Celtic Camino | Here Comes The Planet

I hope you’re all appreciating the fact that I haven’t posted any photos of Danny’s blisters but they, and the weather, are why we are taking today off.

We have sat ourselves in a cafe that is pretty much below last night’s accommodation and have been phoning people for chats (Luke’s parents are currently on a cruise in Germany) and watching the world’s slowest window cleaner.

He took over two hours to do these windows.

He did do an excellent job but the rate was glacial.

It’s been kind of interesting watching people come and go. The cafe has an extensive menu but mainly seems to sell bread from the front end of the counter and beer and coffee from the back half.

Hardly any cafes display their menus or even have them out on tables. Approximately half of this menu was translated into English, the other half is for locals only!

The vast amount of tiling and cold lighting in Spanish cafes make them all feel a bit cheap and basic but this place has stools and clearly is a regular haunt for many retired men. There’s a row of them at the bar with their newspapers and beers.

Half the houses here have benches out the front so I imagine that all their wives are sitting out neighbour-watching between housework while the men are in here.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. This is one of the less disgusting ones. Poor Danny.

We’ve spent the rest of the day with our feet up and Danny trying to get me to look at his disgusting feet. Danny has been enjoying Ted Lasso for the first time.

The highlight of my day was saying I’d race Danny the four flights downstairs, him taking the lift and me on the stairs. The stairs circle around the lift and I hit every ‘door open’ button on the way down and could hear Danny shouting at me from the lift. I nearly died laughing by the time I got to the bottom.

For dinner we went back to the same cafe and had the same arepas as last night. When we walked in the owner and bartender gave us big smiles and right at the end I talked to a girl at the bar who told me they were all from Venezuela. They were all so lovely, if you’re ever in Sigueira I highly recommend stopping at this place, just look for the little square with the fountain on the west side of the main street.

Also we’ve generally found that the cafes that line the busiest roads are nowhere near as friendly or pleasant as going a street or two back.

In the evening, between Ted Lasso episodes, Danny booked all our travel and accommodation in Pontevedra (two nights) and Porto (three nights). After that Peter and Ash arrive and we will meet up in Santiago de Compostella and properly see the city that is the official end of the camino.

Ok so this morning Danny told me how much this apartment is worth. It’s on the fourth floor, there’s a lift. Here’s some photos before I tell you how much it’s worth.

Within the apartment was a second floor, the bedrooms were upstairs.

There’s a separate lounge and dining, three bedrooms and three bathrooms plus a car space and a fee of 52 euros a year for the body corporate. the town is also pretty close to an international airport.

Double-double glazed windows with those amazing roller blinds that you never see in Australia but are everywhere in Europe.

169,000 euros! 277K in AUD. Time to learn Spanish!

Most pilgrims stay in Bruma but we had missed out on accommodation so we had walked off trail to Ordes. I don’t know if I really spent enough time in my last post emphasising precisely how many trucks were driving through the main street of Ordes, where our hotel was. It was like a truck convention had come to town.

It was pretty much a constant stream of loud traffic. The town had a strange vibe, with half the businesses clearly closed down but also a lot of fancy cars and richly dressed pedestrians. All the buildings were soot stained… basically we weren’t sorry to leave. If Pontedueme was 4/5, this was 1/5.

I cannot complain about the staff at our hotel, who were so so friendly and helpful and apologised all the time for their English (this is so embarrassing for me and my ten words of Spanish). Breakfast was … tomato on toast!

Plus a special treat.

Mum, I know exactly what you’ll say when you see this photo! Coco pops was my special treat cereal as a kid.

Hotel decor was a bit dramatic for breakfast.

As we left the hotel I noticed something significant – a pile of bags with tags. This meant the bag transfer service was available! I got out my little backpack, we put all of Danny’s heavy stuff in my big bag and left it for pick up. Having an AirTag on my bag made it easy to check when it reached its destination and helped us navigate to the right place.

Walking out of town was a pleasure and quickly took us away from the grotty part of town and into the countryside. Along the way was some great graffiti.

Five kilometres out of town was an excellent little cafe with an owner who spoke not only perfect English but with a West Sussex accent despite being clearly Spanish. she has been born in England then moved back to Spain with her Spanish parents to look after her grandmother.

We asked her if pilgrims were annoying and she said ‘only the Spanish ones’ and when we asked how they were annoying she said ‘in every way’ and the gist of it seemed to be that they were very entitled and acted like they were doing her a favour and didn’t realise her business was mainly supported by locals, pilgrims were ‘holiday money’. It was really interesting to be able to talk to someone about the local side of living on such a popular route.

People had left pilgrims messages so I left the orange one in the middle letting people know that the little boxes on stilts were for corn. Later on we met some British girls who had also been wondering. It wasn’t just us who was mystified!

The lady in the cafe had said the walk from then on was easy and she wasn’t wrong. Either that or Deb had been right about day five and onwards being easier… or the cooler weather made a difference. Maybe it was all these aspects combined?

Most of the walking was by fields, through trees and on roads.

There were definitely more people on the trail today as both routes had properly joined. We kept leap-frogging groups and saying hello … well, hola! When everyone says hola it’s really hard to work out who speaks English.

We had a nice chat with some Spanish men who spoke English at a rest stop by the second last pilgrim bath of the day.

The last part of the day was beside a highway but behind a hedge, thankfully. Also it was a gentle downhill for once.

Then through industrial estates but they seemed quite new and busy.

Apart from Danny’s epic blisters we both agreed that it was by far the easiest day. Most of the other pilgrims had walked further than us though as we had stayed at a town that wasn’t exactly on the trail. We had wondered if towns not on the official route would still give us stamps but it turned out to be fine no matter where we went.

Walking into Sigueira was lovely with a nice park and an open cafe.

As we sat with a snack under some lovely wisteria, too early to book into our accommodation, the weather turned a bit.

Danny was not happy about getting out his raincoat.

My bag had been taken to a different hotel so we had to pick it up before our accommodation. The AirTag was a super handy way to find my bag. The lady at the hotel was very annoyed that my bag had been sent there when we weren’t actually staying at her hotel and she said ‘maybe it was there, maybe not’ but a nicer member of staff went to look and found it immediately. If I hadn’t been able to track my bag with my phone I would’ve had a proper panic!

Our apartment was on the third floor so after we lugged our bags up we went out for food – delicious arepas at a bar that was playing almost nonstop Adele videos.

I will admit this photo doesn’t look great but it was actually one of the best things I’ve eaten so far on this trip.

We highly recommend this bar, not just for the food but the staff were lovely.

We bought some wine and snacks and by 7pm we were on the couch watching Drag Race.

Danny’s feet had been hurting so much that we decided to book another night in Sigueiro. It turned out to be a great decision as it started raining during the night and hasn’t really stopped since!