Day 17 - Continuing up the coast

In one of my previous posts, there was a picture of the elevated railroad tracks. They were quite new and we soon discovered that the old line had been turned into a hiking/biking path. It was very pleasant - trees on both sides and an occasional glimpse of the ocean through the trees on the left.

Since we were walking on what had once been train tracks, there were few turns and those that there existed were long and slow.

After a while we came out of the woods and back beside the beach. There were a lot of pilgrims on this stretch and we kept passing them and being passed. Someone would go flying by us, but a hour latter we would find the person resting beside the path. A number of people fell in step with us and joined us for a while. We heard stories about everyone around us and were told that all the pilgrims for kilometers in both directions knew about Ian and I. One intriguing thing was that there were constant stories about a non-English speaking Spaniard who was traveling alone. Ian was quite interested because, back when he thought that we would have spare time, he had packed a Spanish text. He wanted to brush up his Spanish in preparation to attending an academic conference in Spain during the summer of 2009. Of course, he had not opened the book at all, having neither time nor energy for study.
We stopped for lunch and Ian laid down and took a rest.
It is hard to see in the picture but down at the waterline there are hundreds and hundreds of seagulls. I have never seen so many in one place at one time.
At least it was not raining, but it certainly seemed like it might start at any moment.