Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis 22kms
Total distance 223kms
Climb 160m
Total climb 3190m

What a great day of walking. It rained all night (100mm) and was raining when we woke up this morning but by the time we had finished breakfast it had stopped. We put our rain jackets on when we departed as we thought there might be some showers hanging about. At one stage Barbara put on her poncho but a brief light shower came to nothing and we had a dry day. It was warm, a bit muggy and we had a nice little tail breeze for much of the day.

Leaving Pontevedra we passed the Fountain of the Children which has water spouts that come up out of the pavement. It wasn’t playing this morning but there were two cute little statues of children. From there we called into the Convent of San Francisco hoping to get a stamp for our passport, but although the church was open we had no joy, maybe we just weren’t pious enough. We passed through a couple of the lovely historic squares in the Old Town. The Lena Square which gets its name from the sale of firewood.  It dates from the 15th century and is surrounded by typical houses and the Provincial Museum. In the centre of the square is a stone transept. Two buildings of the museum are linked by a graceful bridge. The second was the Verdura Square, the Vegetable Square, which gets its name from the products sold there, vegetables, chestnuts and fruit. The arcades of the buildings house old typical taverns. It dates from the 1330s and a market was held here every day except Sundays and public holidays until 1990.
From there we crossed the Ponte O Burgo medieval bridge we saw yesterday.

Although Pontevedra is a sizeable city (pop 80,000) and a university city, we were quickly out of town and into the countryside on natural pathways through woodland offering shade along gentle river valleys. We shared the day with a railway line which was sometimes at ground level and other times on a viaduct spanning small valleys. We saw several fast passenger trains and one freight train over the course of the day.

We are now in an endless stream of pilgrims, all on the same mission. There seems to be a lot more Spanish pilgrims now, doing their 100km to Santiago. Most of today’s walk was through countryside with only two villages that had cafes. The numbers mean the cafes and their conveniences are packed as almost everyone wants to stop for a break. We have learnt not to stop at the first cafe you come across, but to go further into a village where you often find a quieter and cheaper one. The second half of the day was through vineyards.  Many of the vines had ripe grapes ready for picking. The soil is good here and the rain in Galicia is regular.

Caldas de Reis is famous for its thermal baths. Its history is inextricably linked to its thermal waters that have gushed from its ground source at a constant 40° for millennia. Already inhabited by people such as the Cyclenes and the Celts, it became a major spa with the arrival of the Romans and was on the Via Romana XIX. Today we passed several markers showing the route of Via Romana XIX. This was a Roman road from the time of Augustus (63BC -AD14) linking the towns of Braga, Pontevedra, Calaz de Reis, Santiago, Lugo and Astorga in northern Spain.

We arrived at our hotel at 2.30 just as the Tuitrans van turned up with our bags, so good timing. In the lobby we met the first Kiwi we have come across. A young lady from Martinborough. She said she was finding the walking and hills very easy as she was a tramper and spent a lot of time in the Tararuas.