Tag Archives: Galicia

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.

 

 

Camino Finisterre Day 13: Walkin’ back to Santiago, whoop-ah, oh yeah, yeah*

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Tuesday 14 May 2024 – Whilst we had a reasonably comfortable stay, the Hotel Millan is not a place I would recommend; any better days it might once have seen are many, many days ago. So we weren’t tempted to linger after breakfast, and in any case the weather forecast made a prompt start seem a good idea; cloudy and showers were the order of the morning, with the prospect of rain in the afternoon.

We set off just after 0830 in light rain, retracing our steps to Santiago whence we started on May 2nd.  We passed sights that I don’t remember from that walk, such as this dovecote

and some that I do, such as the impressive gates to the Pazo de Albariña,

which is some kind of a historical landmark.

The weather stayed gloomy, with occasional light showers, so when we walked through Ponte Maceira I was glad that we had seen it at its best on the way out to Finisterre. Nonetheless, I took a couple of photos, because it is a lovely village.

After Ponte Maceira, there is a longish climb up to Carballo, which is the high point of the day’s walk. (Coming the other way, you’ll remember, it’s also the high point after The Steep Bit, a decent example of the sort of mandatory component that makes Day One of any walk a bastard.) On the return leg back to Santiago it’s not so steep, and the ascent not so much, but it still tested my energy levels and, frankly, found them wanting. So I used photography to give me the excuse for some short rests on the way up.  For example, there was a beautifully red horreo to be admired,

and some decent scenery

which held out the tantalising possibility that the rain would stop.

In Trasmonte, we had the courage to walk past the tempting Casa Pancho, as we hadn’t quite done the qualifying distance after which a coffee stop is permissible. I looked in at Trasmonte’s intriguing Fisterra Bovine World, where I got a chance at a better shot at one of their sheds.

This is apparently a two-year project whereby thirteen different bovine breeds from all over the world will be fed and raised under the Galician livestock system, using feed typical of the area based on native corn, to measure the effect of the Galician System on each breed. Crikey.

Trasmonte features some photogenic corners,

and just beyond the village we passed the high point, which is more or less marked by a fonte.

The path then goes down, as is not uncommon after high points, and, in the case of this path, it goes down quite steeply (had I already mentioned this, maybe?).

It’s interesting that Google describes this path as “mainly flat”. I’d hate to take on something that it describes as “a bit of a hill”. Whatever, as the sun was now shining more or less reliably, it made for some attractive scenes on the way down.  It is a damp environment, as can be seen from the vast amounts of moss which adorn, well, pretty much everything.

At the bottom is a café called Bar O km 79, where we stopped for refreshments. I think its name stems from the distance from the bar to Finisterre. Whatever, a coffee was a welcome thing, and it meant that we were under shelter as a small spattering of rain swept through.

We pressed on

and it became clear that we were running into a stream of peregrinos who had set out that morning from Santiago.

It never became crowded with pilgrims, but the oncoming flow was steady and constant for several kilometres.

We passed another unusual horreo as we walked on.

It’s been noticeable that, starting around Negreira, the principal construction of the horreos has gone from entirely stone-built to stone-and-wood. This is a stone-and-wood one, as you can see, but the unusual thing about it is its base; typical horreos are mounted on stone “toadstools”, which serve to keep the rats at bay; this one simply has stone pillars, but of course there’s the ledge in place to make it impossible for rats to get at the riches within.

After a few more kilometres we came to our second stop, a bar called Os Arcos.  Whilst we got ourselves outside beer and pizza, an amusing little cabaret played out before us, involving the delivery of large gas cylinders.  With a huge din, this van pulled up.

Its mission was to deliver two full cylinders and take away two empties.  It would have been cruel and ill-mannered to video the troubles the driver had in unshipping the bars which hold the cylinders in place, but it was funny to watch – and very noisy. It involved a lot of hitting things with spanners and other bits of metal before he could get the cylinders out. He correspondingly had trouble getting the bars back into place as well before he drove off.  This video (if played with sound up) will give you some idea of the cacophony which surrounded this little vignette.

After resuming our journey, we passed a tulip tree in full bloom (something Jane tells me I’ve seen before, but not that I remember)

and the sun came out enough to make the scenery worth taking photos of.

The last of those is taken from the ascending path just a few kilometres from Santiago. Once again, I found it really hard work, even though it wasn’t all that steep; but we were rewarded at the top with our first sight of the iconic towers of Santiago Cathedral.

Slightly further on, one gets an even better view

and I was pleased to be able to see it whilst the sun was shining, something it wasn’t doing on our outbound walk.

The cathedral continued to dominate local streets as we made our way through the outskirts

and soon enough we were in the Plaza del Obradoiro

and shortly thereafter back at our hotel, the massive San Martin Pinero monastery building.

We’d walked the complete final stage today, covered 21km, and arrived in the sunshine, which was a nice way to finish our Camino Finisterre. It’s not been a classic achievement for us like completing the Camino Francés was last year – the weather and my digestive issues had intervened to make it a bit of a disjointed experience – but we still had a quiet sense of satisfaction.

What do I think of this Camino? I think it’s worth doing for anyone who has not visited Muxia and/or Cape Finisterre, which are both attractive, charismatic places, but probably less so for people who have visited these before. We found the endless eucalyptus plantations, and their aftermath (blasted earth and chewed-up trails) a bit tedious and depressing; it’s a shame that people’s livings depend on planting and harvesting this invasive species. The poor weather we had in places took some of the gilt off the gingerbread, for sure, although there’s a case to say that this is our fault for not having industrial-strength waterproofs with us.

That said, we’ve stayed in some great places – As Pias in Olveiroa, Casa de Balea in Corcubión and the excellent Hotel Semaforo at Cape Finisterre come immediately to mind – and the trip has got us walking again after a period where it was too difficult to get out and about. Assuming that Vueling don’t cock things up and ruin our journey home, we’ve had a pleasant couple of weeks, which of course included visiting A Coruña and Lugo; and We Will Be Back – our plans include taking on the Camino Portugues. As and when we undertake this journey – and all the others, of course – you can rest assured that I’ll be writing about our travels in these pages.

Hasta la próxima!

 

* Sorry about the title. Anyone younger than me will probably never have heard of Helen Shapiro, a teen star in the early 60s with a big voice and a big hit called “Walkin’ Back To Happiness”, which I, of course, had on my brain for the whole of today’s walk.

Camino Finisterre Day 12: Flamin’ Rain In Spain – Again!

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Monday 13 May 2024 – We looked out of our Mazaricos hotel window this morning to a drearily familiar scene.

In a moment of madness which we’ll surely regret, we decided we would brave the conditions, despite the track record of this kind of weather in this area. After all, the last time we came here, we were forced into a taxi by weather that was the subject of a Yellow Alert for rain. No such alert was in place today, so surely it wouldn’t be that bad? Anyway, I’d be wearing special waterproof socks, so at least I should be OK, surely? [Hah! What about me? Ed]

As you’ll remember from your reading of my description of how we got here way back on Day 2, the Mazaricos hotel, Casa Jurjo (#3 below), is quite some way off the official Camino path, and it has a deal for peregrinos whereby it will collect them from, or deliver them to, the Camino (at #2) as part of an overnight stay.

On the way out, we’d only managed from #1 to #1a before getting waterlogged. Today, the idea was to walk all the way from #2 to #1, even though we knew it would rain.

Accordingly, after breakfast, a lad called Jorje dropped us off outside #2 (a bar called Casa Pepe), and we started along the Camino towards Negreira.

At first it was raining, but OK. We walked through the village of As Maroñas

and out into the countryside.

As we went, there was the usual fairly attenuated flow of peregrinos coming in the opposite direction, and rueful smiles were the order of the day accompanying the “Buen Camino” greetings (through increasingly gritted teeth) as we passed each other.

In the distance in the photo above, you can just made out a digger by the roadside.  Its job was clearly to maintain the roadside drains that were obviously well-needed with so much flamin’ rain falling from the sky.

We pressed on,

and the rain pressed down. It was also bloody windy, which made things a lot more unpleasant. As I said, there wasn’t a Yellow Alert for Rain in force, but there might just as well have been, as I’m buggered if I could distinguish between the user experience today and that of ten days ago.  We simply got wetter and wetter, and our resolve to continue walking fell lower and lower…

…until we passed #1a (Casa Vella) again

at which point we decided, exactly as before, that Enough Was Enough. The claims to waterprooficity of my vaunted waterproof socks turned out to be overblown and my feet were as sodden as the rest of us.  We called in again

and the delightful señora there once again made us coffee and whistled up a taxi for us.

This means that we have completed the Negreira – Mazaricos stage of this Camino, albeit not in one go and, indeed, not even in one direction. This leaves unwalked the 13km from #2 to #4, which is a shame. But this Camino hasn’t been about proving we can do mileage, which the Camino Francés was, partly, and did.  This was supposed to be enjoyable and having to walk in the pissing rain is not that.

A small vignette played out whilst we had coffee at Casa Vella, as a couple of other people were there, one of whom was evidently (a) English and (b) slightly embarrassed to have no euro cash with him in order to complete paying his dues.  He asked if we could spare €20, which he would send us online.  While I suspect he was legit, I was reluctant to start handing out bank details to a complete stranger in The Foreign, even if he was an English Gentleman.  As it turned out he had sterling cash (does this make him more of a gentleman or less, these days?), and so I gained a bit on the deal – he gave me £20 and I gave him my last €20 note, retaining the €50 I judged would be needed for the taxi.  We never caught his name, but he was a pleasant chap, despite the fact that he runs a podcast, and hails from Newcastle, not that you could tell from his accent.

Anyway, the taxi was warm and, importantly, dry and ferried us swiftly and cheaply (for just €15) to our hotel, the Hotel Millan in Negreira.  We were supposed originally to have returned to the Mesquita, but there had apparently been a cock-up and so we were in a different place for tonight.  Luckily, our room was available for us to move straight into, and so we dripped our way upstairs and started the process of drying ourselves out.  We have a lovely view over the hotel’s pool

but it’s not really the weather for a swim, somehow.

The hotel offered a lunch, which was decent enough and very good V for M. Afterwards, we hopped across the road to buy some newspapers, which are almost as good at telling one the news as tablets are, but infinitely better at sopping up moisture from the inside of sopping wet shoes.

The rest of the day was spent drying out, both by us and the weather, which was dry by the evening. According to Accuweather, we should expect a couple of showers tomorrow, but, assuming that our various tactics for wringing the moisture out of our gear work, it looks like we should be able to walk the remaining leg.  We’ll take another look at the weather tomorrow morning, obvs.

Lunch had been an opportunity for us to discuss our philosophical approach to completing this Camino. It would, of course, be infinitely more satisfying to arrive into Santiago on foot than to skulk in by taxi. But the course of the last couple of weeks has taught us a lot about the limitations of our waterproofs (fairly considerable) and our courage (easily swayed by the lure of practicalities and comfort). So we’ll see.  And so will you, should you come back to these pages to find out.