Day 11 Westwards to Negreira

We very much enjoyed our rest day in Santiago. It was a pleasure to take the day slowly. We visited the Pilgrims Museum which had interesting displays on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela and the motivations of pilgrims across many faith groups and destinations.

The legend of St James arriving in north west Spain was told in several different accounts in the early centuries of Christianity. In the 9th century, a Roman mausoleum was found at the sight of the present cathedral. Two and two were put together to make a great story and a pilgrimage centre ensued.

In the evening we headed to O Tamboril for the best paella. En route there was a great view of the cathedral in the western light.

We visited O Tamboril one year ago on our journey back to the UK. We were asked to eat our meal in one hour as they had later reservations. The food was so good we vowed to return and to take our time during an evening. It was an excellent decision.

Our walking over the last two weeks has been of similar distance to last year but we’ve realised that there has been much more height gain this year. We are feeling that much more weary. We toyed with catching the bus today but in the end decided to walk as it was relatively short at just over 20 km. There was though a further 483 metres of ascent.

The Suunto app which we use for route planning and syncing our watches colour codes the gradients. We are becoming very attuned to the meaning of pink.

In the morning the walking was on tracks through lovely woods with plenty of eucalyptus trees but degenerated to long sections of road walking in straight lines which we don’t enjoy nearly so much.

There were some lovely bridges on the way.

We arrived at our destination just before 3 in the afternoon. Sunrise here is at 0700 and sunset at 2200. That puts the true midday at 1430. It’s always best for us to have arrived before the heat of the afternoon.

Having said that we have had comfortable walking temperatures with nothing more than 21°. Tomorrow though is forecast to be 25°. Our route would be long at 29 km, mostly on roads, and with 600 metres of ascent. That is all too much so the bus at €2.50 each seems a great alternative.

It is meant to be a holiday after all.