Saturday 3 October 2026 – We made what was probably something of a tactical blunder in our timing of the day, and it’s all Accuweather’s fault! We had been expecting the possibility of thunderstorms and rain after 2pm, and had 21 or so kilometres to cover, so started out dead early; we took our voucher-paid breakfast at the nearby café at 7am and were on the road at just after 7.30.
Unfortunately, it seemed that so was the rest of the peregrino world.
I wrote yesterday about increased footfall; I write today about there being too many sodding pilgrims. I guess I had formed the opinion from yesterday that crowding would not be an issue. Today, it became clear that, for me at least, it was. I had my Sarría moment today. To quote from that blog entry, “Yes, of course these people have a perfect right to be there; of course I’m being unreasonable. But I hated it. All day.” Today was like that, except not quite all day. It occurred to me, as the day wore on, that the actual number of people is not so much the issue. What triggers me is basically the noise; I like walking in almost complete silence and there was a lot of babble buggering my bubble. Yes, it’s their Camino; but their behaviour buggers up my Camino and I’m hoping that today has inoculated me for the five subsequent days that see us to Santiago.
I’m fairly sure that, had we left later, we would have experienced less crowding because we were on a “Brierley Stage” – a stage as documented by the sainted John Brierley in his extremely good and influential book on this Camino, which thus informs the accommodation and hiking strategies of a large number of the pilgrims. So a lot of people set out at about the same time on the same route; hence the crowds.
We had one exceedingly irritating peregrina today.
I very nearly plucked up the courage to say something to her, but my nerve failed me, so, for the half hour or so that she was in earshot, I simply fumed; it’s the British thing to do, after all.
A lot of photos I took today were about the crowds
A lot of others were about the myriad of pop-up/entrepreneurial sideshows along the way, offering sellos, shells, bracelets, food and other stuff that pilgrims might pay money for.
There was one musician by the wayside that I thought was worth paying; a piper, who was really quite good (if you like that kind of thing).
There were several bicigrinos – cyclists – who must have found the crowds even more aggravating than I did. There was also a very junior peregrina;
I wonder how far she will walk in total?
So, outside the crowds, how did the day go? The weather was fine – and this is where Accuweather had let us down, by providing the forecast that suggested we should start early. We had glorious sunshine all day, and temperatures around the mid-20s. There were a couple of hills to climb, steep in places
and with correspondingly steep descents.
Actually, the one above was at a point where we followed our online map rather than the waymarks. It led down to a major road a couple of hundred metres earlier than the “official” path
but there were still waymarks on it and, if you look carefully, you can see that the track is called “Camino dos Peregrinos”, so it seems that the Powers That Be are tinkering with the route for whatever reasons. Whatever, it gave us a short but well-appreciated dose of solitude as we walked.
We got some great views: as the sun came up, as we crossed the river Verdugo on the Puente Medieval de Pontesampaio, and as we reached the summit of the hills.
Naturally, at some of these lovely views, people were more interested in thrusting their gurning faces unnecessarily in them.
Quite often, though, people just slogged on past without registering them. Their choice, I suppose.
There were the usual sorts of wayside items that occur all along the major Camino routes.
There were coffee stops available, some at established cafés, some at more entreprenerial setups.
The best part of the day was towards the end, with about 7km to go:
another Complimentario. It added over a kilometre to the overall distance of the day, but for almost all of it was a delightful end to a walk that I’d found quite difficult to handle. Fewer people, lovely shady woodland and riparian scenes.
At the end, we passed under a couple of tunnels that had been well decorated
and arrived in the town of Pontevedra.
Sorry about the punter in the shot; life is too short to have waited for a gap where no-one was taking fucking selfies
There’s a memorable quote from the BBC’s Doctor Who on the nature of time: “People assume that Time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.”
One can say the same about Distance, which is not constant, despite what the International Committee for Weights and Measures would have you believe. The last kilometres of a long walk are much longer than the first kilometres, particularly when walking through the outskirts of a town.
To its credit, Pontevedra did its best to leaven the mix a bit.
That thing in the middle of the road there
is the official mark that says there are 64.5km between it and Santiago.
Pontevedra is the capital of its province in Galicia, on the Lérez river at the head of the Ría de Pontevedra. It began as a Roman settlement, then grew into a major medieval fishing and trading port. That prosperity faded in the 16th century when the river silted up and Vigo took over as the main harbour. Today it is known for its well-preserved granite old town of small plazas, along with the scallop-shaped Capela da Peregrina, the Renaissance Basilica of Santa María a Maior and the ruined Gothic convent of Santo Domingo.
Quite some history, then. We used the bits of the day not dedicated to checking into our hotel (Hotel Rúas) and getting lunch (an engaging place called Taberna Felix, just round the corner), to explore it a bit. To do that, we went for a walk. Obviously.
The first thing that struck us is that the old town in Pontevedra has a heck of a buzz on Saturday lunchtimes.
There are many elegant buildings, and the place has an engaging quality to it.
The Capela da Peregrina is a very distinctive shape.
On the outside, one can see St. James
and on the inside,
the statue of the Virgin Mary as Peregrina
and a handsome cupola, shaped like a cockleshell.
The Basilica is an impressive chunk of masonry viewed from the side
or the front.
Inside
it has a very intricate altar screen,
a statue which we now know to be of San Roque
and a decorative rose window.
The ruined Gothic convent is another impressive edifice, which must have been awe-inspiring in its day.
There’s another thing, of course, which concerns how the town got its name.
It comes from Latin Pons Vetus, “old bridge”, after the original Roman bridge over the Lérez; Ponte Vedra is the Galego form. The arches of the current, medieval bridge are fetchingly decorated with cockleshells,
appropriately enough, as we shall be walking out of the town across the bridge tomorrow morning.
Ah, yes: tomorrow. We have to get to Caldas de Rei, some 22km away – another Brierley stage, so likely to be crowded again. The weather forecast is for another decent day, so we plan to start walking around 9am in the hope that hoi polloi peregrini will have buggered off early and so we might get a bit of peace and quiet. Wish us luck!
