Bill Arney

Walked out of Pontevedra, met Julia from Germany,  and was able to return the towel she had left in the albergue the night before. I picked it up thinking that the best that could happen would be that I got to return the towel, and the worst that could happen would be that I would have another nice trail towel.

A few km after leaving Pontevedra everyone came to a decision point. Continue on the Portugués way or turn left on the Variant Espiritual? As I was reading about the Spiritual route,  two German women showed up and said, “This is the turn we were looking for.” I joined them.

The route led through woods to the monastery at Poio, down toward the water, along the shore, through an old beach town, then up the mountain! And up more. Most of the rest of the day was up. It had a feel like the Hospidales route over the mountains on the Primitivo and it felt right to carry rocks and unburden myself at the high points. (At one high point I also unburdened myself of a few squares of milk chocolate. Some might say I just carried them differently, but they were no longer weighing down my pack.) After topping the mountain, a gentle downhill led eventually to a wooded footpath down to the monastery at Armenteira. And from there to a closed and locked albergue! But as I was heading back to the monastery and town, the German women walked in, and a car pulled up with a woman saying she would be opening the albergue. Many things were laughable today. Another one: the sun came blasting out for the last several hundred km down the mountain as if to say, “All that rain … just a joke. Sorry.”

One of the nice aspects of this variant is that there are no concrete markers telling you how many kilometers you are from Saint James … telling you right down to the number of meters, if you believe that third decimal point.  That was a distraction it was good not to have. Just had to keep walking. Nothing else to do.

Tomorrow,  I hear, we walk 24 km and then catch a boat. The boat, “which is permitted as part of the Camino” according to the Germans, takes pilgrims from Vilanova de Arousa to Padron along the water route followed by the stone boat carrying the Saint’s body back to Iberia. It is the only water route in the world that contains a Via de la Cruz with, reportedly, 17 crosses marking the water way.