Porrino to Arcade

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The guide books said it was only 23km but it took from9.20 until 4.00pm and it seemed to take forever – even for us oldies. The new amigos did a fantastic job especially as this was only their second day of walking. The weather was overcast but humid almost the entire time and we basically were only a set of hills away from the ocean the whole way. This is a very different experience to that of last year where the air in the Galician hills was cooling and the Galician fog didn’t lift each day until about 11.00am.

The day was made longer because of the climbs and the subsequent “downs” which today seemed ridiculously steep on at least one of the descents. It’s the first time that I have had to snake it down a hill to try and reduce the pressure on the shins. The descents were made worse because we were doing them on asphalt.

We managed a couple of stops along the way for coffee and snacks and the “collections” from breakfast were added to purchases of coffees and cold drinks. The biggest downer of the day were the groups of secondary school kids who at the end of the year are doing their pilgrimage to Santiago – the tranquility of walking through the bush was shaken up a little to the sounds of Spanish “doof doof” music which seemed to be accompanying most of the school groups walking.

We made it to Redondello which is the town out from Arcade and basically we were expecting a pretty smooth run into the town with about a 5 km walk. What we had not anticipated was the three very steep climbs which would take us up to the final run “down” into Arcade. Having walked for three weeks and being pretty walking fit, even Lori and I had a time of it. To the credit of the Denise and Melinda and with David’s coaching- the new amigos made it in and only about a half an hour separated us. Credit where credit is due. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots really say it all.

After showers we headed over to their hotel for a drink before dinner which was at one of the only restaurants open on a Monday night in Arcade. I have to say that Melinda has taken to the Vino Bianca Sangria’s which clearly are very healthy because of the fruit that is chopped up that goes into them – the Cointreau is clearly orange based too!

So tomorrow we have the shortest walk of the entire Camino – 12km. I have now learnt to not comment on this because who knows how long it may take to finish 12km.