Barcala

There are roughly 90k between Santiago and Finisterre. It's typically done in 3 or 4 days.
Jan was very much set on doing it in 3 days, and the idea of ~30k per day suited me. His idea was different, he wanted to do 35-30-25.
I had already booked a bed at Albergue Rectoral San Mamede da Pena. We left Santiago together, then he wanted to speed up, so I let him go and we would meet again for breakfast, at the first cafe on the way.
After breakfast, we walked together again until the biggest town we would pass through this day, Negreira. That's where we saw Nelly, but she was with another pilgrim in a cafe we didn't like, so we only spoke for 5 minutes and walked on, towards the river, in thehope we'd find somewhere to eat there. It was lunchtime. This town was also the last chance for some supermarket shopping for a couple of days. We found a supermarket before we found a nice cafe, and I proposed to buy a picnic lunch there, apart from the other supplies we needed.
As it turned out, the river did not have an open area for a picnic, but a park nearby was good enough. It had benches in the shade, and a water fountain.
After lunch, Jan wanted to go faster again, as he was planning to go farther than me. It was hot and we just wanted to get to our albergues.
He was walking faster, but also stopping more, so I kept catching up, and at some point I passed him.
I got to my albergue, settled in, and a bit later he was at the reception asking for a bed 😂
I had a feeling he might end up doing that, as it was getting a bit late in the afternoon and too hot to go on for another hour. It was definitely the best decision he could make because the albergue was great, and the dinner (set menu) was excellent value, delicious and very abundant.
At the dinner table we met most of the other guests - all new people for us.
The interesting thing about this extension to Finisterre is that now we were mixing with people who got to Santiago via different routes, and we could learn about them.
The pic shows a sample of what the landscape was like. Some of the walk was along the road, but a good part was in trails with good tree cover.Read more