Bill Arney

The 24 km walk of today’s portion of the Variant Espiritual began with the Ruta Pedra y Agua, the route of stone and water. Stone and water used to mean grain milling, an in fact you could call this a walk “down by the old mill stream.” The ruins (“in various states of conservation,” as the marketing says) of seven or eight old mills, some with their milestones lying around, along with stone water courses to route the river to power the mills, dot the cascading river next to the wooded footpath. It was beautiful,  and the sun didn’t penetrate to the river until very late in the morning.

The second stage of the day was the Ruta Rio, a long, pleasant,  flat walk on graveled paths at an elevation, the GPS said,  of 3 meters above sea level, along the slow moving rio Ulia. Past lots of well groomed commercial vineyards with grapes growing on trellises 5 – 7 feet high and past two or three bodegas producing the wine.

The third stage started with me walking across a 2 km long bridge and finding that I was in Vilanova Islete and not Vilanova de Aurosa where I was supposed to catch the boat to Padrón. Two fellows in a beach bar told me to go back across the bridge and turn left. Oops. I checked the time and headed back to the bridge march. Just as I was about to get on the bridge and as the rain was increasing, the one customer in the bar drove up beside me and motioned me in. He would drive me! Another Angel de Camino. Made it in plenty of time to walk around and find other peregrinos looking for a boat. We gathered in the new albergue, which is part of a new indoor gym.

Stage three was the boat ride to Padrón, up the Ulla river, the river up which St. James’ body was tranported, from Palestine, in its stone boat. Along the river there were, indeed, lots of crosses in the river, 17 by one account, 23 according to our skipper. But our boat did not make it as far as the Saint’s. We got dropped off at the down river town and had to walk 2 km, in some of the hardest rain I have ever experienced, to Padrón,  where the main church contains, under the central altar, the mooring stake to which the stone boat was tied on arrival. The river route is sometimes call “the path of all paths” because, were it not for this river, no body of James in Galicia, no Camino, maybe not even a Reconquista.

Padrón is 23 km from Santiago. I may break that into a two-day walk!