Pontevedra to Armenteira - Variante Espi

Tough day today. Woke up with a stupid migraine, so it took a while to get going. Finally left around 10, still feeling a little off colour, but thought we'd take it easy and see how we went. Unfortunately it wasn't a good day to start late, with a long, hilly stage and 32C forecast.
So we got going, and took it slowly and we took an alternative route called the Variante Espiritual which veers off to the East of the other route towards the coast. It takes 3 days as opposed to 2 on the traditional route and they meet up in Padron, 25km from Santiago.
It was a hard slog, hot and not much shade and most of the day we seemed to be going uphill, and a lot of that very steeply. We finally made it to the village at around 5:45, had a drink then had another 500m to the albergue. Then had to walk there and back to the cafe for dinner! It was supposed to be a 21km day, but 25km were clocked up on the app.
Most of the people we have met have taken the traditional route, but we met two of the couples, one American, one Danish, at dinner, and will probably bump into them the next couple of days.
Supposed to be an easier day tomorrow, so looking forward to that.

p.s. at an old church we stopped at a wedding was about to start so we stayed for about half an hour to see the bride arrive.Read more