Having enough room to dress and sort out gear was a welcome luxury, although I still managed to lose several items, including my deodorant. After an extensive search I declared it to be lost forever, although I later found it in the depths of my rucksack.

I was able to purchase a takeaway coffee from the hotel restaurant before setting off into the now-familiar darkness. We picked a route recommended to us by the hotel Manager that would easily rejoin the Camino.

As we walked along the quiet, dark road, the only sound was our footsteps. Everything seemed still; the looming forest to our right and a cornfield to our left picked out by the feeble light from our head torches felt eerie. Rachel remarked that it felt very ‘Children of the Corn’, but before too long we could see the road we were to join, pock-marked by several spots of light from the head torches of our fellow pelegrinos.

We rejoined the Camino Route and walked through a couple of hamlets, a slowly breaking dawn outlining shapes of houses against the still-dark sky. A few miles later, we arrived at a café that sat amongst a kind of sculpture park, which included a ramshackle mix of statues, a couple of tractors riding an arch and an incongruous huge dinosaur on a trolley.

We resolved to explore but first, breakfast was calling. As we ate, Rachel booked our accommodation for tonight in a private albergue as Sigueiro appears to lack a public one – we didn’t want a repeat of yesterday!

After a few more kilometres of road walking, we turned onto a track through woodland to reach the village of A Rúa, where we passed a few derelict houses that would either have been demolished or hidden behind barriers in the UK.

Eventually we reached Bar O Cruceiro, where a staff member let me clumsily place our orders for coffee and toast in my broken Spanish before repeating my order back to me in perfect English. After all the egg and chips I had endured, I relished tucking into my tasty Tostada Tomate, the café dog demanding pets but probably hoping for a stray piece of toast.

After a rest, it was time to hit the road again. Looking at the map, we faced a few more kilometres of road walking, then we would be among the trees again. As always, it was pleasant walking through the forest, which sported a variety of Autumnal fungi, even if we were sweating from the steady climb.

Emerging from the woods, we knew that for the final stretch into Sigueiro we would be walking alongside a motorway, so we expected a monotonous finish. It was worse. Just as we reached the road, the rain started, becoming increasingly heavier as we trudged along the track, the sounds of heavy traffic amplified by the wet tarmac.

A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder saw us scurry for shelter under a roofed structure for a few minutes. Satisfied that the danger had passed, we walked out the remaining distance to Sigueiro, through the monsoon-like rain. We were soaked.

Luckily our private albergue had decent showers plus a laundry room, which we took full advantage of. We visited a little church on a hill for evening mass before devouring huge pizzas in the restaurant below the albergue.

As I drifted off to sleep in my lofty top bunk, I felt rather sad that tomorrow would be our last day on the Camino. I was enjoying the routine of Camino life and wasn’t sure I wanted it to end.