I am still on the Spiritual Way today. Will today’s experience be as enlightening as yesterday’s one? Let’s find out in a different manner this time; 4 short stories to describe my day.

Food for walking

Let’s talk about food for a bit. When embarking in an activity like walking the Camino food is obviously going to be a subject. Not that I am spending a lot of attention to it but I try to keep well fed during the day. I will start the day taking a vitamin pill. I feel that the food that I am eating in restaurants usually does not contain a lot of vegetables which might cause me staying short on the ingestion of necessary vitamins. After a couple of days of walking this worries me a little bit and I decided to buy some multi-vitamins to have at least the basics covered.

Today I am in luck because the accommodation includes a breakfast and this time is a decent one compared to others I’ve had during this journey. After a short wait in front of me appears a baked egg, some toasted bred with marmalade and butter, a big glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, a big piece of cake, a mandarine and a kiwi. And a coffee with milk of course. I won’t eat all of this before I take off so I stuff the fruit and half of the cake in my backpack and consume the rest of it.

After some 6 kilometres of walking I do my first food stop. It’s raining and I am hiding under a bridge across a river which I have been walking along during the past hour. Good moment for a mandarine. Second food stop is another 6 kilometres further. I still have a left over of yesterday’s sandwich which I see eat on a bench next to a playground situated next to a small church. I also have a cereal bar. This is already half of a lunch which some hours later I complement with some croquettes with mixed fillings. On the television on the restaurant where I am stopping the Wheel of Fortune is on. The sound is being reproduced quite loudly through the speakers of the restaurant. In general the outside lunch spots are the nicest ones. I finish my second lunch stop with a cortado, an espresso with a bit of milk.

Some 2 hours later I have another mandarine. This time it’s a seaside one. And when I arrive in Villagarcía de Arousa I collect another stamp for my pilgrim passport together with another cortado at a bar overlooking the harbour. I will be taking the train from here for which I have to wait about an hour. I buy a small bag of chips with a can of Sprite at the bar in the train station.

The day is terminated with a modest dinner at a restaurant and I treat myself to a chocolate mousse with some proteins which I bought together with tomorrow’s Camino food at a local supermarket in Padrón.

A short cat encounter

I am walking in the rain again. I have been seeing quite a few friendly cats yesterday but today they all seem to wisely hiding inside. It’s not raining cats & dogs today but enough to get sufficiently wet and want to stay inside. It’s a bit cold as well and every time I stop for a small rest it takes me some 5 minutes to get somewhat warm again.

I am finishing the first section of the day which has led me first along the same stream that I have been walking along yesterday and then along a bigger river. I am walking behind some small houses and underneath some plants when I suddenly see something moving on the ground. It’s a small black cat with beige spots looking up at me with eyes wide open. At first i think he is frightened of my appearance but it’s more a look of concentration. He seems to be entertained by the water dripping down the overhanging plants and flowing by in the river. When I call him he approaches me and attacks my hand in playful manner. He circles my legs for a bit while being easily distracted by all the movements the world around him is displaying.

These kind of cat encounters generally don’t last any longer than a minute and this time it’s no different. I tell him it might be a better idea to go inside and not stay out for too long. If weather conditions stay the way they are, then that might be a good idea for me as well. Then a dog comes running and barking at us on the other side of a fence. That’s too much for the friendly cat and he runs off without saying goodbye through a hole in a neighbouring fence. I also set off again.

Nighttime walking

Today has extended itself quite a bit. Up to now I would have been arriving at a hostel around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. A normal pilgrim will leave early and arrive early. But I started late today, because breakfast was not served untill 9, and I had to wait for a train later on the day. I had decided that a train ride would be a good alternative for the boat service which was not running and which normally is part of the Spiritual way.

When the train leaves from Villagarcía station it’s already dark. I will be doing a stretch of 20 kilometers which will only take me 20 minutes. Walking this distance would have taken me the better part of a day. I could have taken the train all the way to Padrón but I want to be a good pilgrim and get off one stop earlier, in the village of Pontecesures. I strap my backpack to my body for the last time today and start walking. It takes me 3 minutes to get out of town and get to the bridge which brings me to Padrón. Just before the bridge I encounter a nicely illuminated statue of Santiago The Pilgrim.

A half moon is visible on the clear sky. Lately I’ve been wanting to walk or cycle in the dark and with clear skies and it’s nice that I can do so now for a short bit. The world just seems that much more quiet when it’s dark and it’s nice to be able to experience that. After crossing the bridge the way leads to a scarcely illuminated road alongside the river which flows through town. A few cars pass by. I notify them of my presence by turning on the light on my smartphone but I also feel somewhat vulnerable like this so I am happy to see the sidewalks reappear when I walk into the town of Padrón. After 5 more minutes I am already at my hostel. It’s quiet and comfortable. Just how I like it.

Lingering at the beach

I’ve already walked quite a bit of coastline during this trip. Walking on the beach has not been part of it yet. Before going on this trip I read a blog of Dutch woman who had followed the same route during the same time of year and she tried some bit of walking on the beach but quickly changed her mind due to the slow progress you make on the beach. But this afternoon I have all the time in the world. This morning I still had some hope that I might some alternative boat tour operator with which I would be able to do the water part of the Spiritual way. But when I arrived at Vilanova de Arousa the harbour was just as abandoned as the beach side campings and hotels that I had come across during my approach to the town.

So train it was. When looking at the timetable of the train I saw that my first viable option was not going to be untill over 4 hours later. This meant that I had 4 hours to walk some 10 kilometers. After doing some road side walking and getting a bit tired of it I opted for an alleyway leading to the beach thinking that it would offer some relief. The sand was not too loose and walking on it therefore wasn’t too hard. On the first beach I collected some small sea shells which were still in their original shell state where both parts of the shell are still connected and form a perfectly closing compartment. There were quite a lot of then on the beach.

After spending some time looking for the nicest shell to take with me and forgetting about walking and having to get somewhere for a while I was off to the next beach. In between beaches it occurred to me that it would be nice to find a shell which would look somewhat similar to the St James Shell which is so symbolizing for the Camino a Santiago. Supposedly because the way would have led St. James, which is the English name for the apostle Santiago, all the way to the end of the world, a place called Finisterra – a place you can actually continue to walk to after passing through Santiago de Compostela – where you can find the scallop shell worn by a lot of pilgrims to indicate that they actually are doing the pilgrimage to Santiago.

On my second beach I did spot some shells which looked somewhat like the St. James scallop shells. So I collected a whole set of them. It remembered me a bit of summer holidays at the beach where I wil sometimes do the same, always looking for the nicest treasure to take home with me. It was relaxing and was quite the contrast to the stiffness and tiredness which I had been feeling earlier that day.

I didn’t kill all that much time while lingering on the beach and as I am writing this I am wondering what the real treasure is that I am taking home with me apart from the shells, some of which already have broken because I dropped the bag with shells from the hostel bed. I hope the same won’t happen with the treasure which is the experience of doing this walk.