Day 28 - You wouldn't believe it - "You're Peter, aren't you?" ...

Fri 13th Oct., Salamanca to Calzada de Valdeunciel, 16 klms

An addendum to yesterday’s post: yesterday, el Día de la Hispanidad (12th October), was the anniversary of the day we first walked into Santiago de Compostela 8 years ago, at the conclusion of our Camino Frances experience.

Today was a relatively quiet day. We had some domestics to attend to (Correos and sorting out our SIM cards), and then at midday we were on the road. On the way to Correos we wandered briefly through the central markets:

The fresh produce looked lovely; lovelier was the building itself with its stained glass windows.

Post Correos we headed off to Orange to sort out the SIM issue. We explained our problem in our un-passable Spanish, assisted heavily by Google translate, and got everything sorted. Whilst we were there another lady walked in, and introduced herself to the staff with my introductory line "my Spanish is not very good", and then proceeded to explain her problem in very passable Spanish. I turned to her and said "well, your Spanish is certainly much better than mine". She turned, hesitated, smiled, and said "you're Peter aren't you?", and then turned to Janet and said "and you must be Janet?". Well, knock me over with a feather - two almost identical experiences within 12 hours. So we got chatting. Annalise is Belgian, but now lives in Australia, is walking the VDLP, having left Sevilla a day or so behind us. I thought that we had briefly connected previously on either the VDLP FB page or Ivar’s forum, but I can't find any evidence of either. But somehow she's aware of the blog and had recognised me. Mind boggling ...

The day was fairly unremarkable otherwise. A selfie in the Plaza Mayor ...

Departure via Calle de Zamora ...

Coffee at Pollo Bill's fried chicken place at Aldeaseca de la Almuña ...

Wonderful street art at Castellanos de Villiquera

And lastly, entering Calzada de Valdunciel

Calzada de Valdunciel has a miliarios display, and one of the reproduced inscriptions reads (with apologies for Google's not necessarily accurate translation):

The emperor Caesar, son of the divine Septimius Severus, pious, Arabian, Adiabenic, maximum Parthian, maximum British;  grandson of the divine Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Germanic, Sarmatic;  great-grandson of the divine Hadrian;  great-great-grandson of the divine Trajan Parthic and the divine Nerva, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius, happy, august, maximum Parthic, maximum British, maximum Germanic, father of armies, vested with Tribunician Power for the twentieth time, of the Empire for the third, consul for the fourth once, father of the country, proconsul.  Mile CXXXIIII.

Milestone in Puerto de Béjar, Mile nº 134.

And lastly, at the albergue ...

Another relatively modest day tomorrow. 21 klms to the wonderfully named El Cubo de la Tierra del Vino. I'm not sure what the "cube" is, but being in the "land of wine" sounds pretty good. Hasta mañana ...