Even if you are familiar with the Camiño Portugues you may not recognise the names of the places where we are starting and ending each day. As I did on the Camino Frances this Spring, we are spending the night "off-stage", i. e. not in the classic stopping places mentioned in the guidebooks, but in the little villages in between. This time it wasn't intentional, but just sort of worked out this way. In some cases this makes it easier to find lodging, but today it made it harder!
We set off this morning from Soutoxusto - and not even the lady who works at the bar downstairs from where we're staying tonight knows where that is, even though it must be less than half an hour's drive away - and walked what is possibly the most dangerous stretch of camino I have ever walked, along a busy three-lane highway with no sidewalk or guardrail and trucks whizzing by at (Spanish) highway speed. Luckily it was only a short stretch, perhaps a kilometre, into the town of Arcade, where the Camino crosses this busy highway - with no crosswalk or traffic light - and continues through town up a side road, before crossing the river over an old stone bridge at Pontesempaio.
After the bridge we climbed through the laneways between the houses and horreos before stopping for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake on our way out of town.
Our path followed an ancient roadbed of flagstones with deep cart tracks carved into them over the centuries.
The path continued through forests of eucalyptus, chestnut and oak, cornfields and vineyards for another ten kilometres before we arrived in Pontevedra.
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| An agricultural procession |
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| It's not all alboriño |
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| Pilgrims help a farmer with a wheelbarrow across a muddy spot on the path |
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| Chestnuts are everywhere |
We stopped for lunch in Pontevedra, where I discovered that just because a sandwich is called "sandwich mixto vegetal", translated in the English menu as "mixed vegetable sandwich", doesn't mean the Spanish won't slip a slice of ham into it just the same!
Having successfully convinced the waitress to fix me a vegetable sandwich without a slice of animal in it, we proceeded into the old centre of Pontevedra, entering the town via Rúa de la Peregrina and Porta do Camiño, leading us to Praza de la Peregrina and the Santuario da Peregrina. We must be getting closer to our goal, judging by the abundance of pilrimage-related place names!
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| Praza das Cinco Ruas |
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| Basílica de Santa María A Grande |
This morning's section of the Way was quite crowded, but almost everyone stopped for the night in Pontevedra, so in the afternoon we had the trail pretty much to ourselves. We crossed the river and left Pontevedra behind, heading back into the forest of eucalyptus trees and bright green ferns in a slight drizzle.
After about a dozen more kilometres we came to what we hoped would be our resting place for the night, A Portela hostel, in a former school. But it was full, and we had a choice of either sleeping on a mattress on the floor or walking another kilometre and a half to a truck stop café with a few rooms for rent upstairs. We opted for the truck stop, accurately described in the guidebook as "very basic", and here we are, hoping for the best and wondering whether we made the right decision! After walking almost thirty kilometres, perhaps we are too tired to care.
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