Stately progression: Marathon completed in 5 hrs 53 mins.

This has been an average fortnight's holiday. Travelling around Portugal and a sortie into Spain. A bit of distance covered; 366.8 miles. Just on foot and by one chap; that's all.

Today was a bit uppish; now unavoidable on the coastal areas of northern Spain. Hugh professes to like hills and that's a bit of luck. He still chooses to lean into the gradient on the way up and walk down the steepest slopes which is sensible. The amount of struggling cyclists illustrated the steepness and I do believe he overtook a couple.

We arrived in Santiago de Compostella this evening; a beautiful city and destination one of the largest regular pilgrimages in western Europe which began from about 900 AD. Most people weren't considering leaving their dung fires at this time yet they made the trip to Santiago. St James is the fellow to whose remains they came to pay homage and we wouldn't risk thunderbolts by drawing analogies with Hugh yet he's an extraordinary fellow as well, alive and kicking of course. Tomorrow we begin our own version of the Camino Way, heading on a slightly more northern, staggered route across to San Sebastian. This will be tough. I badly want to get on the road to share the mental and physical burden of this but must wait until the injury heals. Hugh continues on his own but always with us harrying and nagging him like a couple of sheepdogs.

Samia continues to be a talisman really - anything she applies to Hugh seems to work but this is a very slow game of chess (the sort where the opponent sighs, sits back and makes you wait, twiddling everything) and he needs to take it slowly. He's reminded of this every time we see him unicycling, fire-eating or other silliness. On the whole he behaves.

Weather's still great - expected to break tomorrow but we'll see. Santiago is particularly attractive in the wet apparently, the quartzite in the granite giving it a certain sheen, with water spouting from the gargoyles liberally scattered amongst the old city. All very well but heard a similar thing about Aberdeen on a 'holiday' there. We'll stick with the sun, thanks awfully.