Galicia Espiritual Variant

Today we covered 502 km, our top speed was 246 km per hour courtesy of Renfe high speed trains. Google maps indicates this would take 4 days and 9 hours to walk - eek.

We left Segovia at 6:50 a.m. and arrived in Galicia in the town of Pontevedra at 10:42 a.m.

It's great to be back in Galicia - you can almost smell the sea. We have seriously noticed the drop in temperatures from inland Spain, where we were averaging 35 to 37° celsius,  dropping down to 20° on our arrival  in Galicia and it was struggling to spit a tiny bit. 

 We saddled up our backpacks, the rain held off and the gloomy skies gradually disappeared, time get walking again.

We visited Pontevedra  in 2018 but we didn't take the Espiritual Variant leg of the Camino Portuguese, so now's the time  to explore this  route.

Pontevedra is on the Ria Baixas - the lower bays of Galicia. It is a busy town / city with some wonderful history.

The Church of the Virgin Peregrino dates from the 18th century and is scallop shell in shape (the scallopo shell is a symbol of St James and  pilgrims) and has a baroque facade. 

There is also a 16th century Iglesia -  Santa Maria La Mayor. The artisans that work on these amazing historic places would have been at the top of their craft and they wouldn't have the benefit of CAD design and the sophisticated tools and technology we have now - it's incredible to wonder at how they did it all given the scale and size  -  the height of the church spires let alone the detail and the tapestries, the sculptures and the incredible artwork.

We are back in our wheelhouse  Camino wise.  We actually saw four other peregrinos today, although at the split we were the only ones that turned left onto Espiritual Variant.

We are walking through little hamlets where most people have a few rows of grapevines and evidence of spring / summer gardens being planted out was everywhere. 

The path is well marked and even includes  emergency taxi option at hilly parts - very entrepreneurial. 

We walked through some cherry orchards and a gum forest, passed a locked up Iglesia - it felt like the Camino days of old.

We noted the graffiti advice or was it encouragement for vegan walkers?

We are staying at the Hospedaria Monasterio de Poia which is a 17th century monastery with an incredible 18th century altar altarpiece. 

The monastery is incredibly large but of course  many of the rooms for monks, theologians and researchers are no longer used, hence opening the doors to tourists to maintain funds for the upkeep of the monastery. 

It's an incredibly beautiful place to stay, immaculatly clean and as we are staying here we were able to visit the cloisters, the monastery proper and some of the galleries where historical artifacts are stored.

 It's an incredibly beautiful and peaceful place to come to at the end of a day walking.

The lady at reception was so delightful, we had a great conversation in Spanglish about the place to stay two nights on from here. She was most helpful in trying to book a monastery stay for us but it was completo so we'll go to plan B. It's lovely to see the world over how similar we are  - with a nod and a smile and a laugh we connect and yet we speak quite different languages.