Day 14 A Picarana

Thursday 8th May 2025

It was lovely not to worry about other people this morning. We could get up, switch the light on and make as much noise as we wanted. We have a short day today, so I am in the look out for any detours we can take! Out of the hotel. Over the bridge with a great view of the factory and very soon we are in Padron. It’s a beautiful town, with a great church and looks like lots of good restaurants and bars, we probably should have stayed here last night!! The walk out of town is lovely. We will spend today criss crossing the main road and walking through small villages.

Firstly through Iris Flavia which has a museum with a steam engine outside. It is dedicated to John Trulock who built the first railway in Galicia! We also took a look at the church of Santa Maria de Iris, its medieval with lots of additions. Closed obviously!!

We pass another wash house and along the main road find a few places like this. Selling the crosses and statues that we are seeing everywhere!! Interesting to see where people get them from.

There are so many pilgrims in the trail now, we are behind a group of school children, 2 coach loads of them, walking very slowly. So we take a detour to see a local attraction. When we get there it is beautiful, a stream, with a lovely picnic area and what looks like an iron lick to put in place to dam the area. It doesn’t look like it has been used for ages and we can’t really work out why you would want to do that. But a lovely spot and a good detour either way no other people!! By the time we get back to the Camino it is much quieter.

It’s a pretty quiet walk from there. We stop a few times for food and drink. Tortilla for Robin and tarte de Santiago for me!! We admire a closed church! And see numerous wash houses ! The sun is out and it is a lovely walk along quiet country lanes.

I have managed to string it out today and we reach our hostel after 2pm. We think maybe we should have just gone for it this morning and gone straight to Santiago. But we have booked do we will stay!! Our bags are here and the first think we found get the washing on. Last time for this trip! This is the view as we sit outside the hostel and wait for our washing to be done. There is nowhere to go here and not long after there is absolutely torrential rain. So we decide to eat in the hostel. Pizza or sandwich? We went with pizza which wasn’t too bad. We watched the new pope being announced which was interesting and got chatting to a couple of Americans. ‘Are you looking forward to tomorrow?’ she asked. Not sure is the answer.