A other 30 + kms today of largely flat walking. Ponferrada where I stayed last night is a pretty big town (with a wonderful Knights Templar castle), so it took a while to leave it behind, and it was a bit tricky to navigate. Fairly early on I heard that rare thing, an English voice. The voice was Adrian, a retired farmer from Wiltshire, who had joined the trail at Leon, as have a lot of other people. Adrian runs his local branch of the Long Distance Walkers Association, which organise (long)walks on home turf, in the UK, and around the world. It would appear that there is a branch run out of Norwich. Food for thought. 

Next I ran into Luca. I have seen Luca a couple of times at Albergues in the last few days, he is a 26 year old almost qualified medical student from Venice. He only started in Leon, but unfortunately already has bad blisters on his heels. We started walking together and are the same pace ( possibly  because of his blisters) and walked comfortably together for the rest of the day. Up the valley, through the vinyards, the air heavy with the scent of wine, as the harvest has just begun and the Bodegas are in full flow, to tonight's destination Trabadelo. 

As said, a lot of people have joined the trail at Leon, largely they are people who have walked to Leon on previous trips and are now going to finish the Camino. The 'all the wayers' are becoming diluted. It brings me back the different ways  people 'do' the Camino. 

At the top of the pile are the hard core, all the walkers who carry their own pack,  and live totally in the dorms.  I come a little below this as I escape occasionally to a decent room. Many of the older walkers do the same,  but many don't. 

Slightly further down the hierarchy are the people who do not carry their own packs each day. There is a whole industry dedicated to moving packs along the trail each day. As long as you know where you will be the next night, you leave a label on your pack and it is there before you are. This also suggests a greater amount of pre booking and organisation than the hard core. 

Next are the 'stages' hard core people. Those who can only get the time to do the walk in bite size chunks, but otherwise live the same way. 

Next are the organised trip stage walkers. I suspect there are a variety of ways these trips are organised, but I met a couple a few days ago who totally confused me with the arrangements for walking and bussing back to the hotel them bussing again to the right part of the trail. I think this group is the beginning of the 'tourogrinos'

At the bottom of the pile are the big tour groups who get out of their bus for a while to walk a short stage of the Camino. As we get closer to Santiago, these are becoming more ubiquitous. We saw 2 big groups today. 

Essentially however, it does not really matter how you do your Caminio. I am constantly amazed by the people who are struggling with their fitness, or are in pain, or are probably closer to 80 than 70, who just continue walking day after day. Doing the Camino their way