Day 22: Deuces are Wild | Murray Morrison

“We have to stop the Memphis Pilgrims.” These were the words muttered by my Spanish bunk mate as Alex and I slowly drifted into sleep. She tried to smoke us out of our albergue room by closing all the windows that we had intentionally left open to let the cool air in. It almost worked as Alex and I both woke up this morning in sweat drenched clothes. It definitely wasn’t pretty, but we got out of our top bunks and stayed with our plan.

Wow, we are into week 4 now. It seems like just yesterday we were getting kicked out of our first ever albergue for sleeping in too late. Today’s walk was pleasant and very sunny, which also means very hot. Thankfully, we completed the 24 km to Villafranca before the heat reached its peak.

Along the walk today, we passed a tree that had some small red things growing that I took to be cherries. In my boy scout days, they told me “if it’s red, you’re dead.” Despite this, I decided to take one for the Camino team and try one out. My thinking here may have not been completely logical as the risks far outweighed the rewards, but thankfully, my original guess had been correct.

Around 11 we really needed that pick-me-up to get us through the final 7 km. That is exactly when we saw a sign that we had not seen since arriving in Spain. “Smoothies.” Our faces lit up. We didn’t see many other pilgrims stopping for a smoothie break, but we knew that we needed the fuel. We would also argue that St. James would have stopped for a smoothie break, and we are supposed to be following in his footsteps, so what other choice did we have? It was as good as advertised.

Our albergue tonight seems like the real deal. Unlike the heat chamber last night, tonight’s has air conditioning, so they will have to find another way to stop your Memphis Pilgrims.
Go Preds.

Ponferrada in the distance-

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