we leave leon, a city we felt very at home in, stopping outside the beautiful hostal de san marco, to have breakfast.

after a morning's cycling, we arrive in astorga, the envisaged end of stage. it is market day, and we travel through it as the stall holders are packing up. there are many tourists admiring the beautiful cathedral, even more are queueing outside to visit an exhibition inside. we cycle around looking for the alberque, which we find, but are told they only let walkers stay, so we get out the guide book and maps on the terrasse of a cafe and try to find out from the locals, if they know somewhere we can pitch our tent.

we decide to continue on a few kilometres to a small village, murias de rechivaldo, and hope we will be able to stay there. we cover the ground along a dirt road section of the camino, and discover the alberque in the village to be unoccupied apart from a german and french couple, also pilgrims. the french had met the hostel warden in the local bar and he should be along <<later>>! we are hopeful that we can pitch our tents, as the hostel has a small garden.

we chat to the german couple and discover that they met 3 years ago while travelling the camino and are currently travelling to santiago from freiburg as their honeymoon! i suppose if they are still talking to each other in santiago, they are made for each other!

the warden surfaces and allows us to pitch our tent, which we do and then make our way into the village, which is virtually unchanged since medieval times. we sit outside the warden's bar and chat to the assembled pilgrims. while there, michelle rushes up to us on her bike and askes us if we have seen carlos in the last few days, as she has lost him! we cannot help her, and she disappears of over the horizon.