Ponte Campaña was a great place to stop, because – as with the previous two nights – it was off-stage and so wasn’t as busy as the stage end places would have been. There was also nothing there other than our hostel, so should have been quiet.

And perhaps it would have been had the hostel owner not had all his friends around to watch Spain playing soccer – and then letting off some heavy-duty fireworks after they won 🤦‍♂️.

Still, we got a fair amount of sleep before beginning the uneventful but hot walk to Arzúa – home of the fabled A Queixeira de Arzúa cheese shop that anybody walking with us would likely have been fed up of us mentioning 😅.

I wouldn’t say we ate a balanced meal that evening, but we certainly ate well with good local meat, cheese, and wine in spades 🤤.

Our penultimate day – thankfully – coincided with a good drop in temperature (a high of 24°C), plus was a shorter walk of around 20km. It got even better when I managed to find a fantastic coffee beer in a cafe in the middle of nowhere, so loaded it into my backpack for the evening.

As with the penultimate day, our last day walking into Santiago was also shorter and not as hot, and so we took it easy to give our bodies a bit of respite. We made good time and after arriving managed to catch up with quite a few people we’d seen over the last few weeks.

Today has been a rest day – which basically means eating and drinking far too much 😅. And, while we may have finished the Camino Francés, we’re not done walking.

Tomorrow, we start down the central Portuguese route in reverse for a few days, before getting the boat part of the “spiritual route” back up and then walking back into Santiago again. And feasting as we go, naturally 😀.

We’ve each walked just over 795km and taken over 1,000,000 steps to get here… so what’s a few more before we return home?