Day 8 - The end of the day

The bell tower at Temple #23, which Ian and I both rang. As I have said, it is customary to ring the bell when you enter the grounds as a Pilgrim, but many things interfere with this. Often there is no bell tower, of if there is one, there is no bell. In other temples, the tower is not near the gate. Also we found some where the tower was roped off so that we were not able to approach the bell. I have no idea what was going on, other than it seems to be a custom but a weak one.
This is the main hall at Temple #22. You can clearly see the wind shelters for the candles at the right and left. Also the stone structure in the middle at the foot of the stairs. As always the doors to the main altar are open but since there is no interior lighting, you can not actually see much inside.

I just realized that I may have gotten the previous temple numbers mixed. In any case, the above picture is of Temple #22.
The route between Temple #22 and our ryokan was very nice, an extremely pleasant walk. I found that more and more my inner voice was quieting down and a feeling of peace and tranquility strengthened. My legs were getting stronger, but I was developing a rash and my feet had large blisters. However, these were relatively minor and did not detract from my positive mood.

This was a relatively easy day compared to some of them while we were in the mountains. During the day we met almost no other Pilgrims. We met the three sisters for the last time, since they were planning on stopping at Temple #23. They said they planned to do one prefecture a year. We also met one young man going in the other direction. The counter-clockwise route is much harder than the one we took. For some reason the steepest slopes are all down hill when you go in a clockwise directions, but uphill on the reverse. Also all the signs are pointing in the clockwise direction and put in places where they are easily seen when going in that direction. Many of them are extremely easy to miss it you are walking in the other direction.

While at Temple#22, we called various places and got reservations for the rest of the week. Because of the locations, we will have to alternate long and short days. I am still not sure whether this was good or bad.

The place were we spent the night was a ryokan, a hotel for people on vacation, that was next to the ocean. However, it had seen better days and smelled badly of mold. It had a huge bath but the showers were broken. A man was there unsuccessfully trying to fix them. The ryokan consisted of a restaurant and a section with rooms. Apparently people are not taking vacations much anymore, because of the economy, so places like this have really fallen on hard times.

The beach was beautiful in front of the ryokan was beautiful. We went over to look at it before we checked in and then Ian went over to walk in bare feet through the salt water. He hoped that it would help his blisters, which were worse than mine. I decided that I would use the time to send a longer than usual blog.

Twice during the day I had forgotten to attach the belly strap on my backpack, so my shoulders were much sorer than usual. However, they felt okay when I got up in the morning.

Since this was a vacation spot, not a stop on the Henro Trail, breakfast was normally served late. We asked if they could serve us earlier, since we were the only ones there. They finally said that they could have our breakfast ready for us soon after 7 am. We ate packed and left for Day 9.