Provincia de Pontevedra

Today we are cycling 43+ km from Pontevedra to Padron. We had breakfast and lots of conversation with Mary and Keith about their ride yesterday, about their children and travel. Our ride today consists of:

DESCRIPTION
Cycle through the ancient streets ofPontevedra to start the journey to Padrón,which will be relatively hill-free and surrounded by pleasant countryside. Just
after Pontevedra you'll briefly cycle on a main road but this will be replaced with attractive woodland very quickly. 2.5 kms
after leaving Pontevedra, the Camino splits off for the Variante Espiritual and the main
Camino. Make sure to turn right at this point to continue on the correct path. After 15km, there's the opportunity to leave the
Camino very briefly to visit a series of stone watermills at the Ria Barosa Natural Park just 200m from the Camino. Continuing on,
visit the hot spring in the center of Caldas de Reis if you wish, then continue on the bike to gradually climb through a series of hamlets and a beautiful stretch of woodland to a high point of 165m before a gentle descent. Take some time to explore medieval
Padrón, and discover its deep connection to St. James as well as its tasty green peppers Padrón is also home to illustrious Galician
writers, such as Camino Jose Cela and Rosalia de Castro.

We were all super tired today. I think my quads were done before I started today, but we all just keep encouraging each other and away we go. We saw a LOT of pilgrims on the trail today because the Coastal and Central Camino trails have merged. We used our bells a LOT to try to get around and through. Many people dont know what to do,so we have to be very careful. It was a bit stressful today because of the sheer volume of people and the unpredictability of what they will or will not do when they heat our bike bells. We saw a sheep farmer taking his tiny flock up the road. All were white except the black sheep at the back...unfortunate!!
We had lots of little climbs today, enough to really get our legs, ugh!! At 8km we were going down a forested path and came across a slightly wider creek. Lots of pilgrims were heading across the big stones on the side so I made a judgement call to ride through. Well the first half was shallow, but the second half was more like a full on big bouldered creek and I got stuck and had to put my foot in and it slipped and down I went into the water. All I could do was laugh because I was soaked and couldn't move. Joanne got my bike off me, Andrew helped me up and then was so quick humored, he blessed me as I was standing in the water😂😂😂 then led me out of the water and Anthony was filming and taking pictures🤔😉Everything was pretty wet so we pulled over up a bit and had a reset. I entertained all the pilgrims walking on through 😂🤭😜
I added to my existing bruises on the one leg and more on my other ankle. So much for confidently riding through!! Though I saw one guy do it after me while I was still sitting in the creek. It was a wet ride for a bit then stopped and changed my tops for dry ones. My 2 padded bike shorts were soaked the rest of the way. We continued on and closer to 20km we stopped for coffee and a piece of the local salmon Porta cake. I dried out my passport, our Camino passports and several items in my pack. On we continued and eventually we hit a few climbs, some we rode, some we walked our bikes up. The descents were very steep and tricky today. Our wrists were actually sore having to brake so much and ding our bells to warn other pilgrims. We had a nice. Gentle ride into Padron and came across a.bridge and took pics of the weeds floating in the river in very cool formations. We would d our way eventually finding our beautiful, old hotel.Les mer