Redondela/Arcade to Pontevedra
Tina bday today
Met the ladies Ada and Marla (from NOLA) who also stayed at our Vigo Hotel. I went to breakfast with them and it turned out they wanted a ride with us to the next town, Arcade. 4 of us decided to take the first 5 miles off of our hike since it’s not supposed to be that nice. They were taking a day off there due to bad knees.
We started at the old Roman bridge in Arcade at 9:35.
Went thru back streets/alleys with lots of uphill but with flats in between. The flats disappeared so up up up. A steep downhill and now I’m on a path through the woods. The dirt path became
an ancient stone road called Verea Vella da Canicouva. It was all uphill but not steep. Back and forth stone and dirt eventually ended up at an entrepreneur stand and had a fresh squeezed orange juice and of course a nice stamp in my passport/credential. Back on the road uphill dirt then stone the key being uphill.
Now back to dirt path. Just when I thought it was going to level out I got an uphill. At least it’s dirt not stone. This is tiring. Good thing we skipped the first few miles from Redondela to Arcade or we would have started this section tired. Passed a guy doing stamps on the passport in ceiling wax and everybody was lining up for that. A popular event but I just did a regular stamp and moved on. I don’t want to lump off wax in my passport and I don’t want to wait in a line.
The path merged with a paved road for a short distance.. walking along some small vineyards. The map showed a left turn at a food truck. I’m looking for it Still gradual uphill. Found the left with a yellow arrow but no food truck.
A quick right and we’re in a beautiful Fern Forest all wooded and shaded.
Just met someone from Ireland. She said visit after St. Patrick’s Day cuz he stops the rains and May is a good month
Just got to a downhill. Hopefully it’s gradual and we’re done with the uphills.
Many more pilgrims on the trail today because we joined the central route and anybody coming from Valencia would be on the trail now. Nothing like the previous days of few pilgrims.
Just passed a very noisy frog pond. They are singing their lungs out. One annoying pilgrim was poking the water around them with her hiking pole. That really annoyed them but she didn’t seem to care. All pilgrims are not calm and respectful.
Next I walked with a lovely woman from Jburg South Africa. I had to take some nice pictures of her that she could show her friends and say they were selfies. She’s as good at selfies as I am. Her pace was extremely fast so it made it easy for me to cover a lot of ground in a short time. Apparently she does mountain hiking every week in South Africa. I finally got her to take a break and we sat in a shaded area and shared my food. Her friends were behind and so were mine so we had plenty of time. We decided it was time to check our Google maps and see how far we actually had to go. I had checked once before and it had said an hour. This time it said 2 hours. So did her map. Her friends had texted and said we only had 2 km to go so we’re very mixed up at this point. I took the map and I studied it and studied it and realized they were sending us back almost to our starting point and doing a u-turn and coming up a different path. Not useful. Good thing the path is well marked and I have my Camino ninja app with a very good map it just doesn’t tell me distances. We left our resting place and headed towards Pontevedra. It wasn’t too long before we entered the city and we said our goodbyes since she was going one way and I was going another. Hopefully we’ll meet up again in another spot.
I noticed sometimes I had the bent pole in my right hands and sometimes they had it in my left hand. Reminded me of Igor once again.
After passing the obligatory Pontevedra 3-d sign I was going to follow Google maps to the hotel. On a whim I compared the map to Google, different Roots similar and point so I decided to stay on the Camino route. Good choice. It took me on pedestrian only roads almost the entire way. Right through Old Town and several squares. The last few blocks I switched to Google and voila I arrived. Entry thru a large gate into a large courtyard into the Parador.
Easy check-in but I had to wait in Andre’s room until mine was clean.
Somehow any followed Google maps at the end and ended up going up a big hill. I have no idea mine was flat the whole way.
We’re all so tired. We just want to sleep but we have 8:45 dinner reservation for Tina’s birthday so we’ll have to all wake up and have some energy. Good luck!.
Arrival 2:40 9 miles