Portuguese Coastal, Part of the Primitivo, Week in Vigo
We see this a lot: a dual use walking and bicycle lane with. 10 km/hour bicycle speed limit. The pedestrian seems to be striding so purposefully.
Just the usual don’t do this and be careful about that except the text is Galician, which seems to be more like Portuguese than like Spanish.
It was a long walk today. About 11 miles from start to finish. A little longer than we like to walk and some up and down, but it wasn’t too bad.
It was one of the prettiest days we’ve had walking. The scenery, the weather, the ever-changing path.
The Litoral is the Camino we’ve been trying to stay on because it is usually close to the shore. But it isn’t well marked. The Coastal (strangely) is a little further inland, hillier, more established, with much better way marks. Today the Coastal and Litoral coincided all day. Hence it was an easy day to navigate: yellow arrows pointed the way at every turn. Less stress.
Also, we are trying something new. As we’ve mentioned in blogs of previous years, Charlie generously carries more than twice as much as I do. About 25 pounds for him and 10 for me. Starting last Camino he said it was getting hard (or at least not fun) to carry that weight and maneuver rocky, rooty, steep trails. Yesterday he said (to paraphrase many discussions) “I hoped I’d make it to 80 before we did pack transfer, but I’m more nervous about falling now and I think I’d enjoy the walks more without this heavy pack. Let’s try it.” So, we set it up last night and did it today for the first time.
The Spanish postal service (Correos) has a great service where they’ll take your pack from one town to the next. Cost is 7 euros per bag. You leave it at the hotel you are leaving and then find it waiting for you at the hotel you arrive at. It worked perfectly today.
We only carried what we needed for the day: rain gear, cool weather gear, some snacks, water bottles, first aid, my hiking poles. Charlie carried all that in his pack. We filled my pack with all our other stuff and that’s what got transferred via Correos. So, I didn’t carry anything but my waist pack. It was really nice to not have the weight on our backs.
It did take us a frustrating hour yesterday afternoon figuring out the Correos website to set up the transfer and having to make a phone call because of a glitch. But, we finally got it going. It’ll be easy from now on.
We saw this neat statue of St. James (aka Santiago) on the Camino this morning just as we were leaving A Guarda. We liked that he was sitting down. It was a little bigger than life size.
We passed this on the Camino this morning about half way to our destination. In someone’s backyard. It was big. (That’s a shed roof over to the left, I think.) Ella and Grubb (friends who are traveling in Japan), of course, we thought of you! That’s the ocean in the background.
Sometimes a tree is in the way.
Sometimes they are fake.
