We made it to Portomarin today!
It was a fairly easy way, with a couple big uphills and quite a downhill at the end of the day. A mix of ups and downs, as usual. Nothing murderous.
It was the first day for lots of peregrinos/peregrinas. In order to get the Compostela (certificate of completion) at the end of the journey, you must walk at least 100 kms. The closest town to that number is Sarria… so it’s the most popular place for people to begin the journey. Not everyone has the luxury of taking a month or more to do the full walk from St. Jean Pied de Port.
If you start from Sarria, you really get a good feel for what the Camino is.
We left our albergue at 6:53am and we walked for several kms in darkness.
We were almost never fully alone today. A slightly different feel, but nothing drastically different. The new pilgrims most likely left after daybreak. All of those walking in the dark were pilgrims we recognized from previous days.
We stopped for breakfast relatively early. It was still dark. We stopped because we didn’t know when the next place would appear.
We soon came upon the spot where we found horses on our last Camino in 2019. Guess what!? They were still there. These horses know exactly how to work a crowd. They stay by the fence right along The Way, in order to get pets and apples and admiration!
Of course I fed this beauty an apple…
I love fences and gates and stone walls. There are a lot of them on this part of the Camino.
It didn’t take us long to get to the 100km milemarker today. They changed it! The one we saw in 2019 was so covered in graffiti and knick knacks, you could hardly see the numbers on it. It was smothered. This one looks relatively new.
It was right after the milemarker when we saw this Ninja dog…
We came across our first Hórreo of this Camino. Soon after we saw them everywhere…
Into every life, a little rain must fall. Today, there was a bit of rain. Not too much. Enough to pull out our ponchos. It was Misty and spitty for a couple of hours.
Just before you get to Portomarin, you have a choice to make. LEFT OR RIGHT. I went right in 2014. It is mostly road all the way DOWN into town. And down almost all the way. In 2019, Michael and I chose the left way. It was a hellscape of rocks and dirt. It was like a drainage ditch with walls of dirt closing in on both sides and almost too narrow for one person. That means no passing. If you’re behind a slow person, you have to go at their pace. If you’re the slow person, you’ll feel like you’re holding everyone up. It’s a nightmare.
WE WENT RIGHT THIS YEAR! The right way is the right way. Pro tip for you!
Seeing that lovely bridge tells you you’re almost there! Just cross the bridge and climb the stairway and you’re there!
We are relaxing in our albergue room. We booked a special dinner tonight. I think I’ll make a new post just for that. For now, it’s Buen Camino, pilgrims! We need to find a bar in town to have pre-dinner drinks! We’ve earned them.
Just a couple more photos first! This church was down by the river (the whole town was). They were going to flood the valley to make the river larger, so they disassembled what they wanted to keep and brought it up the hill. The church was taken apart, brick by brick. They numbered each brick, carried them up the hill, and put the whole building back together again at the loftier height.
Buen Camino!
Click here to jump to DAY 10 – Portomarin to Palas de Rei!
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While you’re here, I wrote a novel set on the Camino Frances route. You can check it out at Amazon here: THE CAMINO CLUB
KEVIN CRAIG 