happy heart". I was hoping for something like that but I can't really say I've got there yet.  I'm not sure she has either, to be honest, but it is a good aspiration for the rest of the walk.

Tomorrow, maybe Ponferrada, or Molineseca if I can persuade myself to stop walking.