Getting to Sarria and Finishing up Part 3/Section 27

May 17, 2025 Triacastela to Samos. Distance 6.96 miles. Weather: Partly sunny and warm- 70s. I can taste the end - only a day away from Sarria and the final section.

This was a lovely walk today alongside the Sarria River (?) . There was some road walking, but mostly through the woods. Each little hamlet had its own church, but they were all locked tight. There are photos of them in the video. Samos came earlier than expected with a nice downhill. I got there too early to checkin, so immediately went to have a tour at the Monasterio de San Xulian de Samos - the principal feature of Samos. This was built in the 6th C and was one of the most important and influential monasteries in the history of Spain. At its height, it controlled over 100 churches, 200 towns and 100 other monasteries. It was very wealthy and was plundered several times by pirates. In 1536 and in 1951 it was devastated by terrible fires, the 1951 fire was started by an explosion in its distillery…The tour was very interesting. - one of the cloisters is the biggest in all Spain. Also there were interesting murals on the second floor - the ones by Celia Cortes included interesting aspects of perspective. In one, no matter where you were in front of it, the painted cloister hall was always in front of you. The other had the arm pointing the way to hell always just to the left of where you stood.

The hotel, although 1 star, is very pretty and my room overlooks river rapids. Dinner was rather good - mixed salad, breaded/fried chicken breast, Santiago Cake, beer and tea.

At a table nearby was the Exodus Tour getting ready to start its trip to Santiago tomorrow. I was not tempted to join.

May 18, 2025 - Samos to Sarria. Distance - supposed to be 6 miles and ended up being 11.46. Weather - partly sunny and cool - high 60s.

The moral of the story is: if you lose the trail markers, go back to where you saw the last one and try to find the one you missed. Don’t keep going using Kamoot. It was a lovely walk - cool weather and away from the highway. At one point a farmer had a rope across the road and there were no other options for getting where I needed to be. Thankfully, I met up with some French people and another couple and we just decided to continue on - that problem was solved. Looking back on it, it was a harbinger of things to come. Sarria was not going to be an easy destination.

About 20 minutes later I found myself in a field thinking that it didn’t feel right - I couldn’t see any trail markers. I looked at Kamoot, which had a totally different route mapped for today. I did see a trail a bit to my left, so walked up a small ridge where a tractor had cleared out the brambles, then had to walk over some brambles to a narrow trail which turned into a road. This I took to a larger road - had I turned right there I would have picked up the marked trail which I didn’t figure out until I saw the maps later that evening. Stupidly I turned left because that was the direction of Sarria. Following the Kamoot paths/roads I was doing fine, until…. The road was totally flooded for about 50 feet - no way around it. It was like wading through a river and the water came up almost knee deep. My boots are still drying out.

I met a local man who showed me the way, which involved a steep uphill. As I walked by that trail it looked totally overgrown. Looking at Kamoot I saw a different way that didn’t involve a trek uphill along a road which was less overgrown. This was another mistake. This trail disintegrated about 1/4 mile from the road I needed, it got rather soggy underfoot and I saw a tick on my leg. Very unhappy, I backtracked to the uphill and got to it. Finally I got to Sarria, which turned out to be an underwhelming town. One of the things to see there was the Escalinata Maior going uphill to the end of the historic area. I’m not sure why that was a highlight and it was the last thing I wanted to do after my morning activities. The only good thing in climbing it was being able to see the majority of the places of local interest. On the right was the Church of Santa Marina - I was able to get in because they were having a church service. At the top of the hill was the prison, now the Tourist Information (closed). Across from this was the Tower of the Battalion (ruins - couldn’t get into the grounds), and the Church of San Salvador (also closed). For lunch I had a pizza and 2 sangrias at a recommended place. I really needed the Sangria, after my ordeal. The pizza was average.

I had to call for a pick up - my accommodation was out of town again. This was inconvenient because dinner wasn’t included on 2 of my 3 nights at the accommodation and they didn’t take credit cards. Thankfully I wasn’t hungry anyway and just went to bed after doing my laundry. There were some wonderful thunderstorms in the night and I was happy I wasn’t walking in them.

May 19, 2025 rest day in Sarria. Distance -0- Weather sunny and in the 60s. I did nothing today. This hotel, while very nice, is about 10 miles outside of Sarria and I had no way to get into Sarria today. I will say that breakfast and dinner were outstanding and made up for any inconvenience. Dinner was mixed salad, homemade dinner rolls, pasta with pesto sauce (all made here) and chocolate lava cake with ice cream. Add to that wine and cold bottled water for 24 Euro. Lucky because all I had was 25€ and they don’t take credit cards- another thing that would have been good to know ahead of time….