Day 20 - Watermelon time

We awoke feeling a little sore and stiff but determined to carry on - it was only the second day after all. A quick coffee to get started and then we crossed the old bridge and joined the other peregrinos on the walk out of Hospital d'Orbigo.

One mildy concerning thing we had noticed along the way over both days so far was the graffiti on many of the camino signs and markers. It wasn't just your standard juvenile graffiti, this was quite bigoted and narrow minded stuff, comments like "no feminism", "no muslims", "no abortion", "no homosexuals" ... all in English and not isolated, at one point it was pretty much every sign we passed. Quite a surprise given what we had understood the Camino to be like.

It was another warm day and at times the shade was limited, but the day was shorter and having learnt our lesson from the previous day we took better advantage of the rest stops. At one point in what was seemingly the middle of nowhere we could see a large group of people in the distance, it turned out to be a "pay what you want" stand with all sorts of fresh fruit on offer. As we were pretty hot by this time we went straight for the watermelon, dropping a few coins into the healthy looking pile of coins on our way out. We later spoke to another person who had spent some time at the "oasis" observing the people, and he said it was amazing how many people didn't donate a thing! So much for the "spirit of the camino".

We made it into Astorga by around 3pm, crossing an unnecessarily long and high bridge over the railway line as we entered town (it felt like a two km detour by this point just to cross a couple of tracks), completing a relatively short walk for the day of only 17 or so kilometres. 

After a short rest we headed to the town square, which had a very impressive looking town hall at one end, with a couple of mannequins striking the bell each hour. Here, we, (along with all of the other peregrinos as well as a few locals) enjoyed some drinks followed by dinner.