Category Archives: Walking

Day 41 – Ribasar to Santiago de Compostela: Last leg(s)

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Wednesday 7 October 2026 – The weather forecasting apps we had access to gave us no real help when it came to planning when to leave on our final walk into Santiago; the chance of showers varied from 40% to 60% for the whole day, which wasn’t helpful for our particular needs. So we did the default: hand our bags in to be collected just before the 8am deadline and head for breakfast. I packed my sun hat in my suitcase, on the basis that I was sure I wouldn’t need it, extracted my poncho and put that in my backpack, on the basis that I was pretty sure I would.

Diego served us a good, albeit slightly unorthodox, breakfast (avocado, anyone? Yes – me! Ed) and made the effort, when we left, to point us at the best route to follow to get us back to the Camino, which involved walking on roads whose existence Google stolidly denied. As we set out, it was impossible to work out what the weather would do (although it was possible to work out that there had been rain overnight).

We walked the non-existent road to rejoin the Camino trail

and rejoined the flow of pilgrims.

The first point of interest was in a small village called Rúa de Francos, where one building had been embellished with a couple of murals,

but where, of more interest historically, could be found the Gothic stone cross of Francos.

This is described in a nearby info board, translated by someone whose first language was clearly not English as: “one of the oldest and most unique stone crosses in Galicia (15th century), a popular imitation of the Gothic crosses, which was emphasised by Castelao in his work, The Stone Crosses of Galicia (1950). It stands out due to the apparent simplicity of its carving and the archaic shapes of the main image which depicts Christ crucified, accompanied by the figures of two pilgrims, reinforcing the link to the Portuguese Way”.

Nearby was another sculpture,

by local artist Camilo Seira, possibly honouring a local horse fair, the Feira de San Martiño, which occurs every year in November and is a long-established Galician event, dating back to the 16th century.

The sun actually began to emerge, which was very good of it, as (a) it lessened the chance of rain and (b) created the chance of a couple of cracking images.

The Camino route took us into a village called Ameneiro, where Jane spotted this horreo.

Apart from simply being an imposing construction, it’s interesting to note that it is/was a double decker, with storage below and above the rat proofing. Presumably the lower deck would be used for storing firewood or some such non-edible resource. We’d done a good 6km by this stage, and there was what appeared to be a café by the wayside which appeared to be open.

We looked in, and at first I thought we’d made a mistake, as there was all sorts of stuff inside.

Further examination showed that there was a (very unusually appointed) counter with a coffee machine and a nice lady behind it,

and so we had a coffee and looked around at some of the amazing things in the place.

By this stage (about 10.20), the sun had come out strongly, to the point where I wondered if my decision to leave my sun hat in my suitcase was the wrong one. In any case, it was pleasant walking along the path.

I should note (because these things are important to me), that we’d been walking steadily uphill ever since we rejoined the Camino. It was never horribly steep, and there were a few little dips, but the overall tenor of the route was gently but relentlessly uphill. There was a fine example of the usual “if there’s a choice, the Camino is the uphill one” scenario.

The highest point of the day was a village called O Milladoiro, where there is a chapel, the Capilla de la Magdalena tucked away among all the modern apartment blocks.

Mary Magdalena is regarded as the “fallen woman” – a repentant prostitute – in the Jesus saga, although there’s no biblical basis to support this view. In any case, this chapel definitely had her portrayed as fallen.

Also in O Milladoiro was a coffee stop at the Casa da Cultura. We refreshed ourselves (yes, I did have a beer, as I needed something by this stage to buck me up a bit) in front of a mural of Rosalia de Castro over the first line of one of her poems,

“Sing if you want to, in the language I talk”, encouraging the use of Galego.

As we left, we noted that in the few minutes we’d been taking refreshments, the sun had disappeared and it had quite significantly clouded over.

We walked on and caught sight of what we thought might be the towers of the Cathedral at Santiago.

Could it be? Paging Mr. Samsung and 30x magnification on the phone….

Yup. Looks like it. About the same level as us; but there’s a down and an up between us and it.

The down passed a highly-decorated lavadoiro,

and a shack which had definite pilgrim connotations, although exactly what they were is anybody’s guess,

and led down to the Ponte Vella de Arriba, a historic bridge over the Sar River.

Apparently recently restored, it forms part of the route connecting A Coruña and Lugo (the old Royal Road) and was originally built in the 16th century and renovated in the 18th century. It was also the point at which our online map – and John Brierley – showed two route options, one pretty straight, the other wandering about. Brierley (and common sense) indicates that the straighter route is the better option, but The Powers That Be had clearly decided against this, as the arrows only pointed at the other route. We resolutely set our faces against this and followed our online map. Whichever route one follows leads up once more and into the outskirts of the city of Santiago,

which, as you might expect, are not that rewarding to walk along. Particularly unwelcome was the start of some rain, but it exactly coincided with us passing another café, so we stopped in for another coffee. When we left, the rain had gone and the sun had returned – a lovely piece of serendipity.

Slightly off the route is a park which offers a viewpoint over the cathedral, so we headed that way. As we entered it, I had a powerful sense of déjà vu – was this the park from which I’d flown a drone for aerial photos when we were here after the Camino Francés? I was sure I was until I saw the view, which is very striking,

and I couldn’t remember having seen it before. As we walked through the park, though, I once again became more sure that it was indeed the place I’d used to launch the drone (I checked later; it was). These days, there’s a new sculpture there,

and the view from slightly further on gives a good sight of the two Mayan-influenced spires of the Cathedral cloisters.

We exited the park by the 100 year-old Sequoia tree

and took the southern approach to the cathedral which is the traditional route in from the Caminho Português. This passes the tiny Capilla del Santo Apostol

where (legend says) St James’ body was laid to rest awaiting his final burial. It’s a short step from there to the South Gate, the traditional end point, and typically the site of a vast queue of punters waiting to get into the Cathedral. We then made our way round to the Praza do Obradoiro, where one sees the famous view of the cathedral.

There was an unusual sight in the square;

this is part of a protest about rent regulations in Spain, which had been sparked off by the high-profile eviction on 23 September this year of an 87-year-old, María del Carmen “Maricarmen” Abascal (who, we read in the press, died today in hospital). We noticed a large number of people sitting in the square, facing the cathedral,

something which is also part of the same protest.

As part of this Camino, we’d treated ourselves to a stay at the posh hotel on the Obradoiro square, the Parador Dos Reis Catolicos, the oldest hotel in Spain.

Founded in 1499 by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, as the Hostal dos Reis Católicos, it was a Royal Hospital to provide free medical care and shelter to weary pilgrims completing the Camino de Santiago. The building operated continuously as a hospital and refuge for over 440 years. In 1954, following the relocation of the city’s medical facilities, the historic complex was transformed into the luxury hotel we were lucky to be staying in. Today, it stands as one of the world’s oldest continuously operating hospitality sites. Having checked in, we went to complete the staffwork for our Camino, which involves going to the pilgrim office a short walk away, and queueing up

to get our Compostelas (free of charge) and distance certificates (€3 each).

OK, the distance shown there is 634km from Lisbon. The dedicated (or masochistic) among you who have read through all of the entries for this Camino will know that we didn’t walk all of the stages, as the weather was too murderously hot in late August and early September. So here are the stats about what we did do.

  • Walking actual Caminho stages: 543km
  • Total distance walked since we started the Caminho on August 28: 651km
  • Total distance walked since we left the UK: 677km

So, we skipped about 90km of Caminho stages, but did around 108km of sightseeing en route, plus a further 26km of sightseeing in Lisbon and Sintra. And we both did all of this walking, I’m pleased to say, in sandals (with no socks! – Ed) which is probably the closest we will ever get to the Authentic Pilgrim Experience.

Another statistic: In the 46 days since we left the UK, we have drunk 326 cups of tea.

So, that’s it, then. We’re here, and we have a whole day tomorrow to relax before going on to visit friends in other parts of Spain and then returning home. This is the last entry for our Caminho Português, which has been a great experience which we hope you’ve enjoyed reading about in these pages.

Huge thanks are due to Caroline at WalktheCamino.com, who set up the schedule for us, all the baggage transfers and some very fine accommodation all the way along the trail; she was also very responsive on a couple of occasions when we needed her expertise.

We have a few other travels in plan, but not for the remainder of 2026; I will write about them as, all being well, they happen next year. Until then, farewell!

Day 39 – Caldas de Reis to Padrón: bloody bicyclists!

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Monday 5 October 2026 – Bringing down our bags for collection and going into breakfast coincided nicely; a decent hotel breakfast later, we were on our way. We walked out of the hotel to find that market stalls were being set up in the road outside.

It’s a big market, stretching along the whole length of the street, right up to the Roman bridge across the Bermaña.

So, let’s take a check on the state of the crowding….

Oh, well – could have been a lot worse. Actually the bugbear today was the almost ceaseless flow of bicycles through the stream of pilgrims.

Even with a wide path, pilgrims had to scatter when bicycles came through; and there were a couple of times later on in the day, when the basic slope was downhill, that those on foot had to shout at the cyclists to slow down, because of the risk of a collision.  I hope that The Powers That Be address this problem. On the Francés, there is actually a specific and often separate route for cyclists which is signposted so that, although the tracks are very close, there’s almost no overlap, and certainly none where the track is narrow.

We were continuing on the route of the Roman Via XIX

which led past a chapel dedicated to San Roque, the patron saint of Caldas de Rei,

portrayed, as ever, coyly lifting his robe.

Our natural pace seemed to be slightly faster than most people’s, so once we’d overtaken the initial group we were following, the trail was relatively uncrowded.

I certainly didn’t feel as claustrophobic as I had a couple of days ago. There was the usual array of entrepreneurial pop-ups along the way.

One of them was doing wax sellos, offering a wide variety of colours and finishes,

but our experience is that wax stamps are too fragile, so we didn’t take up on any.  These wax stamps seem to be a new thing within the last couple of years; we didn’t notice any on the Francés or Finisterre routes we did in 2023 and ’24.

Individual vignettes:

A tiny lady, incredibly well-laden with stuff

Free range cattle

Very free-range chickens having wonderful dustbaths

A significant plantation of the tree cabbages which are so popular in this part of the world

A very regularly-arranged cemetery

A Single, Laceless, Left-Hand, Leather-effect Boot, with its votive offerings

There were two pipers, neither very good: one with a guitar accompanist who was even worse;

and one who was worse, with a drummer accompanist who must have despaired at the piper’s appalling sense of rhythm.

The overall route was about 8km of uphill pull, mainly gentle, occasionally steeper but always relentlessly up, followed by some steeper downhill leading into the outskirts of Padrón. It was always pleasant walking, in sunshine and temperatures in the 20s. Of course, having got up the hills, we got to see some decent views.

Same view as the photo above, but showing the downhill

We saw a couple of mystery objects as we approached Padrón.

A wicker version of an horreo?

Not an obscure artwork, but a remnant of older electricity distribution infrastructure

and something that wasn’t at all a mystery object.

We didn’t stop at this beer stop, but we did have a couple of coffee stops. We had planned the second one at this place, which advertised itself from quite a distance away,

but were seduced by the sudden apearance on our right of this one,

where, delightfully, we bumped once again into Angus and Linda, the couple we’d spent a lot of time walking with yesterday.

Before reaching Padrón, we passed through Pontecesures, which seemed pretty pleased to have made it to 100.

Just outside it was an interesting garden: in one part, there were many gourds hanging in a line (presumably to dry out)

and in the part nearer the house, there were more gourds, obviously having gone through a paint job.

I’m surprised they didn’t have a stall selling gourds to any passers-by who happened to have a large stick about their person.

The Camino reaches Padrón via a bridge across the river Ulla, called the Pilgrim Bridge

from which one can see a large industrial complex

that we think is an alumnium production plant.

We parted company with Angus and Linda at this point and headed in to the town, past a good view of an impressive convent, the Carmelite Convento do Carmen,

and arrived at our hotel, the Hotel Corona Padron, where both a room and our bags were available. Our room had a kettle and a fridge, so making tea became top priority and a cup of Twinings finest Earl Grey started the process of re-energising us after 19.5km. It was good walking, but we were both a bit tired. However, there were some Things To See in the town, so, having established the opening time of a particular church of interest, we went for a walk. Obviously.

The church in question is the Santiago church, which is labelled “Iglesia de Santiago Apóstol de Padrón”, here seen on the other side of the old bridge over the river Sar.

Padrón plays a key role in the traditions surrounding St James. Legend has it that after the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, James the Apostle travelled to Hispania to preach, landing in Galicia at Padrón (then called Iria Flavia). He preached at a nearby chapel, Santiaguiño do Monte. Then after his eventual martyrdom in Jerusalem, his disciples took his body to Jaffa and set it in a stone boat, which, guided by angels, crossed the Mediterranean and reached Iria Flavia. They moored it to a pedrón, a stone, before burying his body inland at what became Santiago de Compostela.

That stone determined the location of the Santiago church in Padrón, which was built around it; the stone is now beneath the altar at the church and the town took its name from the stone pedrón.

The church has a splendid altar piece

with St. James at its head in his benevolent, saintly, pose.

At the back of the church is him in his Matamoros, Moor-slaying, persona.

San Roque gets a look in, too.

That stone is partially visible below the altar.

It’s inscribed in Latin, so actually is probably a Roman (pagan) altar stone that has been repurposed.

There are a couple of replicas of the stone, one of which can be found at the site of the chapel where the saint was held to have preached, the Chapel of Santiaguiño do Monte. We visited the site, and the word Monte is the operational one, here.

129 steps lead up to an area containing the chapel

with its sculpture of St. James baptising from a cockleshell.

The chapel iself was closed, but we peered in through various apertures to see the inside

with its statue of St. James on the right, with its faintly surprised expression.

Above the chapel is the Cross of Santiaguiño do Monte.

The replica pedrón bears a cockleshell,

though we’re not quite sure what for.

Back down in the town, we passed the monument to Rosalia de Castro,

the founding figure of modern Galician literature. Her Cantares gallegos (1863) launched the Rexurdimento, the revival of Galician as a literary language after centuries of neglect and belittlement as “a dialect only fit for the illiterate and the churlish”. The publication date, 17 May, is now Galicia’s Día das Letras Galegas. Born in Santiago, she spent her later years in Padrón, where she died in 1885, and where her house is now a museum.

We also saw the locals indulging in what I read is a very traditional Galcian game, Chave de Ferrolterra.

I don’t know the detail of the rules, but the basic objective is clear from the video.

We popped into a local supermarket to get some more milk so that we could indulge our tea habit. Out of curiosity, I visited the tea section, and – look what I found!

We were not, as it happens, in danger of running out (thanks again, Jessica), but it’s comforting to know that the Spanish haven’t the barbaric shortage that bedevils Portugal.

Tomorrow, most pilgrims leaving Padrón will walk to Santiago to finish their Caminho Português. We’re being a little lazy and splitting the final stage into two short walks, taking an overnight stay in Ribasar tomorrow night. We have only a short walk, therefore, which may well be a good thing, since there are two weather warnings out for the day – a storm warning and a rain warning. If we scuttle quickly along, we hope to avoid getting either drenched or blown to pieces. Fingers crossed!

 

 

 

Day 38 – Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis: Good walk in pleasant company

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Sunday 4 October 2026 – We proceeded with Plan A: leave a little later in the hope that the Keen Beans have buggered off early, meaning less crowding on the trail than yesterday. The alarm went off at 6am because we had to surrender our bags early on account of some streets being closed to accommodate a charity fun run during the day, but other than that we treated ourselves to a leisurely start.

We took breakfast in the hotel restaurant (which is also a public café, so somewhat chaotic) and headed out just before 9am with an estimated 22km to walk to Caldas de Reis. The streets looked wet,

not because of rain, but because the streets were being cleaned, by a large number of large machines,

which required some nimble footwork on our part occasionally to avoid being swept up. You remember the buzz I shared in yesterday’s post? It was clear from the state of the streets that people had been having a good time; bottles, paper cups, takeaway packaging and other detritus was being hoovered up wholesale, and the streets left gleaming and spotless.

Crossing the medieval bridge and the subsequent streets gave us a chance to see whether our Cunning Plan to avoid the crowds had worked.

Nope.

That said, it didn’t seem to matter to me as much as it had yesterday. There was a big group of (we think) Korean peregrinos, and once we’d passed them the trail seemed a bit less crowded.

The walk over the bridge afforded some lovely views in the morning sunshine.

After the bridge, the trail led uphill, mainly on the basis that leading downhill would not have worked well, and on that stretch of track we got chatting to a couple, Angus and Linda – both Australian residents, him originally from South Africa. It turned out that we spent the rest of the day’s walk in their very pleasant company, which is actually a first for us on any of the Caminos we’ve walked. The matter of whom one ignores, or nods and smiles at, or wishes “buen Camino” to, or exchanges a couple of remarks with, or continues to walk with and talk to remains one of the Camino’s great mysteries. But the combination of a couple of opening remarks, a compatibility in walking speed and a certain je ne sais quoi meant that we just carried on walking and chatting and walking and chatting.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the very young peregrina we saw walking with her mother. Jane spotted her today, walking with her father, which was nice to see.

I have to say that much of the walk was perfectly pleasant and completely unremarkable – just this 22km walk, you know? The weather was perfect, much of it was in shade, and chatting away with Angus and Linda meant that the time passed very agreeably. There were, of course, some things to note as we went: entrepreneurial pop-ups,

Angus and Linda inspecting a home-made “nyckelharpa”, a kind of keyed violin with resonating strings, very popular in Scandinavia

and some vignettes.

After about 8km, it was surely time to stop for coffee, so we looked in at a wayside cafeteria

but once again we were clearly at the tail end of a pulse of peregrinos – it was rammed, inside and out, and not just with pilgrims – as well as a number of bicycle pilgrims (bicigrinos) it was, of course, a Sunday and the local bike clubs were out in force, adding their particular brand of lycra-clad assertiveness to the mix: so we walked on. Jane hatched an excellent plan B, which involved us walking about half a kilometre off the trail, onto a major road that ran parallel, and we found

an excellent, blissfully pilgrim-free zone, which enabled the four of us to have coffee and other refreshments. Rather than simply retrace our footsteps back to where we’d left the Camino, we then walked a little way along this main road, which allowed us to have a view over the surroundings

and then cut back across to the Camino route and

once more into the stream of pilgrims. The trail took us back, actually, to the main road we’d left some 3km ago, and the first road sign we’d seen to our ultimate destination, which gave us an interesting comparison between the driving and walking distances to Santiago.

(If you’re reading this on a small screen, the Camino Waymark reads 51.070.) 

The Camino trail was following the course of an old Roman road,

which wasn’t straight and didn’t lead to Rome; but some of it was shaded by vine tunnels, which was welcome.

The temperature by this stage was probably around 27°C – not unbearable, but warm enough that patches of shade were welcome. At one stage we passed a shady spot with a handy wall, which a lot of punters were using as a rest stop

along with a bunch of bicigrinos.

In the short term, this acted as a sort of boom across the path, sweeping up pilgrims and leaving the route ahead clear

but soon enough we caught up with more pilgrims and then the stream of cyclists came through; there really was not quite room enough for them and walkers on the path and it was a bit of a nuisance having to dance across the path to get out of the way of cyclists on hearing  the rasp of tyres on gravel; very few of the cyclists bothered to use a bell, if, indeed, they were even equipped with such.

The walk carried on very pleasantly and we passed another coffee stop, called O Cumberto, which was busy but not unbearably so,

and allowed Jane to have one of her favourite refreshments – a freshly-prepared orange juice,

made to order and by hand; none of this machine-made nonsense.

By the time we reached the outskirts of Caldas de Reis, the crowds of pilgrims had died away considerably

and we just had to push through the lengthening kilometres that mark the end of a longish (22km) walk. We passed the attractive Iglesia de Santa Maria de Caldas de Reis

and a couple of buildings which gave away the USP of the place.

“Caldas de Reis” translates to “Royal Hot Springs”; the town has been a thermal spa centre since Roman times, when it was called Aquae Celenae. There are two hotel/spas in the town, and also a public fountain, As Burgas, which spouts water that is slightly too hot for one’s hands,

although It’s A Thing to bathe your feet in it.

Our target, though, was a specific church. To get there, we crossed the river

and turned left off the main road, to see the imposing Igrexa de San Tomé Becket

a church dedicated to Thomas Becket, murdered in 1170 by knights loyal to Henry II, who allegedly uttered the famous phrase, “who will rid me of this troublesome priest” after Becket gave him grief about the relative rights of royalty and Church. Local tradition has it that Becket passed through the town on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela a couple of years before his death, hence the church dedicated to him.

The church was, of course, closed. Werl, Sunday, innit?

We went, therefore, the short distance through the streets of the town

only narrowly avoiding being mown down by more bicigrinos, to our hotel, the Pousada Real and checked in. It’s a Pousada, therefore posh, and, to start with, a bit up itself. But the room was available, and they had already put our bags in it, which was a nice touch. 

The hotel receptionist thought that the Becket church might reopen at 5pm, so after a bit of a relax and a cup of tea, we headed back there, to find that that was the case.

The altar screen at the far end is elegantly carved,

and has a figure of Thomas Becket at its head.

Elsewhere in the church is a processional statue of Thomas

and also a statue of San Roque

(see the dog! see the wound!) who is the patron saint of the town. After that we headed back to the riverside, where there is a cafeteria/bar/restaurant called As Termas.

They didn’t start serving food until 7pm, and they don’t accept table reservations, so Jane hatched a cunning plan: we occupied a table and drank G&Ts until the kitchen opened. Once they’d started with the food service, it was quite the operation. We had an excellent meal, with rather too much food, so, to walk it off, we had something of a stroll afterwards. Obviously. Jane found us some pieces of street art

and then we headed back to the hotel to relax and prepare for the morrow.

We have another decent day in prospect; fine weather and under 20km to walk to Padrón – or that’s what it says on paper, anyway. It’s a Brierley stage, so we can expect further crowds, but I hope I’ve made the necessary mental adjustment that means it won’t be too tiresome. We’ll try the later departure again, in the faint hope that it makes any difference. In any case it means a reasonably relaxed day tomorrow and I shall report on it in due course.