Another short day. 22.6km according to my Garmin across a fairly flat, mostly rural landscape.

We left this morning at 7:30, our preferred time; morning kilometres really are shorter than those in the afternoon.

Pontevedra was pretty quiet as we walked through the somewhat unpleasant concrete periphery and more interesting tangled streets of the Centro Historico.

The next two images are of the same building, the Sanctuario de la Virgen Peregrina, the first taken in the warm failing light of yesterday evening

the second in the cold early light of morning.

It’s interesting how colour and warmth are missing from the second image.

I noticed the following piece of graffiti underneath a typical Camino directional sign.

It refers to John Cage’s (in)famous piece for solo piano, 4’33” in which the performer is required to sit silently for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds before taking the customary bow. Not sure who this is intended for. It’s underneath the Camino sign so perhaps it’s intended for the passing pilgrim, an instruction to listen to the moment as it passes us by, perhaps an exhortation to pay attention to the myriad of sensory experiences as we poodle along in life. Or perhaps he was simply bored and wanted to write something seemingly profound. Who knows.

A little while later we came across the following.

It’s not possible to see motion in a single static image as I had only a moment to take the photo whilst the baker was out of the room, but the object in the background on the far right consists of two paddles which gently knead dough in exactly the same manner in which Dorothy uses her two large silicon ‘spoons’ to massage her sourdough before setting it to rise for the first time. Now that is interesting.

We were early enough this morning to see the local council workmen cleaning the streets before the populace arrived.

It’s the sort of thing that you see in many European cities early in the morning, again something that the UK might learn from.

It took 20 minutes or so to travel the 2km from our accommodation to the edge of the city, by which time the sun had started to rise.

There’s a strange object in the tree in the next image. It’s quite possibly a bird’s nest but it looks quite solid and a little too ‘manufactured’. Perhaps a wasp’s nest?

The route to Caldas de Reis took us mostly along country tracks and narrow lanes.

The Spanish are or at least were a devoutly religious people and crosses like the following can be found everywhere.

We came across the somewhat strange re-engineering of what appeared to be stumps of old willows.

They appear to be trying to graft the same plant back onto itself and onto others. No idea why they might want to do this.

As we stopped for coffee and an agua con gas two Columbian pilgrims passed us, dressed identically. They smiled, shouted buen Camino and continued on. The portuguese analogue of the red Italian perhaps.

There was little of note today, some donkeys,

some chickens and geese,

some goats,

some boisterous Spanish schoolchildren out on what Dorothy suspects is the Spanish equivalent of the citizenship field trip

as we passed over the bridge to Caldas de Reis.

We had an excellent late lunch when we arrived, have showered and are ready to (hopefully) meet up with Andy and his wife if they’ve managed to make it this far. It’s our turn to buy the wine.

We noticed this sign on our way in.

By foot we’re roughly 44 km from Santiago. Odd to think that what will take us two days would take a mere 30 minutes on the bus.

Buen Camino