Santo Domingo to Villamajor

Today was 'glad to be alive' glorious.

The sun was shining, the views were spectacular and the company, fantastic.

For the past couple of days I've been walking with an international troop of awesome people.

There's Mila (Spanish), Tano (Spanish), Magda (Polish), David (Italian), Ines (French), Manon (French) and Tony (Wolverhampton).

I've been improving my Spanish, learning to swear in Italian and enhancing my knowledge of the Midlands folk music scene.

I've found that walking with Europeans means that people are constantly trying to feed me.

Walking with a light pack is so important on Camino, but Mila walks every day with an extra drawstring PE bag full of food which includes a large bottle of olive oil - not on any of the packing lists I looked at but clearly an essential if you're Spanish.

At points along the way, we're all reverting to little stereotypes...the French girls spend our rest breaks nonchalantly smoking; whenever we find a cafe the Italian orders espresso; the Spanish have a never ending supply of bread, meat and cheese and me...well, I'm sunburnt. I've also been outed for not eating enough vegetables.

It's a real privilege to share the Camino with such lovely people, we're becoming a little travelling family.

Today was Davide's (the Italian) birthday; he made the mistake of mentioning this to me yesterday, so of course I happened to let a few people know...

This evening we surprised/embarrassed him with a birthday cake and sang happy birthday, which sounds surprisingly good in five languages!