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.