Camino,Oct 2013(b)

Every morning lately, we've been running into these tall, insanely happy yellow flowers. Whenever Roxanne sees these, she shouts out GOOD MORNING!!! on their behalf. They have now been christened the "Good Morning!!" flowers.
Today we walked all day through hills and valleys full of chestnut trees. They look like yellow tennis balls, until they split open and drop out the chestnuts (Note: sitting under a chestnut tree is not the best spot for a picnic). There are people out all over the place collecting bags full of chestnuts ; don't know why - they don't really taste like anything...
The gatherers load up donkeys with the chestnuts they collect.
Some of the chestnut trees are ancient!
We've started climbing again. We took this picture a half-hour after we started out from that little village.
Cows - we hear their bells almost every day. If they sound like the cow-bells here, they're eating. If they have a regular pattern - clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang.... they're walking. (We have a lot of free time to figure these things out...!)
Tiny chapel
Cutest car - it's an Ambra and is made by Ligier.
Shadow perigrinos 1
Welcome Rooster: it seems like every village has at least one 'Welcome Rooster'. Whenever we come up to a village, the welcome rooster is always crowing... evan in the afternoon!
We passed the "100 km to Santiago" post today.
Shadow perigrinos 2
We're in Galicia now.
Galicia: our map book gave a great description, "This is rural Galicia at her best; wet and green with the sweet smell and squelch of liquid cow dung underfoot." Yeah!
Mushrooms and castles - we'd heard about the neglected castle in the background. The owner of the albergue where we were staying drew us a simple map and a farmer whose farm we had to cut across pointed us down a dirt track. That took us to this field. There was a river between us and the castle and the remains of a simple bridge across, but the bridge was down to one mossy log across the 4 meter central span (about 3 m above the river), so we backed off, and took this photo instead!
We crossed 6 rivers today. Lots of climbing, up and down.
Sheep crossing.
Jesús cola.
Rainy day... (Running out of room on this page. Please go to the "Santiago/Finisterre" page.)