Ribadumia to Vilanova de Arousa

Beautiful day again in Galicia, the temps for the next week are hot, hot, hot. We had a great breakfast at the rural casa we were staying at, the mamma out back in  the kitchen made the best eggs and the O.J was so fresh. 

We set off early and  had our first stop at Capela San Pedro de Mouzos  - a tiny little chapel in a hamlet  amongst the vineyards.

It was lovely walking through the vineyards.

They grow mainly  albarinio grapes here on small holdings that supply the major vineyard. Unfortunately the vineyard bodega was not open when we were walking past.

We were looking for a shady place to rest and came upon the Igrexa de San Miguel de Reiro and a kind gentleman stopped mowing the lawns and unlocked the church for us so we could sit inside in the cool.

A simple little village church with a bell tower and an external bell pull to call people to service or to raise the alarm in a case of a fire especially with the eucalyptus forest being so close. It was very tempting to pull that bell.. but we resisted.

There are over 10,000 cruceiros  in Galicia. They are to guide the traveller and you'll find them at crossroads. They also  protect the harvests and we came across them in the fields and the vines.  The oldest date back to the 14th century. 

The lemons here are enormous and abundant and the blossom smells divine!

 We had a steep climb  to walk to San Roque do Mont. The path was  a blend of walking through a eucalypt forest and then back into vineyards again.

In the little hamlet of San Roque do Mont there's a memorial to the humble donkey.

I couldn't find out the history but now the village celebrates a fiesta to the donkey  and they have donkey races apparently.

It was lovely to come back to the coast again. We rested for a while in the shade of the pine trees and watched a white heron fishing in the shallows.

There's quite a bit of seaweed on the shoreline. The water looks beautiful and on another day we would have jumped in but we still had a little bit more of hiking to be done to get to the village of Vilanova de Arousa.

We  crossed a little footbridge to the town proper.

There is a big fishing fleet here that harvest muscles, clams, cockles and fresh fish of course. As we came over the footbridge and were looking down, we could see three divers with air tanks just slowly cruising along the sea floor and we think they were collecting shellfish, but not sure.

The economy here is still linked to fishing, especially to shellfish and  mussel farming with hundreds of platforms all along the coast. We'll get to see these up close tomorrow as we need to take a boat for tomorrow's stage.

There looks to be lots of public sculptures but it was too hot to wander, our priority was to find our hotel and get our packs off. So sculptures shots tomorrow.

We have walked from Pontevedra to Vilanova de Arousa - tomorrow is our final stage to Pontcesures and it's via boat - yay! Many will walk on to Padron and then Santiago de Compostela however we took this path a few years back so won't walk it again. 

Hasta luego amigos 👍