Río Miñor

It was a day of three good coffees! A very short walk and mostly not wet! Probably 85% on pavement of some kind. Tiny ups and a huge down.

Today I learned that the 100-kilometres-from-Santiago crowds are real! For some people an important part of a Camino walk is getting a compostela, a certificate to accredit (is that a verb?) their pilgrimage, when they arrive in Santiago. To get the certificate, you have to walk at least 100 km. For years I’ve been hearing people talk about the huge crowds on the more popular routes when you get to the 100 km mark. But I have not seen them before.

I have only walked into Santiago three times, once in the year 2000 when there weren’t big crowds, and twice coming from the southeast side, and routes that are more quiet, the Invierno and the Sanabres/Via de la Plata. On those routes the numbers increased at 100 km, but you wouldn’t say there were crowds. Today there were crowds!

It felt like a walk-a-thon or charity walk of some sort. Always someone in sight and often someone close enough that I could hear their conversation or (ugh) their metal pole tips on the pavement. At one point, just after O Porriño the Camino crosses a busy road to head down a quiet lane. At the top of the lane was a big group of people obviously gathered together for a photo. I assumed it was a school group going to a sports event or something like that (they had been cheering). But, just as I got to the lane, I could see they were not kids but adults, with day packs with scallop shells. And they were turning down the lane too. There were 103 of them, come from Ireland to walk to Santiago over Easter.

I spent the next hour trying to adjust my attitude! I can walk in quiet woods every day at home! Oddly it seems the more people, the less interaction there is. Or, that was my observation today.

What can it be like to live along this route and have hundreds of people walking by over a day? The owner of the hostal where I am staying in Redondela said that the town is totally booked out from Easter to November. Later this afternoon I was having post-lunch coffee, around 3:30 or 4:00, and there was a steady stream of pilgrims walking past the window. That stream probably starts well before noon.

The man at the hostal said that there would be a Semana Santa procession this evening but I could not find it. He had said it would maybe be cancelled because of the weather. Maybe it was?There will be another chance to see one somewhere tomorrow, I guess.

A very fun thing today: I ran into a young woman from Toronto, whom I had met a couple of nights ago and whom I had assumed I would not see again. Her name is Jordan. We stayed at the same albergue in Valença. I first saw her today coming from a café about 100 m ahead of me and it was clear I was not going to catch up to her. So I thought that was that, but then walking into town here I saw her and two other young women (botanists!) just getting ready to leave a little restaurant. We chatted for a while, they all tried on my new fancy pack. And then it turned out that both Jordan and I had walked the East Coast Trail last year, and that she had written a trip report for a Facebook group, which I had read. And I had written to her to ask her some questions before I went to Newfoundland - and she had written back. Very small world moment.

Quiet afternoon in my very sweet little room after a great lunch - a huge salad - in a very busy, noisy ‘gastrobar’. Walked around a bit. But did not make it far enough to see where the river that flows through town opens out to the bay that opens out to the sea.

Good Friday tomorrow. I am promised that cafe/bars will be open!Read more