5.06.14 Thursday Aroue to Ostabat Asme. .(probably)
A quiet night on the lawn at the back got a bit cool as the clouds cleared in the wee smw hours. But a cracking day dawns. A lot of tarmac up hill and down dale with short bouts of mud mean the team has time to muse on other things, the hills around us are scattered with fields of grass with white dots in the distance. They become cows or sheep or occasionally white aphids (as Ray says or geese as we later find out). We try to guess what they are from a distance Betsy is spectacularly bad at it! The team fantasy takes over and we wonder about selling the rights to “Cows OR Sheep” as a cheap day time tv programme and wonder if Brucie would come out of retirement to host it.
After a particularly gruelling hill we end up near a little chapel and a table d’orientation or disorientation as the spell chucker trys to have it. Reasonable views of the mountains confim snow on Pico d Annetto just in Spain and 3500 m or so high hopefully we will be nowhere near it.
A local old boy in a beret recommended a restaurant in Ostabat and we realise that with only 4km to go we could have lunch there so a spurt downhill results. Unfortunately not only are there two more hills 5.5 km but when we arrive it is not serving today as the lady concerned has her grandchildren. Nice for her and a good insight into the size of places we are going through. We eat yesterdays bread with cheese and ham and will cookin the alburgue/ gite later. A good days walk and an afternoon of scorching heat.
22km 700m up and a bit less down